A secure way to boost computing power and handle growing data volumes
ESA depends on powerful, secure computing as almost every aspect of its space projects, from spacecraft design to data analysis, involves complex computations.
Orange Business has provided the agency’s private cloud – esacloud – since 2011. This cloud platform was custom-built on premises across two mirrored data centers to ensure both availability and redundancy.
Notably, ESA owns the infrastructure itself, and Orange Business operates it as a fully managed service. ESA and Orange Business collaborate to determine whether infrastructure upgrades or new services are necessary.
ESA has extended its contract to enhance its cloud platform and services further, keeping pace with growing demand for computing resources and evolving security requirements.
A platform to support space exploration
ESA has chosen Orange Business to expand its computing capabilities that support the agency’s work in developing and coordinating Europe’s space missions and technologies.
Orange Business has provided ESA with the computational power to handle its increasingly demanding data flows, calculations, and analysis
A unified way to handle mission-critical, data-intensive applications
The agency sought to expand the capabilities of its cloud platform to support data-intensive scientific projects, mission-critical applications, and space simulations. All while optimizing cost and resilience.
Orange Business has been collaborating with ESA for over a decade to ensure it has the computing capabilities to handle increasingly complex scientific projects that often involve significant data flows.
ESA has built a trusted relationship with Orange Business and has been impressed by its understanding of its technological needs to support its projects. Thus, the network and digital integrator were the obvious choice for advancing ESA’s IT computing infrastructure roadmap.
To meet ESA’s evolving requirements, Orange Business recently extended ESA's cloud infrastructure nodes by adding a node in Belgium, which hosts its new Cybersecurity Operations Center (CSOC).
Orange Business’s Professional Services help ESA continuously accelerate its digital transformation by providing consulting services and expert advice on network, cloud, and data strategies.
Orange Business now manages esacloud infrastructure in three major locations: the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Germany, which serves as the primary mission control center; the European Space Research Institute (ESRIN) in Italy; and the European Space and Education Centre (ESEC) in Belgium. In Germany, there are two separate nodes.
ESOC operates a highly sensitive mission-critical operations infrastructure. Here, teams are responsible for launching satellites and controlling orbits, so reliability is essential.
Previously, the mission control systems environment was based on a dedicated, virtual infrastructure. Services have now been harmonized and migrated to the fully managed Orange Business esacloud platform. This has involved a shift in mindset from owning and controlling the physical setup to trusting and efficiently consuming reliable, scalable private cloud services.
Shoring up security for ESA
Security is a critical issue for ESA as European governments, citizens and economies increasingly depend on services provided by space infrastructure. This includes the Galileo global positioning service and the Copernicus Earth observation system to monitor climate change. Such assets have become targets for malicious actors so robust security is imperative to protect daily operations.
Orange Business continues to strengthen security and enhance its self-service environment for ESA, including progressing towards the implementation of a zero-trust segmentation model. This approach enables IT teams to easily define and manage granular access policies within a network environment. Breaking the network down into zones limits a bad actor’s lateral movements should a breach happen. Policy automation reduces the need for manual interventions and the likelihood of misconfiguration.
Zero-trust minimizes unnecessary connections, reducing attack points, while also speeding up incident response and improving compliance.
A distributed firewall-as-a-service (DFWaaS) is managed from a central console. Scalability and simplified management provide ESA with protection against internal and external threats through a granular, role-based control system further enhanced by micro segmentation features, which traditional firewalls struggle to deliver.
Recently, Orange Business provided support for virtualized Trusted Platform Module (vTPM), a software-based equivalent of TPM2.0 chips which enhances security by delivering protection for sensitive data, such as secure storage for cryptographic keys.
Orange Business also has an ongoing security program to maintain compliance with industry standards. Its managed platform, for example, is compliant with ISO 27001 in alignment with any other esait service, and with FedRAMP a US government standard used for cloud environments and services.
Performance boost with GPU on demand
Orange Business is providing GPU on-demand to support ESA’s AI ambitions.
This is achieved through scalable, high-performance graphics processing units (GPUs) with a negotiated amount of computing power available on demand to ESA users, thereby avoiding the need for a huge upfront investment in physical GPU infrastructure.
ESA is exploring the opportunities offered by AI/ML for its core business activities.
Traditional CPU-based systems are no longer capable of handling many of ESA’s complex computations. GPUs are specifically designed for such heavy data tasks. By providing a negotiated amount of computing power as a service, ESA gets easy access to faster computing power to handle AI workloads and advanced analytics.
A powerful, secure environment for space exploration
Orange Business manages the continuous improvement of ESA's infrastructure, supporting increased agility, productivity, and scalability, while strengthening security to protect it from a growing threat of landscape.
The managed service that Orange Business provides ESA supports large-scale and diverse computing needs within the organization, including mission operations support, Spacecraft simulations, research, prototyping, training, and many other areas.
Orange Business has supported 10 space missions, including AEOLUS, JUICE, EUCLID, HERA, SENTINEL-2C, EARTHCARE, SENTINEL-1C, BIOMASS, SENTINEL-1D, SENTINEL-6B
With a further extended partnership, Orange Business looks forward to collaborating with ESA to support its use of AI to support Earth observation and disaster response, for example.
Business Outcomes
More than 6000 people working on ESA sites
Orange Business supports ESA’s workforce
10 space campaigns
Orange Business has supported 10 space projects
Orange Business and ESA have been collaborating for over two decades to support the ESA in pushing frontiers of science and technology.
The European Space Agency
The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.