Here’s how Paris pushes for the French Atos and Ovhcloud in Italy
What emerged from the event "Sovereignty over data: the European mission of Italy and France" organized by Ovhcloud and Atos in collaboration with the French diplomatic representation in Italy
The National Strategic Pole, the Italian cloud for public administration with reinforced security levels, is on its way.
"We hope to be able to launch it as early as the end of June", said Stefano Firpo, head of the cabinet of the Ministry of Technological Innovation and the digital transition, participating in the round table on "Data sovereignty: the European mission of Italy and France" organized by French companies Ovhcloud and Atos in collaboration with the French diplomatic representation in Italy.
"With Minister Franco (Economy) we decided to launch the initiative for the creation of the PSN which will be a cloud for the Public Administration with reinforced levels of security and with a definitely Italian jurisdiction (residence of data in Italy and in Europe)" , the Minister for Innovation Vittorio Colao explained yesterday, interviewed by Riccardo Luna and Maurizio Molinari on Italian Tech, the new publication of the Gedi group dedicated to digital. “But at the same time with access to the best international technologies because we all know that the best technologies are not Italian”, Colao specified.
Just "France has released a policy on the French cloud and that's exactly what we want to do: bring together the best of both worlds, collaboration with private individuals but also the protection and security that the state must provide" added the minister. .
In fact, Paris intends to use the cloud technologies of Microsoft, Google and other American players under license, to allow the emergence in its territory of a powerful, but protected and safe offer. France wants to create a "cloud of trust" label, which guarantees "total independence from American extraterritorial laws", explained French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire. This label can only be given to “European and European owned” companies that have “servers managed in France”.
"It is important that the infrastructure is trustworthy – reiterated Firpo, formerly in Intesa Sanpaolo and then at Mise again with Corrado Passera – and also for this reason the Gaia X initiative (the Franco-German initiative project for the European cloud ) is as important as the French strategy, which I do not say we are inspired by but we believe is right: Europe builds clear standards and can negotiate in conditions of greater strength and advantage ”.
Here are all the details.
ITALY AND FRANCE HAVE COMPETENCE AND INTEREST TO DEVELOP A EUROPEAN CLOUD
"France is actively involved in the project for the European cloud (Gaia-X), with an ambitious industrial strategy that passes through Europe and focuses on public administration", thus introduced Christian Masset, French ambassador to Italy, the meeting "Sovereignty on data: the European mission of Italy and France" organized by Ovhcloud (the French company active in the cloud sector with over 1.5 million customers worldwide that recently jumped to the news for the fire that hit one of the its data center ) and Atos, a French IT company. Both are founding members of the Gaia-x project and at the beginning of the year they also started a strategic partnership for a 100% leading multicloud solution on the European market.
“This is why we participate in an important project of common European interest (Ipcei): in Italy and France we have the skills, the interest and the energy to develop a European cloud and all related activities,” he explained.
“The digitization of our companies increasingly relies on the cloud – Masset insisted -, which is destined to play a central role in numerous sectors and production activities, as well as in our lives. A role that will acquire even greater importance thanks to the relaunch of the economy after the pandemic, which will have to give particular impetus to digitization and the green revolution. In this context, cloud technologies could represent a turnover equivalent to that of the telecommunications sector between now and 2030 ”, he said, underlining the positive contribution that the resources of the Next Generation Eu can make to incentivize investments in this field. "Europe has before it a unique opportunity and an important challenge, that of the integrity and security of the data of our businesses and citizens", added the ambassador.
FIRPO: "GAIA-X A SCHENGHEN OF DATA"
Precisely in terms of infrastructure reliability, Firpo noted that the "Gaia X project is as important as the French strategy, which I do not say we are inspired by but which we believe to be right: Europe builds clear standards and can negotiate in greater strength and benefit".
"Gaia X on the one hand builds standards and then builds data spaces, a 'Schenghen' of data to ensure that European companies can collaborate", Firpo underlined during the round table organized by Ovhcloud and Atos.
BONFIGLIO: CARRIED OUT WITH THE DEMAND FOR GAIA-X SERVICES
"The real shift is from a cloud where we entrust our data to others to a cloud where we control our data" while "the turning point will come when there is a demand for Gaia-X services", said Francesco Bonfiglio, CEO of the European association Gaia-X which, at the conference on data sovereignty, also focused on the concept of “labeling” which will be very important for the project.
