During a visit to the OVHCloud datacenter in Strasbourg, this Monday, the Minister of Economy, Finance and Industrial and Digital Sovereignty, Bruno Le Maire, and the Minister Delegate in charge of the Digital Transition and Telecommunications, Jean-Noël Barrot, restored the government’s cloud ambitions.
Cloud revenue is expected to exceed €560 billion in Europe by 2030, according to KPMG. Within five years, the European cloud market will thus be comparable in size to that of the telecoms market.
In May 2021, the government launched a national cloud strategy to support the development of innovative French offers, including those of free software, and to accelerate the scaling up of French players on a certain number of critical technologies. Nearly a year after this announcement, some twenty so-called “innovative and high value-added” projects have already been funded to the tune of 380 million euros, the ministers specify.
Sensitive data scrutinized
SecNumCloud certification for highly sensitive data also shows some signs of progress. The government observes that seven offers are now qualified, carried by Cloud Temple, OVHCloud, Oodrive, Outscale and Worldine. In May 2021, only three offers qualified as SecNumCloud in France: OVH for its Hosted Private Cloud offer, 3DS Outscale with its Public Sector Cloud offer and Oodrive for all of its private cloud offers.
Ministers want to “go further” to help administrations sign with French suppliers. They announce new measures to allow better support towards obtaining the SecNumCloud label. The National Information Systems Security Agency (Anssi) will implement this qualification support system, endowed with 2.5 million euros, which is aimed at SMEs and start-ups and to their SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) and PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) services.
The government also wants to clarify the notion of “particularly sensitive data”. These are the data that justify the creation of SecNumCloud certified offers. Bruno Le Maire indicated on Monday that this approach aims to “clarify in an administrative and rigorous manner what this sensitive data is”. This information will be clarified by circular in the coming weeks.
“Trusted digital” strategic committee
The ministers also announced the creation of a “digital trust” sector strategic committee (CSF) to bring out a French offer in the coming years. Michel Paulin, CEO of OVHCloud and responsible for supervising the project, will have to make a proposal to the ministers, within six months, on the composition, governance and objectives of this new committee.
“With Jean-Noël Barrot, we have a strong ambition for the construction of French and European digital sovereignty. We are building a sovereign cloud industry to make France and the European Union the spearhead of digital innovation in the decades to come,” said Bruno Le Maire.
“The cloud is the essential engine of innovation and growth that supports the digital transformation of our companies and our administrations. Today, the government is renewing its digital ambition and its support for a bold cloud ecosystem. We are convinced that it will strongly contribute to guaranteeing our sovereignty and our strategic autonomy”, added Jean-Noël Barrot.