Bleu and S3NS, the “sovereign” cloud offerings from Microsoft and Google

On 22 June 2022, Orange, Capgemini and Microsoft presented Bleu, a joint venture aimed at offering Azure cloud services while meeting SecNumCloud standards via data hosting on French territory by Orange and Capgemini.

On 30 June, Thales and Google Cloud in turn presented S3NS, their company dedicated to the trusted cloud based on the same principle (Google’s cloud offer, data hosted in France by Thales).

Bleu and S3NS are French companies, wholly owned by French capital. They are expected to start operations in 2024, after a transition period.

The creation of these companies should enable the two American giants to obtain the SecNumCloud label, which is indispensable for hosting critical data in France. The choice of companies governed by French law will theoretically prevent the data from being recovered by the American authorities under the Cloud Act.

It remains to be seen whether the two companies will obtain regulatory approvals for their activity and, above all, whether the ANSSI will agree to issue them the SecNumCloud label.

For the moment, only three companies (all of them French) have this certification: OVHcloud, 3DS Outscale and Oodrive. These three providers consider that Bleu and S3NS are « presumptuous » in asserting that they will be able to obtain the label in such a short time, while indicating that they would prefer that the ANSSI not validate these offers.