Some were waiting for a signature with AWS, it is ultimately the research giant that is partnering with the French specialist in digital and cybersecurity solutions. The Amazon subsidiary could make its own announcements in a few months.
“ The cloud of trust looks more and more like the sovereign cloud of 2012, but with Americans in the loop ”, confides an observer of the sector. As a reminder, this previous initiative was launched ten years ago, leading to the creation of Cloudwatt (Orange / Thales) and Numergy (SFR / Bull), which have since been closed.
Now , we no longer speak of sovereignty but of trust, with Thales associated with Google on the one hand, Orange associated with Capgemini and Microsoft on the other (through Bleu). As a reminder, OVHcloud had also partnered with Google to offer its services via Anthos.
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Today’s announcement concerns “ the signing of a strategic agreement to co-develop, within a new company, a sovereign cloud offer meeting the criteria of the French Cloud de Confiance label , ”said the press release. “ French public institutions and companies will benefit from all the power, security, flexibility, agility and sovereignty offered by the technologies of the two experts in their fields ” promise the two partners.
“ By addressing the technical and legal aspects, the Thales and Google Cloud offer will enable the French private and public sectors concerned to acquire a cloud meeting the highest level of requirement certified by ANSSI with the “trust cloud ” label, in accordance with the French national strategy ”. Behind this promise, that of protecting customers from American extraterritorial laws, even if the legal mechanisms that should allow it have not yet been detailed.
It is nevertheless specified that these services will be “ operated by a new dedicated company under French law, majority owned by Thales, hosted in France, within an infrastructure separate from that of Google Cloud whose network and servers will be separate, controlled and operated by this company ”. It is not known whether the servers will be provided by Google or designed by Thales and French partners.
Thales also promises “ customer support provided by local teams, with security services provided by the new company, in particular identity management, data encryption, administration or even supervision, with updates received continuously but received, evaluated and validated within an airlock security piloted by Thales, managed on a sustainably designed infrastructure ”.
The implementation date of this new entity and its services has not been specified.
