Combining over forty years of experience and a unique diversity of expertise, talent and cultures, the architects of Thales Alenia Space design and deliver innovative solutions for telecommunications, navigation, Earth observation and environmental monitoring, exploration, science and orbital infrastructure.
Institutions, governments and businesses rely on Thales Alenia Space to design, build and deliver satellite systems to geolocate and connect people and objects worldwide, observe our planet, and optimize the use of Earth’s resources and those of our solar system. Thales Alenia Space believes that space brings a new dimension to humanity, enabling us to build a better and more sustainable life on Earth.
A joint venture between Thales (67%) and Leonardo (33%), Thales Alenia Space also forms the Space Alliance with Telespazio to offer a comprehensive range of solutions, including services. Thales Alenia Space achieved a turnover of 2.23 billion euros in 2024 and employs more than 8100 people in 7 countries, with 14 sites in Europe.
At-a-Glance
Thales Alenia Space accelerated development of mission-critical satellite software with the SUSE Rancher Suite. Powered by SUSE Rancher Prime, SUSE Virtualization and SUSE Security, the new platform-as-a-service model automates provisioning, unifies DevSecOps practices and strengthens security — cutting environment setup time by more than 90% and reducing virtualization costs by up to 3x compared to its previous virtualization solution.
Gaining efficiency
Most space projects include a ground segment, the collection of networking, compute and software systems on Earth that lets mission teams send telecommands (TC) to satellites and receive their telemetry (TM).
To increase efficiency, Thales Alenia Space launched the ‘Move to Cloud’ initiative to standardize and industrialize ground software development using containerization, microservices and infrastructure-as-code. The goal was to automate provisioning, strengthen security and improve agility across new satellite projects.
The cornerstone of this transformation was the Space Digital Platform (SDP), a company-wide platform-as-a-service designed to provide a catalog of reusable microservices and preconfigured environments for developers. With the SDP, Thales Alenia Space aimed to introduce automation using tools like Terraform that would enable teams to build complete, secure, Kubernetes-based environments in hours rather than days. By pooling resources and centralizing management, Thales Alenia Space aimed to improve efficiency.
To make the SDP successful, Thales Alenia Space needed a flexible, hybrid-ready foundation that could operate in any environment. Some customers required public-cloud deployments through providers such as Azure, while others needed on-premises virtualization or to reuse existing Kubernetes clusters. Thales Alenia Space sought a single solution that could span all these deployment models without sacrificing consistency, automation or governance.
“The cost of SUSE Virtualization is two to three times lower than our previous vendor for equivalent functionality. When we factor in training and operational efficiency, the total cost of ownership clearly favors SUSE.”
Sébastien Blasi
Space Digital Platform Product Line Manager
Thales Alenia Space
Why SUSE Rancher Suite?
Already a user of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and the community version of Rancher in earlier projects, Thales Alenia Space shortlisted SUSE for evaluation alongside alternatives XCP-ng, OpenStack and Proxmox. During the process, the company found SUSE Virtualization offered a decisive technical advantage.
Because SUSE Virtualization is built on Kubernetes rather than a traditional hypervisor stack, Thales Alenia Space engineers (already fluent in Kubernetes management) could transition without extensive retraining. The platform’s modern, API-driven architecture also aligned with Thales Alenia Space’s infrastructure-as-code strategy for the SDP and its goal of unified automation.
Thales Alenia Space conducted a proof-of-concept (POC) in collaboration with SUSE’s engineering and product management teams. The POC tested SUSE Rancher Prime for multi-cluster management, SUSE Virtualization as the planned platform for the virtualization migration and SUSE Security for zero trust container protection.
“Many aspects of the SUSE Rancher Suite appealed to us,” comments Sébastien Blasi, Product Line Manager for the Space Digital Platform. “We were particularly impressed by SUSE Virtualization. Although it is a young product, it will support the vast majority of our virtualization use cases at a competitive price point.”
Confident in the technology, Thales Alenia Space adopted the integrated SUSE Rancher Suite to manage containerized and virtualized workloads from a single control plane across on-premises and cloud environments, without vendor lock-in.
The impact of SUSE solutions
Reduces virtualization costs by 3x
By adopting SUSE Virtualization, Thales Alenia Space cut licensing, support and operational costs by up to threefold.
