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 Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage ( cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over mul ...

, with the goal of spending €285 million (US $338 million) in "''cloud souverain''" ("sovereign cloud" in

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

Overview

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

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 o ...

was established on September 6, 2012 as a subsidiary of

Orange S.A. Orange S.A. (), formerly France Télécom S.A. (stylized as france telecom) is a French multinational telecommunications corporation. It has 266 million customers worldwide and employs 89,000 people in France, and 59,000 elsewhere. In 2015, ...

, with the

government of France The Government of France ( French: ''Gouvernement français''), officially the Government of the French Republic (''Gouvernement de la République française'' ), exercises executive power in France. It is composed of the Prime Minister, who ...

and French military contractor

Thales Thales of Miletus ( ; grc-gre, Θαλῆς; ) was a Greek mathematician, astronomer, statesman, and pre-Socratic philosopher from Miletus in Ionia, Asia Minor. He was one of the Seven Sages of Greece. Many, most notably Aristotle, regarded him ...

as secondary shareholders. Patrick Starck became the CEO of the company. On October 2, 2012,

Fleur Pellerin Fleur Pellerin (; née Kim Jong-sook, born 29 August 1973) is a French businesswoman, former civil servant and Socialist Party politician who served as a French government minister from 2012 to 2016. Early life Pellerin was born in 1973 in Seou ...

, Minister responsible for SMEs, Innovation and the Digital Economy, participated in the Cloudwatt press conference. It specified the government's commitment to cloud computing. In 2013, Cloudwatt chose US-based

Juniper Networks Juniper Networks, Inc. is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. The company develops and markets networking products, including routers, switches, network management software, network security product ...

as a supplier to ensure French

data sovereignty Data sovereignty is the idea that data are subject to the laws and governance structures of the nation where they are collected. The concept of data sovereignty is closely linked with data security, cloud computing, network sovereignty and techno ...

. Commercial sales began in 2014, and were expected to reach €500 million per year. The company developed a

Dropbox Dropbox is a file hosting service operated by the American company Dropbox, Inc., headquartered in San Francisco, California, U.S. that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, personal cloud, and client software. Dropbox was founded in 2007 ...

-like storage service targeting small businesses and organizations, which was advertised on TV in 2013. On March 20, 2015, Orange bought the company out the other investors. On January 1, 2016, Cloudwatt merged with

Orange Business Services Orange Business Services, the business services arm of Orange S.A., is a global integrator of communications products and services for multinational corporations. Orange Business Services offers integrated communications products and servic ...

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. The users were advised to switch to the Flexible Engine public cloud platform. On February 1, 2020, all services were terminated and clients were advised that their data was deleted.

Assets

Cloudwatt had a capital of 225 million euros with the distribution of funds as follows: 44.4% for Orange, 22.2% for

, 33.3% for

Caisse des Dépôts Caisse, a French word, may refer to: * Caisse Desjardins, an association of credit unions in Quebec * Caisse d'Epargne-Illes Balears, a road-bicycle racing team *Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, a public pension fund in Quebec * Caisse n ...

. On January 13, 2015, Orange and its subsidiary Orange cloud for business announced the intention to buy back all of Cloudwatt. Since March 2015, Orange held 100% of the capital of Cloudwatt.

External links

Official website

References

French companies established in 2012 French companies disestablished in 2020 Defunct software companies of France {{France-company-stub

Overview

Assets

See also

External links

References