The new hyperscale cloud offering will be built to meet the criteria of the French 'Trusted Cloud’
The sovereign cloud offering from Thales and Google Cloud will be hosted in France. (Credit: Cinerama14/Wikimedia Commons)
French defence company Thales and Google Cloud have entered into a partnership to jointly develop a sovereign cloud offering for France.
For this purpose, the partners will create a joint company in which Thales will hold the majority ownership. The new hyperscale cloud offering will be designed to meet the criteria of the French ‘Trusted Cloud’.
By using the new offering, French firms and public sector organisations are expected to benefit from all the power, security, agility, flexibility, and sovereignty provided by the respective technologies of Thales and Google Cloud.
The hyperscale cloud technology being offered will enable organisations in innovating and keeping their data confidential, secure, and completely sovereign.
Furthermore, private and public sector entities through the new offering will be benefited from cloud computing services in compliance with the French sovereign cloud strategy.
Thales secure communications and information systems executive vice president Marc Darmon said: “Thanks to this unique collaboration with Google Cloud, we will be able to help power the digital transformation for organisations of all sizes and industries that want to keep control and sovereignty over their data and that of their customers.
“Together, we will address the criteria defined by the government for a trusted cloud, as well as environmental goals with a sustainable approach for the infrastructure we will build.”
Google Cloud’s services will provide elasticity, agility and technological openness to the sovereign cloud offering. This will help firms in innovating transparently as well as autonomously without vendor lock-in.
Thales, on the other hand, will bring the required guarantees of France’s sovereignty requirements. The company will use its cybersecurity operations centre for ensuring the management of encryption keys, identities, access, and cyber threat monitoring.
Some of the benefits offered by the set of hyperscale cloud services from the two firms include sustainably developed infrastructure and support provided locally by their newly formed company.
The sovereign cloud offering will be hosted in France with the infrastructure being separate from Google Cloud. There will also be a separate network and servers that will be controlled and operated by the newly created company.
Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said: “Thales and Google Cloud have a joint vision to deliver the most innovative and trusted solutions to companies and public sector organisations in France.
“Our unique approach to addressing the concerns of French citizens and government bodies, including the development of a new company, ensures organisations can benefit from the innovation and agility of the cloud, without compromising on the security, privacy and sovereignty required by the French government.”
Recently, Google Cloud expanded its partnership with geospatial solutions provider Planet to offer planetary-scale satellite data analysis to governments and enterprises.