Capgemini and Orange announced that Bleu, a cloud company launched in partnership with Microsoft, is working commercially with “selected French public and private organizations” and the service is expected to be online by the end of 2024.
Described as “fully operational”, Bleu is being rolled out to meet the specific cloud needs of a variety of high-level organizations, including the French state, regional authorities and hospitals, among others. The company received validation from the European Commission last year and is now looking to chart a course to assist in preparing for migration, as well as testing and piloting with customers the nascent platform based on Microsoft 365 and Azure services.
This product is unique to the French market and is related to the “cloud de confiance” or “trusted cloud”. This is a label awarded by the French cybersecurity agency ANSSI, which, as stated in a 2022 Euractiv article (in French), guarantees the highest level of protection “particularly against the extraterritorial jurisdiction of US law”. The specific qualification is SecNumCloud, ANSSI’s “Secure Visa” designed to guide administrations, essential operators (OVI) and all European and French economic operators in the selection of trustworthy providers.
This intense scrutiny has led to fierce competition from French cloud providers. Thales is best known for cybersecurity, but has a strong interest in cloud computing, signing a strategic partnership with Google Cloud in 2021. The first result of this effort is S3NS, a new company established in 2022 to take the “first step” towards this goal. The cloud you can trust.
OVHcloud is considered Europe’s leading website hosting provider with several SecNumCloud-eligible products, while Dassault Systemes announced Outscale in December, claiming to be the first cloud to receive SecNumCloud 3.2 ANSSI security visa on its public cloud service operator.
If you think this sounds a lot like a sovereign cloud (a cloud computing architecture designed and built to provide data access in accordance with local laws), Dominique Luzeaux, former director of the Defense Digital Agency, said , then there is a difference between the two. This time last year, Le Monde Informatique published an article titled “Le cloud souverain est mort, vive le cloud de confiance.” Luzeaux pointed out that there is a “significant” gap between sovereign states and trusted clouds. “Fundamentally, sovereignty depends on oneself, while trust depends on one’s relationships with others,” Luzzo writes. “There is no comparison.”
As one would expect, Bleu from Capgemini and Orange has been firmly eliminated. “As a leader in the digital transformation of French enterprises, Orange is aware of the specific challenges critical infrastructure operators and public institutions face with regard to data protection and sovereignty,” said Christel Heydemann, CEO of Orange. cloud solutions to meet these needs while fully complying with the standards set by the French authorities in their ‘Trusted Cloud’ principles.”
Capgemini Group CEO Aiman Ezzat added that he was “proud” of the work done by all parties to achieve a product that “leverages the full power of Microsoft’s cloud services”. “Bleu brings a unique combination of security and service advantages, including the broadest range of technological innovations, enabling French organizations to accelerate their digital ambitions in the coming years,” said Ezzat.
The company added that it hopes to achieve ANSSI SecNumCloud 3.2 qualification in 2025.
Photo by Rafael Garcin on Unsplash
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