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
- ^ "285 millions d'euros pour Andromède, le cloud souverain français". web.archive.org. October 23, 2011.
- ^ "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
- ^ 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
- ^ Ricknäs, Mikael (January 12, 2015). "Orange looks to take over struggling French cloud". CIO.
- ^ Sze, Maricar (August 5, 2019). "Cloudwatt Announces Complete Halt on Its Services Come Feb 2020". Myce.com.
- ^ Meyer, David (November 18, 2013). "A guide to the French national cloud(s)". gigaom.com.
- ^ "Orange confirms Cloudwatt acquisition". Telecoms.com. March 20, 2015.
- ^ rédaction, La (August 29, 2019). "Cloudwatt : vie et mort du premier « cloud souverain » de la France".
- ^ "Orange enterre Cloudwatt, qui fermera ses portes le 31 janvier 2020". www.nextinpact.com. August 30, 2019.
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