THE IMPORTANCE OF LABELING FOR THE CLOUD
"Think of the labeling used in the food chain, what we are studying is such a thing, entrusted to technology, it will allow the architecture of Gaia-X to control itself, to be the guarantor". In addition, underlined Bonfiglio, Gaia-X “is a federation, diametrically opposed to the cloud we conceive today. That is, Gaia-X is creating a federated infrastructure. Furthermore, today the computing capacity must be brought close to the data ”.
ATOS ITALIA: MORE PA-ECONOMY DIALOGUE WITH GAIA-X
With the European cloud project Gaia-X there is, among other things, "the great opportunity of being able to equip oneself with logics that, by exploiting the cloud and common rules, can allow the Pa-economy dialogue". This was underlined by Giuseppe Di Franco, executive vice president of the Atos group and CEO of Atos Italia at the event organized by Atos itself with OVHcloud, in collaboration with the French Embassy in Italy.
"I think – added Di Franco – that being able to adopt rules that allow to maintain the sovereignty of the data is a fundamental requirement to guarantee operations, allow subjects also belonging to different supply chains to be able to manage their business"
THE ATOS PARTNERSHIP AND THE ITALIAN TIM ON THE CLOUD
Atos, a French listed company specializing in digital transformation, entered into a partnership with the Italian Tim last November for the development of the cloud.
While synergies between Tim and Google continue (including on the cloud), the two companies have signed a strategic agreement for the development of a digital platform for Tim's cloud. The latter will provide innovative solutions for the secure and localized management of public and private data in Italy. And Atos will instead provide innovative solutions to Tim's hybrid cloud platform.
Furthermore, thanks to this agreement, the two companies are focusing on the implementation of the Gaia-X initiative . In fact, Tim is also one of the 37 entities, both from the public and private sectors, participating in the initiative for the European cloud.
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE GAIA-X PROJECT
In the digitization process of the country and Europe "we must have an ecosystem that also has data centers, clouds" and, in this perspective, the European project Gaia-X is important, "in a few weeks we reached 37 participants, we are the third country after France and Germany. ". This was stated by the CEO of Tim Luigi Gubitosi, speaking as vice president of Confindustria, at the conference organized at the French Embassy on data sovereignty.
Regarding the Gaia-X project, he added, “we have had a strong correspondence in Confindustria, interoperability and the setting of the standard are extremely important elements”.
THIS WEEK THE ITALIAN HUB OF GAIA-X OPENED
“The Italian Hub – continued Gubitosi – which will be inaugurated with the Minister of Innovation this week must be a very active point. We are pleased to imagine that it will be a driving force ”. The Gaia-X project, explained Gubitosi, is also “relatively accessible even to small companies, thanks to networks also remotely. On the other hand, a large part of the demand for fiber is coming from non-central locations ”.
THE GOVERNMENT PLAN FOR THE ITALIAN CLOUD
Finally, returning to the national cloud project, the National Strategic Pole, “By 2022, in sixteen months, Italy will have an all-digital Public Administration with obvious advantages for people and companies”. Repubblica writes it today on the basis of an interview with Vittorio Colao with Maurizio Molinari, director of Repubblica, and Riccardo Luna, who directs the new content hub of the Gedi Group, Italian.Tech.
ITALIAN COMPANIES INVOLVED
With regard to the companies involved in the National Strategic Pole, Minister Colao made it known that “We have had interactions with various Italian companies of excellence and also expressions of interest from internationals. We are starting in these hours to receive some proposals and then start with the evaluations and in 2022 to have this operational structure ".
According to many industry observers, Leonardo and Fincantieri (with the alliance with Amazon Web Services) are "in pole position in what will be the race" for the PSN as Michelangelo Colombo wrote on Start . But insiders are expecting news from Tim and Google .
In the meantime, the announcement of Leonardo's partnership with Microsoft on the cloud is expected shortly in view of the national strategic pole, as Francis Walsingham tells today on Start .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/ecco-come-parigi-spinge-per-le-francesi-atos-e-ovhcloud-nella-pa-italiana/ on Tue, 25 May 2021 14:27:48 +0000.