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]

Overview

The launch of Cloudwatt was a part of the Andromède project initiated in 2009 to promote France in the cloud computing market.[3][4]

Cloudwatt was established on September 6, 2012 as a subsidiary of Orange S.A., with the government of France and French military contractor Thales as secondary shareholders.[5] Patrick Starck became the CEO of the company.[6][7]

In 2013, Cloudwatt chose US-based Juniper Networks as a supplier to ensure French data sovereignty.[8] Commercial sales began in 2014,[9] and were expected to reach €500 million per year.[10] The company developed a Dropbox-like storage service targeting small businesses and organizations, which was advertised on TV in 2013.[11]

On March 20, 2015, Orange bought the company out the other investors.[12][13] On January 1, 2016, Cloudwatt merged with Orange Business Services through its subsidiary Orange Cloud for Business.

Despite government subsidies of €75 million, after two years, the project had revenues of just €6 million. At the end of July 2019, the platform announced to its customers the cessation of its activity, scheduled for January 31, 2020.[14][15][16] The users were advised to switch to the Flexible Engine public cloud platform.[17] On February 1, 2020, all services were terminated and clients were advised that their data was deleted.[18][19][20]

Assets

Cloudwatt had a capital of 225 million euros with the distribution of funds as follows: 44.4% for Orange, 22.2% for Thales, 33.3% for Caisse des Dépôts.

On January 13, 2015, Orange and its subsidiary Orange cloud for business announced the intention to buy back all of Cloudwatt.[21]

Since March 2015, Orange held 100% of the capital of Cloudwatt.

See also

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References

  1. ↑ "285 millions d'euros pour Andromède, le cloud souverain français". October 23, 2011. Archived from the original on 2011-10-23.
  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. ↑ Avril 2012, Par Christophe Auffray | Vendredi 20. "Cloud Andromède : Orange et Thales se félicitent et se disent prêts à démarrer". ZDNet France (in French). Retrieved 2021-07-21.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  4. ↑ "Franceinfo - Actualités en temps réel et info en direct". Franceinfo (in French). Retrieved 2021-07-21.
  5. ↑ "Cloud souverain : Orange et Thalès lancent Cloudwatt - Le Monde Informatique". LeMondeInformatique (in French). Retrieved 2021-07-21.
  6. ↑ Gr, Yves; montagne (2013-07-22). "Où en est Cloudwatt ? avec Raphaël Ferreira de eNovance". Silicon (in French). Retrieved 2021-07-21.
  7. ↑ "Cloudwatt : des offres naissantes misant sur l'Open Source". www.journaldunet.com (in French). Retrieved 2021-07-21.
  8. ↑ 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
  9. ↑ Ricknäs, Mikael (January 12, 2015). "Orange looks to take over struggling French cloud". CIO.
  10. ↑ Sze, Maricar (August 5, 2019). "Cloudwatt Announces Complete Halt on Its Services Come Feb 2020". Myce.com.
  11. ↑ Meyer, David (November 18, 2013). "A guide to the French national cloud(s)". gigaom.com. Archived from the original on October 19, 2020. Retrieved October 19, 2020.
  12. ↑ "Orange confirms Cloudwatt acquisition". Telecoms.com. March 20, 2015.
  13. ↑ "Orange prend le contrôle de la totalité de Cloudwatt". usine-digitale.fr. Retrieved 2021-07-21.
  14. ↑ "Cloudwatt : arrêt définitif de service en février 2020 - Le Monde Informatique". LeMondeInformatique (in French). Retrieved 2021-07-21.
  15. ↑ "Orange to close down Cloudwatt in France". www.telecompaper.com. Retrieved 2021-09-06.
  16. ↑ "Orange enterre définitivement Cloudwatt". ChannelNews (in French). 2019-07-31. Retrieved 2021-09-06.
  17. ↑ "Flexible Engine, le Cloud public fiable et sécurisé d'Orange". Cloud - Orange Business Services (in French). Retrieved 2021-07-21.
  18. ↑ rédaction, La (August 29, 2019). "Cloudwatt : vie et mort du premier « cloud souverain » de la France".
  19. ↑ "Orange enterre Cloudwatt, qui fermera ses portes le 31 janvier 2020". www.nextinpact.com. August 30, 2019. Archived from the original on October 24, 2020. Retrieved October 19, 2020.
  20. ↑ "Adieu le cloud souverain, Orange ferme aujourd'hui Cloudwatt" (in French). 2020-01-31. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  21. ↑ "En voulant racheter Cloudwatt, Orange défie Atos dans le cloud français". usine-digitale.fr. Retrieved 2021-07-21.
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