The Cloudwatt, Orange's online data hosting service, will be disconnected on February 1st. Launched in 2012, it was one of the two heads of the French-style sovereign cloud co-financed at a loss by public money. With Bercy calling again for the creation of secure data centers to host sensitive government and corporate data, this failure could serve as a lesson.

At the origin of this project, called Andromeda, France wanted to invest 150 million euros in a shared server service that could reduce the costs of ministries and companies. But here we are, the French technology groups called upon to help did not succeed in reaching an agreement and therefore shared the envelope.

On the one hand, Cloudwatt was created by Orange and Thales by adding 150 million euros to the amount provided by the State. On the other hand, Numergy was launched by SFR and Bull with the same investment. However, none of them were able to find customers. And two years after their launch, Cloudwatt claimed only 2 million dollars in revenue. Even if Numergy was doing better with 6 million billed, these are crumbs compared to Amazon, Microsoft and IBM.

Bercy stops the expenses, a few months later, by assuring that she has spent only half of the promised sums. Orange and SFR then bought back the shares of the State, one from Thales and the other from Bull. Numergy and Cloudwatt, which had then become simple brands, had since been part of the offers designed for large companies by the two telecoms operators.

Today, the dominance of American players in the online IT market continues to raise concerns about the integrity of critical data. A recent report by MP Raphaël Gauvain criticizes the Cloud Act, an American extraterritorial law recalling the Patriot Act and spy programs.

The Government should therefore sign a strategic supply chain contract to develop a "Cloud of Trust" ecosystem in the fall. Being French will not be enough to be French and some American or Chinese technologies used in French data centers will be difficult to support.

"This time, we will not assume the nationality of the actors but their ability to guarantee data integrity with regard to our laws and strategic autonomy over our essential infrastructures and data," notes Jean-Noël de Galzain, Hexatrust's president on the sector's strategic committee. In addition, the State should commit itself to playing its role as a buyer.

 Read the article

Source : Les Echos

How can we succeed in building IT infrastructures in a sustainable and perennial way for the next 20 years? What are the important elements to consider during the design phase?

Although it may seem easy to build data centers, it is a rapidly evolving industry. Indeed, today's rooms are becoming denser, servers consume more and more energy and are heavier. Modularity concepts are shaking up the market every month, the ranges are evolving rapidly to better meet users' needs....

This is why adaptability and modularity must be part of the solutions to these problems from the design phases. For example, choose modular cooling and electrical solutions, increase power and load during maintenance, design large equipment by oversizing it.
It can also be very useful to implement new Agile working methods. It is therefore essential to be flexible and adapt to these changes that can affect the project in a sustainable way.
Modularity is also an essential point during the design phase, especially if you choose an atypical location to set up your data center. However, legal or regulatory aspects may run counter to this modularity. It is therefore necessary to address these problems as soon as possible, as they often have incompressible deadlines...

 Read the article

Source : Le Monde Informatique

Interviewed by LeMagIT, Olivier Micheli notes that French data centers are finally attracting international cloud players and that they are expanding geographically in order to reduce latency.

Olivier Micheli, who is both CEO of Data4 Group and President of the France Datacenter Association, estimates that there are 200 large datacenters in France covering up to 10,000 m². The capital with the largest number of people because Paris is a European interconnection node.
There are between 3000 and 5000 private computer rooms of varying size and power across the country.
Beyond the desire of companies to control their equipment, the importance of ever lower latency is increasingly important in local economic activities and the development of smart cities.
According to Olivier Micheli, the market is moving towards data centres whose size is proportional to the size of the economic activity nearby.

After a slow period between 2012 and 2015, the French data center market has caught up. France is now in fourth place in Europe, tied with Ireland. There are several reasons for this: the opportunity for international companies to reach 67 million people from locally hosted IT resources, the geostrategic importance of Marseille and also the government's efforts to create favourable conditions for the development of these datacenters.
This finally allows France to align itself with the United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands.

The customers of these data centers are 70% of public cloud players such as Amazon, AWS but also publishers such as Salesforce. User companies want a lot of support.

The first issue for datacenters is, according to Olivier Micheli, connectivity. Indeed, companies now want to benefit from an offshore computer room in order to redistribute this data to users and Internet actors.
The second challenge is that of intelligent buildings and to achieve 100% renewable energy by using, for example, Free Cooling.

 Read the article

Source : LeMagIT

From 9 am till 11 am at the ADIRA premises (Parc du Chêne - 5, allée Général Benoit - 69500 Bron).

Lionel DREVON from Maxnod is going to speak about the data centers' LAN and WAN connectivity.

   I register  

Attention: the access to the ADIRA working groups is

strictly reserved to its members

About ADIRA

Association for the Digital in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Region, ADIRA is a hosting structure connecting all regional actors of information technologies. Productivity booster in companies, it is also considered to be revealing in information systems test tube.

Learn more on ADIRA web site

Rezopole in partnership with DCforDATA organizes the Aperezo 35 on Thursday, December 17th at the B-52 restaurant in Dardilly, opening at 6:30 pm. Come to meet the DCforDATA team as well as the regional IT sector professionals around a cocktail reception, in a pleasant and friendly environment.

Register now!*

Register to the Aperezo #35

On this occasion DCforDATA offers you the opportunity to visit its data center!

Register to the Aperezo #35 and the 7:00 PM visit

or

Register to the Aperezo #35 and the 7:30 PM visit

About DCforDATA

DCforDATA is a next generation Datacenter that enables businesses from the Rhone Alpes region to benefit from high availability services. Up to now this kind of infrastructure was limited to big cities, it is now possible to get it in the region. In a market where companies focus on their core business, DCforDATA is the outsourcing or backup solution. Thanks to its cold aisle technology and to the variety of telecom networks, companies can benefit from a economic and scalable solution. Reactivity, professionalism and performance are the characteristics given by their customers.

www.dcfordata.com

*Registration to our events is open to the members of the Rezopole Association. If you are not a member yet, register here, it is free !

In 2013, many new DataCenter have been created in Lyon. The Greater Lyon experienced a shortage a few years ago but is now in a position to insure the future. Besides public DataCenters (Education, Research, or local government services) and DataCenters dedicated to a single company, hosting commercial DataCenters are booming in Lyon and its region.

It is worth mentioning that the set back was important: till 2010, there were only 5 DataCenters that may host racks. Now nearly twenty players can offer hosting servers. Rezopole has produced a map of these centers. And several projects are still under construction near the capital of saplings. Lyon city has caught, up in less than 10 years, its delay in this field. An interesting detail: all DataCenters recently created (Maxnod, DCforDATA, FMI, CFI, One-System, SynAAps) joined Lyonix from the beginning of their activities !