During the commercial launch of the French region of Google Cloud, which was held this Thursday morning, another announcement made the headlines of the morning: the formalization of the company S3NS, the response of Thales and Google Cloud to the cloud of French confidence.
Marc Darmon, Deputy CEO at Thales, announced the official birth of this new independent company – which is written “S3NS” but pronounced “Sens” – presented for the first time in October 2021. Thales is the main shareholder, and Google is in the minority there, as a technology partner.
As a reminder, the objective of this initiative is to offer public institutions and private companies a trusted cloud offer that meets the criteria of the SecNumCloud qualification, issued by Anssi. A week earlier, Orange and Capgemini also presented the outlines of their new company Bleu, which will see the light of day at the end of 2022.
“The idea of delivering a cloud of trust founded and based on Google Cloud Platform is to bring together the best of both worlds,” said Marc Darmon. This structure under French law will make it possible to deliver a public cloud labeled SecNumCloud.
Commissioning in 2024
Marc Darmon testifies to a “positive traction” on the market. Nearly “forty” potential customers have already shown a sign of interest in this future offer, which will begin to be marketed in 2024. The deadline is far off, yet “we are entering into relations today, including commercial relations, with many of them” emphasizes Marc Darmon.
Discussions have also begun with integrators and distributors, as well as SaaS software publishers who wish to “use this offer to deploy trusted services”, specifies the deputy general manager of Thales.
There are still several steps before the actual commissioning. “You have to deploy the entire infrastructure, train the operators, and at the same time Googe must make the essential software developments to have all the separations necessary to pass the SecNumCloud certification” evokes Marc Darmon.
An intermediate offer to wait
Faced with this colossal project, Anthony Cirot, general manager of Google Cloud France, wants to “put resources into it”. Several hundred Google engineers are expected to help build this trusted cloud infrastructure. If several dozen employees have been recruited, the director wants to accelerate to target the hundred new recruits.
In the meantime, Sens is starting to launch an intermediate offer on the market, which is presented as “a GCP offer with color controls operated by S3NS” explains Marc Darmon.
Concretely, the data is managed in France, but it is not a certified SecNumCloud offer. It will wait in the time interval. “It provides additional security compared to Google Cloud,” notes Marc Darmon, which therefore makes it an intermediate value proposition for customers with specific needs. Six early adopters responded to the call at the start of the summer.