2. Customer stories

ESA private cloud is transforming space exploration

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Issues and challenges

The European Space Agency (ESA) is an intergovernmental organization with 20 member states, 2,200 employees and an annual budget of around €4B. It is Europe’s gateway to space and develops programs involving observation of Earth, telecommunications, navigation and other endeavors that bring more knowledge to humanity and help improve life on Earth.

The volume of data generated is enormous and has to be carefully managed in terms of high availability, storage and security. Traditional technology was increasingly unable to meet the scientific and operational simulation and testing needs of the ESA, both the data volumes and the speed of change. Taking weeks to set up computing resources for a new team was no longer acceptable. The organization needed to provide scientists with rapid access to a greater data computing resource in a way that was easy and secure and at a lower cost.

"esacloud will allow our scientists to do rocket science, rather than IT, and our business to jump ahead in time more than five years. We put a high value in close partnership with suppliers in IT, and since being selected in 2000, Orange Business has helped ESA innovate and be a pioneer in many areas, such as the first European converged MPLS IP VPN. esacloud marks a new milestone in our joint path."

Filippo Angelucci, CIO and Head of the Information Technology Department, ESA

The objective

Enable ESA to focus on the data, not the infrastructure.

Solutions
  • Cloud solution utilizing the Orange Flexible Computing infrastructure-as-a-service platform
  • Best-in-class virtualization, networking, computing and storage
  • On-premise, cloud-based at two mirrored ESA data centers (Italy and Germany) – full redundancy and active-active data replication
  • High security with rigorous role-based access control and security design customized to specific requirements of the various ESA user communities
  • Private cloud integrated into the ESA IT environment
  • Program and partner management – Cisco, EMC, VMware
Benefits

Orange delivered a private cloud solution that is supporting the ESA on its strategic journey to digital transformation.

  • Enhanced communications and collaboration
  • Improved efficiency across its geographically distributed community
  • Robust, reliable, flexible and scalable platform
  • Stronger data protection capability
  • Rapid self-provisioning access to major computing power in minutes rather than months
  • Compliance with complex business continuity and disaster recovery requirements
  • esacloud, moving business forward five years vs. legacy technology
  • Reduced costs with resources available on a pay-as-you-go basis
  • IT moved from supplier to leadership role
Results
  • Predictable costs
  • Easy end-user access to computing resources
  • Management of greater data volumes
  • Compliance with high security governance
  • Fail-safe data BC/DR systems
  • Seamless integration into the ESA IT infrastructure

The European Space Agency (ESA) is an intergovernmental organization with 20 member states. It is Europe’s gateway to space and develops programs involving observation of Earth, telecommunications, navigation and other endeavors that bring more knowledge to humanity and help improve life on Earth

  • 2,200 employees
  • Annual budget of around €4B