France's Orange, Capgemini to Establish Cloud Company with Microsoft's Help

By Mauro Orru

Orange and Capgemini SE have agreed to set up a French cloud service provider that will offer services to the French state, public agencies, hospitals and regional authorities.

Telecommunications company Orange and consulting-and-technology group Capgemini said Thursday that they would work with Microsoft Corp. on the creation of the company to be known as Bleu, touted as a step forward in cementing French data sovereignty. Bleu will offer Microsoft's cloud technology including Microsoft 365 and services available on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform.

Capgemini and Orange will be Bleu's majority investors, while data centers in France will be separated from Microsoft's global data center infrastructure.

The announcement comes just over a week after the French government outlined a new cloud strategy to bolster the role of French companies in the protection of sensitive data that are usually in the hands of U.S. Big Tech players.

"The overall ambition is to enable users to benefit from the best technologies that are run by trusted players from within an exclusively European legal framework and that these services provide unfailing security," said Guillaume Poupard, director general of the French National Agency for Information Systems Security, or ANSSI.

"With this in mind, ANSSI enthusiastically welcomes this ambitious project that meets these requirements," Mr. Poupard added.

Write to Mauro Orru at mauro.orru@wsj.com; @MauroOrru94

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 27, 2021 06:14 ET (10:14 GMT)

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