PARIS (FRANCE) – IT consulting group Atos is joining hands with OVHcloud to come out with fully European-led cloud computing services, said the two France-based groups on Tuesday.
This is viewed as widening the choices for European firms and public sector entities in the cloud computing domain, which is fast developing. The sector is dominated by behemoths such as Amazon.com Inc, Microsoft Corp and Alphabet Inc’s Google.
In the third quarter of last year, Microsoft and Amazon had a combined worldwide market share of more than 50%, said Synergy Research Group.
However, this monopoly has stoked fears in Europe that sensitive corporate data could be insecure with the adoption of the US CLOUD Act of 2018 and in the absence of major rivals other than Alibaba of China.
Such fears led to the formation of European association Gaia-X to establish common benchmarks for storing and processing data on servers that are sited locally and adhere to the EU’s strict laws on data privacy.
Both Atos and OVHcloud have a network of 130 data centres which can host data in virtual spaces and those resources are not shared with other users or private environments.
OVHcloud was recently given the SecNumCloud label by French cybersecurity agency ANSSI. This certification requires the implementation of high security standards.
Computer scientists of Atos also help firms install cloud computing services from Microsoft, Google and Amazon.