“The cost of SUSE Virtualization is two to three times lower than our previous vendor for equivalent functionality,” explains Sébastien Blasi. “When we factor in training and operational efficiency, the total cost of ownership clearly favors SUSE.”
These savings allow Thales Alenia Space to reallocate budget toward innovation and development on the SDP.
Accelerates deployments by more than 90%
Driven by infrastructure-as-code automation through SUSE Rancher Prime and Terraform on top of SUSE Virtualization, Thales Alenia Space can now provision secure Kubernetes environments in under two hours, a 90% reduction in setup time.
This acceleration allows development teams to focus on building and delivering value rather than maintaining underlying infrastructure. Thales Alenia Space leverages Terraform and GitLab CI/CD as core automation tools across both container and virtualization layers, enabling consistent, repeatable deployments through SUSE Virtualization APIs.
“We can now deploy a full cluster, preconfigured with all our services, in less than two hours,” says Sébastien Blasi. “What used to take days is now automated and industrialized. We are very happy with the way SUSE Rancher Suite makes life easier for our product owners and administrators.”
By standardizing deployments through code, Thales Alenia Space has also improved reproducibility and compliance, ensuring that every environment follows the same security baselines regardless of mission. This newfound agility helps Thales Alenia Space respond faster to customer needs and accelerate time-to-market for new satellite ground software.
Strengthens cybersecurity posture
In a highly regulated industry, information security and data governance are top priorities for Thales Alenia Space. Through SUSE Security integration, the company has introduced real-time monitoring and automated vulnerability scanning, enhancing visibility and control over containerized workloads. While adoption is ongoing, Thales Alenia Space sees clear advantages in how this will supplement existing cybersecurity tools.
This layered security model, based on nine rules common to all Thales Group projects, allows Thales Alenia Space to maintain compliance with the rigorous security standards required in the aerospace sector while preparing for broader zero trust adoption across future projects.
Streamlines operations and simplifies maintenance
SUSE Rancher Prime’s centralized management replaces the previous model of independent, inconsistent project infrastructures. It provides a single control plane for both virtualized and containerized workloads, unifying oversight across all SDP deployments from on-premises to Azure.
Operators can manage Kubernetes clusters and virtual machines through a single, intuitive interface, eliminating the need for multiple disconnected administration tools and commandline management. This streamlines day-to-day operations and helps teams adopt the platform faster.
Supports European digital sovereignty
SUSE’s European roots and open source model align naturally with this mission. By using transparent, independently governed technologies, Thales Alenia Space can deliver ground systems that meet strict sovereignty and compliance requirements while avoiding proprietary lock-in.
By building the SDP on the SUSE Rancher Suite, Thales Alenia Space reinforces Europe’s capacity to develop and operate secure, cloud native infrastructure using technologies governed within its own ecosystem, ensuring lasting control, resilience and trust across critical missions.
Provides effective support
Beyond the technology itself, Thales Alenia Space values its partnership with SUSE. During the POC, Thales Alenia Space worked directly with SUSE’s product and engineering teams, shared feedback and helped shape roadmap priorities for SUSE Virtualization lifecycle management, Cluster API integration and enhanced security capabilities. The collaborative approach strengthened trust between the teams.
This partnership extends to day-to-day operations. When support is needed, Thales Alenia Space has been impressed by the speed and quality of SUSE Support’s responses to tickets.
From roadmap influence to responsive support, this strategic alignment gives Thales Alenia Space confidence that it has chosen not just a vendor, but a long-term partner for innovation.
Multiple benefits for Thales Alenia Space
With SDP established on SUSE Rancher Suite, Thales Alenia Space aims to make it the standard foundation for software development and operations across Europe. Having already demonstrated the platform’s value, the next step is to industrialize SDP so every new program benefits from consistent automation, security and agility.
The SDP currently supports a dozen internal projects in pre-production, laying the groundwork for the first full production deployments planned for 2026 and 2027 after a validation and hardening phase. As the platform matures, Thales Alenia Space plans to extend SDP use to customer and partner environments, enabling collaborative projects built on the same secure, cloud native architecture. Another area of consideration is applying SDP concepts at the satellite level through a Space Edge Computing approach.
Together, SUSE’s technology and Thales Alenia Space’s mission-driven culture are helping build a new generation of digital infrastructure for space, enabling faster innovation, greater autonomy and confidence in the systems that keep Europe connected.