IT consulting group Atos and OVHcloud have announced a partnership that would make them offer fully European-led cloud computing services.
The two French groups partnered to widen the choices for European-based companies and public sector entities in the fast-growing cloud computing sector, which is dominated by Amazon.com Inc, Microsoft Corp and Alphabet Inc’s Google.
Synergy Research Group revealed that in the third quarter of 2020, Microsoft and Amazon alone had a combined worldwide market share of more than 50%.
This dominance of the U.S.tech giants has raised concerns in Europe that sensitive corporate data could be insecure in the wake of the adoption of the U.S. CLOUD Act of 2018.
The concerns led to creation of European association Gaia-X, set up to establish common standards for storing and processing data on servers that are sited locally and comply with the European Union’s strict laws on data privacy.
Atos and OVHcloud claim they together have a network of 130 data centres able to host data in virtual spaces whose resources are not shared with other users, or private environments.
French cybersecurity agency ANSSI recently granted its so-called SecNumCloud label to OVHcloud, a certification that requires the implementation of high security standards.
Atos, whose computer scientists also help companies install cloud computing services from Microsoft, Google and Amazon, will provide cybersecurity software hosted by OVHcloud.
