In the aerospace industry, every piece of data is linked to a certification. Every maintenance record, every design review, every quality report is part of a traceability chain that authorities can audit at any time. Migrating these systems to the cloud is not a conventional IT project: it is an operation where a planning error can put the entire organisation’s certification at risk.
However, keeping these systems on on-premise infrastructure has a growing cost that many German aerospace companies can no longer justify. Servers over ten years old, disaster recovery plans that have never been tested, and IT teams dedicated to hardware maintenance instead of generating business value.
The regulatory dilemma
Critical systems in aerospace — PLM, MRO, quality management, technical documentation — are subject to standards such as AS9100, EASA Part 21 and Part 145, and in many cases information security requirements like TISAX or national BSI regulations. Any change to the infrastructure supporting these systems must demonstrate that data integrity, availability and traceability remain unaltered.
This creates a widespread perception that cloud and aerospace certification are incompatible. They are not, but the migration requires a specific approach that most cloud providers do not master.
The main challenges are threefold: guaranteeing the traceability chain during and after migration, demonstrating to auditors that the cloud environment meets the same controls as on-premise, and maintaining operations without interruption while the change is executed.
How to migrate without certification risk
The migration strategy in aerospace cannot follow the same playbook as other sectors. Principal33 applies a four-stage approach designed specifically for certified environments.
In the first stage, the regulatory assessment, systems are classified according to their criticality for certification. Not all systems require the same level of control: a PLM holding design data under EASA Part 21 has different requirements from an internal reporting system. This classification determines the migration strategy for each application.
In the second stage, the cloud architecture is designed with compliance controls built in from the outset. This includes encryption in transit and at rest, native audit trails, data segregation, backup and DR with documented RPO and RTO aligned with certification requirements.
The third stage is phased migration, starting with systems of lower regulatory criticality. Each phase includes data integrity validation, traceability testing and, where required, quality team review before moving to production.
The fourth stage, stabilisation and audit readiness, ensures that all change documentation, validation evidence and updated procedures are ready before the first post-migration audit.
Real case: German aerospace supplier
A Tier-1 supplier headquartered in Hamburg was running its PLM system and quality management platform on local servers over twelve years old. The annual infrastructure cost exceeded 600,000 euros, DR was theoretical and the most recent EASA audit had generated two observations related to system availability.
Principal33 executed the migration to Azure over eleven months with an eight-person squad: a senior cloud architect with aerospace experience, an AS9100 compliance specialist, two mid-level cloud engineers, two mid-level developers for integrations, a QA engineer and a PM.
The quality management system was migrated first and, once validated, the PLM followed. Results after twelve months in production: infrastructure cost reduced by 45 % (from 600,000 to 330,000 euros per year), availability of 99.95 % compared to the previous 98.8 %, operational DR with four-hour RTO and fifteen-minute RPO, zero observations in the post-migration EASA audit, and quality report generation time reduced by 60 %.
Why Principal33
Cloud migration in aerospace requires a partner that understands both the technology and the regulatory framework. Principal33 combines AWS and Azure certified cloud architects with consultants who know AS9100, EASA Part 21 and Part 145, and TISAX.
Hybrid squads with senior profiles leading architecture and compliance, nearshore from Romania with office presence in Düsseldorf, ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 certifications, and a track record of zero regulatory findings in cloud migrations for certified sectors.
Are your critical systems ready for the cloud?
Our Düsseldorf team offers a free cloud readiness assessment for aerospace environments: system evaluation, regulatory risk analysis and migration roadmap. No commitment required.
Principal33 – Near-shore IT partner for German companies. Offices in Düsseldorf, Cluj-Napoca, Brașov, Târgu Mureș and Valencia.
