A year back, while in the COVID pandemic, a breakout in public opinion about public health data entrusted to Microsoft, raised some tensions in the french general opinion and led the French government to rethink its digital policy for its national and private companies data.
In order to balance big-tech monopolies and protect data from any foreign ingerence, France has dug up an old desire to develop a sovereign cloud computing service.
As said above, the aim was to offer a controlled, secured and reliable cloud service without being dependent on big trust companies with potential foreign ingerence and use of national or private companies data by those third party companies.
Many French companies started to team up and plan such services as CapGemini & Orange with their “Bleu” project, or Dassault System and OVH in order to provide a “sovereign cloud service” or as it is now called a “ Trust Cloud Service”.
As the primary idea of “sovereign cloud” was to conceive an 100% made in France service, the government now seems to allow partnership with foreign big tech under conditions.
As said by the French government : “some of the most sensitive data from France or French companies can be now safely stored using cloud technology developed by Google or Microsoft, IF those are conceded to French companies.”
The new partnership between Thales group, a french tech company specialised in aerospace, defense and security, and terrestrial transportation and Google tends to confirm the new orientation.