Cloudwatt

Cloudwatt was a core initiative of Project Andromède, one of France's periodic attempts at building a local computer industry. Project Andromède was announced in 2009 as a governmental desire for French-controlled cloud computing, with the goal of spending €285 million (US$338 million) in "cloud souverain" ("sovereign cloud" in English).[1][2] Cloudwatt was established in 2012 as a subsidiary of Orange S.A., with the government of France and French military contractor Thales as secondary shareholders.

In 2013, Cloudwatt chose U.S.-based Juniper Networks as a supplier to ensure French data sovereignty.[3] Commercial sales began in 2014,[4] and were expected to reach €500 million per year.[5] The company developed a Dropbox-like storage service targeting small businesses and organizations, which was advertised on TV in 2013.[6] In 2015, Orange bought out the other investors.[7]

Despite government subsidies of €75 million, after two years, the project had revenues of just €6 million. On February 1, 2020, all services were terminated and clients were advised that their data was deleted.[8][9]

See also

References
  1. "285 millions d'euros pour Andromède, le cloud souverain français". web.archive.org. October 23, 2011.
  2. "France continues to pursue its own data centre infrastructure, dubbed “le cloud souverain”, despite the closure of some of the businesses initially behind the idea." https://theconversation.com/digital-colonialism-why-some-countries-want-to-take-control-of-their-peoples-data-from-big-tech-123048
  3. Alex Scroxton (28 July 2014). "Cloudwatt deploys SDN to orchestrate public cloud service". Retrieved 19 October 2020. The Paris-based business picked Juniper Networks’ OpenContrail – an open source project initiated by the network supplier in autumn 2013 – to improve network operation efficiency and safeguard data sovereignty
  4. Ricknäs, Mikael (January 12, 2015). "Orange looks to take over struggling French cloud". CIO.
  5. Sze, Maricar (August 5, 2019). "Cloudwatt Announces Complete Halt on Its Services Come Feb 2020". Myce.com.
  6. Meyer, David (November 18, 2013). "A guide to the French national cloud(s)". gigaom.com.
  7. "Orange confirms Cloudwatt acquisition". Telecoms.com. March 20, 2015.
  8. rédaction, La (August 29, 2019). "Cloudwatt : vie et mort du premier « cloud souverain » de la France".
  9. "Orange enterre Cloudwatt, qui fermera ses portes le 31 janvier 2020". www.nextinpact.com. August 30, 2019.
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