The European Space Agency has awarded a multi-million-euro contract to cloud provider OVHcloud and IT services firm CGI to design and operate a new sovereign infrastructure for Earth Observation data across Europe.
The programme, called Digital EO (Earth Observation Information System), will provide the underlying compute, storage and networking capabilities for ESA's Earth Observation activities, including those supporting the European Union's Copernicus environmental monitoring programme and the Destination Earth initiative.
ESA currently uses Earth Observation data to track climate change, air pollution, agricultural conditions and wildfire activity. The agency projects that the volume of such data will exceed 500 petabytes by 2035, a scale that it says requires a fundamentally different approach to infrastructure and data governance.
Under the 30-month contract, OVHcloud will supply compute, storage and network infrastructure, while CGI takes on the role of system architect and integrator. The resulting platform will be decentralised and distributed across sites in France, Germany and Italy, with support operations based in Poland.
A central requirement for ESA is that the system remain sovereign, meaning data processing and storage stays within European jurisdiction and under European operational control. OVHcloud operates 46 data centres worldwide and serves 1.7 million customers across more than 140 countries, and has positioned sovereign cloud as a core part of its commercial offering.
"Digital EO must allow us to take a new step forward in the way Earth Observation data is managed and used," said Nicolaus Hanowski, Head of EO Mission Management and Ground Segment Department at ESA.
"Europe absolutely must have control over the infrastructure that runs its most strategic programs," said Octave Klaba, CEO and Founder of OVHcloud.
The Digital EO platform will also support artificial intelligence workloads applied to Earth Observation datasets. ESA and the European Commission have increasingly used satellite data and AI-assisted analysis to track environmental changes, assess crop yields and provide near-real-time information to emergency response teams during wildfires and other natural disasters.
CGI, acting as system integrator, will coordinate the overall architecture and draw on its experience across space and critical digital infrastructure programmes. Didier Therond, President of CGI France, said the contract would bring the firm's capabilities in cybersecurity, data and artificial intelligence to bear on a platform of strategic significance for Europe.
The deployment geography, spanning France, Germany, Italy and Poland, keeps the entire platform within EU member states, consistent with a broader push across European public institutions to reduce dependence on non-European cloud infrastructure for strategically sensitive workloads.
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