In France, Thales teams up with Google on the cloud
French company Thales launches S3NS, a cloud services company in partnership with Google Cloud. The company has yet to receive Anssi certification
French company Thales creates a Google-based cloud services company.
On June 30, Thales, Europe's largest defense electronics supplier, said it had created a new company, called S3NS, in partnership with Google to offer state-controlled cloud computing services for storing some of the most sensitive of the country.
The new company follows the signing of a strategic agreement signed by Thales and Google for the development of a "reliable cloud" offer in France to compete with Bleu, a company formed by Capgemini, Orange and Microsoft.
The operation is part of the framework established in May by the Paris government which envisages the use of clouds provided by the US giants exclusively in collaboration with French companies.
US giants Google and Microsoft, along with market leader Aws, dominate the realm of data storage around the world. However, they also fuel concerns in Europe about US surveillance risk in the wake of the adoption of the 2018 Us Cloud Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa).
The US Cloud Act allows US authorities, law enforcement and intelligence agencies to acquire IT data from cloud computing service operators (hence Google & co) regardless of where this data is located; so even if they are on servers outside the US.
For the French government, Google and Microsoft cloud computing services can be used to store France's most sensitive state and corporate data, as long as the data centers are located in the country and the services licensed to French companies.
From the idea of "sovereign cloud", 100% national, we thus move on to the concept of "reliable cloud": relying on foreign technologies as long as all the necessary protections are adopted.
All the details.
THALES WITH GOOGLE FOUND S3NS, A FRENCH LAW CLOUD COMPANY
The new company S3NS will operate three data centers based in France on which Google's controlled and secured cloud services will run.
The French company Thales has the majority stake in the company. So it has full control over the marketing of the services developed by Google. As Le Figaro points out, Google Cloud will be a shareholder with less than 24% in S3NS. We remind you that the "reliable cloud" certification "SecNumCloud defines the maximum participation of a non-European player at 24%, in our case we are well below" said Marc Darmon, head of secure communication and information systems at Thales in La Tribune .
CUSTOMERS
Some of the largest French banks and healthcare organizations are among the 40 potential customers of the new company, said the manager of Thales.
SERVICES STARTING FROM 2024
The company is already operational, with about forty customers and dozens of employees. But its “trusted cloud” offering won't be available until 2024.
WAITING FOR ANSSI CERTIFICATION
The company must in fact receive certification from the French IT security agency (Anssi) through a so-called “reliable cloud” label.
Several French cloud services companies have already received the Anssi label, dubbed SecNumCloud, such as OVHcloud, Dassault Systemes' Outscale and Oodrive, Reuters recalls.
COMPETITION WITH BLEU (ORANGE-CAPGEMINI-MICROSOFT)
Finally, the company of Thales and Google will compete with Bleu. That is the company established in May 2021 by the IT consultancy company Capgemini and the French tlc group Orange and which aims to use Microsoft's cloud technology.
Through this structure, Microsoft will be able to offer the Microsoft 365 collaboration and productivity suites as well as all the services of the Microsoft Azure cloud platform.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/in-francia-thales-si-allea-con-google-sul-cloud/ on Mon, 04 Jul 2022 05:35:53 +0000.