ESA taps OVHcloud, CGI to build system for Earth observation data

Sept 28 : OVHcloud and CGI have won a 30-month European Space Agency contract to build computing infrastructure to store and process Europe's Earth observation satellite data, the companies said on Monday.

The award reflects the European Commission's push to steer strategic workloads to European providers and follows a €180 million ($205 million) cloud tender handed exclusively to four European firms in April.

ESA expects to hold more than 500 petabytes of Earth observation data by 2035, the companies said. The new system, called Digital EO, will pool storage, computing power and AI tools for researchers, public bodies and companies, and connect to existing national and European facilities. 

OVHcloud, Europe's largest cloud provider, will supply the computing, storage and network capacity. CGI, an IT consulting and systems integration firm, will act as architect and integrator.

"Europe absolutely must have control over the infrastructure that runs its most strategic programmes," OVHcloud CEO Octave Klaba said in a statement.

ESA is racing to upgrade how Europe handles satellite imagery. Earlier in September, it awarded parallel study contracts to teams led by Finland's ICEYE and Italy's Leonardo to design a separate, security-focused Earth observation architecture for EU governments.

The system will be deployed in Italy, France and Germany, with support operations run from Poland. It is designed to feed programmes including the European Union's Earth observation programme, Copernicus, and the EU's digital twin of Earth, DestinE.

OVHcloud and CGI said the contract had a value of "multi-million" euros. ESA did not disclose a figure.