French cloud player OVHcloud is teaming up with its compatriot Atos to offer a '100 percent European public cloud service' to French customers, using Atos' digital sovereignty service, Onecloud Sovereign Shield.
The deal expands on an existing partnership between the companies, and comes at a time when the EU-sponsored Gaia-X initiative to create a European cloud platform is reportedly suffering "chaos and infighting." Both Atos and OVHcloud are founder members of Gaia-X.
The agreement also includes customer access to Atos' quantum computer simulator, and the potential integration of Bull hardware into OVHcloud's bare metal offering.
French cloud
Atos and OVHcloud announced plans for their own European cloud in January 2021, and today's announcement brings in the Atos OneCloud Sovereign Shield, a service launched this month to support the data sovereignty needs of governments and industries around the world.
This week, the two French companies announced new products and joint research and development aimed at delivering sovereign cloud services to French customers. It will use global products offered by the two companies, including Atos OneCloud and the OneCloud Sovereign Shield, along with OVHcloud public cloud.
The result will be rolled out in Atos’ data centers in France, using OVHcloud's data center as-a-service to enable IaaS and PaaS capabilities, combined with Atos' bare metal, cybersecurity, and decarbonization solutions. It will offer hybrid cloud to Atos customers, by including Atos' private cloud offering.
The companies say that increasing their partnership into Atos' data centers will allow French customers to get their cloud services closer to where their activities are running, potentially reducing latency.
With both Sovereign Shield and OVHcloud's SecNumCloud qualification, the services will meet public sector and defense requirements for true sovereign solutions.
The two companies are also collaborating on R&D projects, which include access to Atos' quantum computing simulator and its Quantum Learning Machine, potentially offered as a service, to researchers through the OVHcloud.
OVHcloud will also work on a proof of concept to show that Atos' BullSequana S servers, specialized hardware optimized for SAP, can be offered as bare metal solutions within the OVHcloud platform.
The two companies will offer decarbonization level agreements to customers, providing carbon emission reporting for sustainable cloud computing. OVHcloud customers will now be able to use Atos' MyCO2Compass, a carbon data reporting platform, to help move towards net-zero.
“We are delighted to expand our partnership with OVHcloud to provide a sovereign cloud offering for our French customers," said Pierre Barnabé, interim co-CEO at Atos. "Working with OVHcloud, we will reinforce the uniqueness of Atos OneCloud Sovereign Shield portfolio by creating a 100 percent European cloud solution for French organizations. This is a great step in that we are now, finally, able to offer SecNumCloud qualified OVHcloud solutions to our customers.”
SecNumCloud is a national cloud security specification for France, created by ANSSI, the Agence Nationale de la Sécurité des Systèmes d'Information.
