Capgemini and Orange have introduced that Bleu, a cloud firm launched in partnership with Microsoft, is participating commercially with ‘choose French private and non-private organisations’ in anticipation of providers going dwell by the tip of 2024.
Bleu, which is described as ‘totally operational’, was launched with the objective of assembly particular cloud wants of varied excessive degree organisations, together with the French state, regional authorities, and hospitals amongst others. The corporate had obtained validation from the European Fee final 12 months, and is now seeking to set out its path to assist put together migration, and perform assessments and pilots with purchasers for the nascent platform, which is predicated on Microsoft 365 and Azure providers.
The providing is exclusive to the French market and pertains to the ‘cloud de confiance’, or ‘trusted cloud’. This can be a label awarded by ANSSI, France’s cybersecurity company, guaranteeing the best degree of safety ‘notably in opposition to the extraterritoriality of US legislation’, as a 2022 Euractiv article (French) put it. The precise qualification is SecNumCloud, a ‘safety visa’ from ANSSI which goals to information administrative authorities, operators of significant significance (OVIs), in addition to all European and French financial operators in direction of trusted suppliers.
This heightened scrutiny has led to intense competitors from French cloud suppliers. Thales, finest recognized for cybersecurity however with a robust curiosity in cloud, signed a strategic partnership with Google Cloud in 2021. The primary fruit of that labour was S3NS, a brand new firm launched in 2022 with the objective of providing a ‘first step’ in direction of the trusted cloud.
OVHcloud, cited because the main hosting supplier in Europe, has numerous choices that are certified underneath SecNumCloud, whereas Dassault Systemes introduced Outscale, claimed as the primary cloud operator to obtain the ANSSI safety visa for SecNumCloud 3.2 on its public cloud providers, in December.
If you’re considering this sounds moderately like a sovereign cloud – a cloud computing structure designed and constructed to supply knowledge entry in compliance with native legal guidelines – then there are variations, in response to Dominique Luzeaux, former director of the Protection Digital Company. Quoted in a Le Monde Informatique article this time final 12 months entitled ‘Le cloud souverain est mort, vive le cloud de confiance’, Luzeaux famous a ‘vital’ hole separating the sovereign from the trusted cloud. “Already on the base, sovereignty relies on oneself, whereas belief relies on a relationship between oneself and the opposite,” wrote Luzeaux. “The 2 usually are not comparable.”
As one would anticipate, the bunting was firmly out for Bleu from Capgemini and Orange. “As a number one participant within the digital transformation of companies in France, Orange is conscious of the particular challenges when it comes to knowledge safety and sovereignty for vital infrastructure operators and public establishments,” stated Christel Heydemann, CEO of Orange. “We’re assured that Bleu will meet these wants by offering a cloud resolution based mostly on Microsoft providers whereas being totally compliant with the requirements set by French authorities in its ‘trusted cloud’ doctrine.”
Aiman Ezzat, CEO of the Capgemini Group, added that he was ‘proud’ of the work carried out by all sides to grasp an providing which is able to ‘leverage the total energy of Microsoft cloud providers.’ “Bleu brings a singular mixture of safety and repair advantages, together with the widest vary of technological improvements, enabling French organisations to speed up their digital ambitions by means of the approaching years,” stated Ezzat.
The corporate added it was seeking to receive the ANSSI SecNumCloud 3.2 qualification in 2025.
Photograph by Rafael Garcin on Unsplash
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