Google and Thales join forces in the “Trusted Cloud”

Google, the American search and online services giant, and Thales, the French flagship of security and defense … Their origins are very distant but the two companies nevertheless announce a “Strategic partnership”, this Wednesday, October 6. The goal : “Co-develop, within a new company, a sovereign cloud offer that meets the criteria of the French“ Cloud of confidence ”label”.

This alliance is a direct response to the new doctrine set out in May by the State for the accommodation and online services of administrations and public structures. Its principle: data must be controlled by French or European companies, in order to escape American extraterritorial laws such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. However, it authorizes these companies to use software bricks from American groups. This policy therefore encourages hybrid offers, such as the one created by this agreement by Google and Thales.

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The entity, whose name is not yet known, should start its activity in 2022. It will open three data storage sites in Ile-de-France. To benefit from the “best of both worlds”, each of the partners will contribute their expertise: Google will offer its rich online software offering, from artificial intelligence to database management; Thales guarantees its data sovereignty and its expertise in cybersecurity, for example for the management of data encryption keys, which it sometimes already provides to Google or its competitors such as Amazon or Microsoft.

“Clear governance control”

Thales will hold the majority of the company’s capital and will exercise “Clear control of governance”, says Marc Darmon, Deputy CEO of Thales in charge of the secure information and communication systems business. This assumes that Google will own less than 33% of the shares. The amount of the agreement is confidential.

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The logic of this merger is reminiscent of two other partnerships already announced: in November 2020, Google joined forces with OVH, the French cloud leader. The Roubaix company has thus integrated, in one of its offers, Anthos, a platform created by Google to manage activities on different clouds, public or private. In May, Orange and Capgemini joined forces with Microsoft and created Bleu, which notably wants to offer a “sovereign” version of Office 365, the American’s office suite.

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