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“I need a sovereign cloud. 80/20 we'll find a solution.” – Catherine Jestin, EVP Digital at Airbus, quoted in The Register
Digital sovereignty

Airbus, the sovereign cloud and the 80/20 chance

Moving PLM workloads to a sovereign cloud takes verifiable requirements, not labels. Airbus's digital chief sees an 80/20 chance. Europe should make it 100/0.

Automatically translated from German · Read the original

Julian Weyer
Julian Weyer February 25, 2026 · 1 min read
Digital sovereignty ·Digital sovereignty ·PLM ·1 min read

When a company like Airbus wants to bring PLM workloads into a sovereign cloud, things get serious: labels no longer count, only verifiable requirements do. Yet according to The Register, Catherine Jestin, EVP Digital at Airbus, speaks of only an “80/20” chance of finding a solution — among other things because of questions about the performance of European providers and open questions about extraterritorial influence.

I think Europe should turn an 80/20 chance into a 100/0. And I believe Europe can do it.

Takeaway

If a company the size of Airbus gives a sovereign cloud solution only an 80/20 chance, it shows that digital sovereignty is no longer an academic debate. It is a question of verifiable requirements — and a perfect opening for European providers to close that gap.