{"id":5289,"date":"2012-09-10T15:30:33","date_gmt":"2012-09-10T13:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/?p=5289"},"modified":"2012-09-10T15:30:33","modified_gmt":"2012-09-10T13:30:33","slug":"andromede-takes-shape-le-sigh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/2012\/09\/andromede-takes-shape-le-sigh\/","title":{"rendered":"Andromede takes shape…le sigh"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nIn a move that’s certain to frustrate France’s entrepreneurial ecosystem even more, Androm\u00e8de’s structure is finally place<\/a>. \u00a0Androm\u00e8de has now morphed into two companies, also known as ‘National Champions’ (I guess this is the government’s attempt to create some competition?).\u00a0 The first company is called Numergy<\/a> which comprises SFR and Bull and the second called Cloudwatt<\/a> which comprises Orange Association and Thales.\u00a0 The French state via the Caisse de Depots is injecting 75 million euros into each company in return for a minority stake of 33% in each.\u00a0 The government has given the objective to each company to “make available to companies and the French administration IT infrastructure capable of hosting information and applications, which is both accessible remotely and secured”<\/em>.\u00a0 Of course the new ‘companies’ are happily going along with building ‘the French cloud’, with an additional 75 million euros in their pockets and dreams (I stress dreams) of pulling in 3 billion euros in revenues p.a.\u00a0 Numergy even aspires to be “the first central Digital Energy in Europe”<\/a>.
\nAccording to Les Echos [FR]<\/a>, the American giants are (not surprisingly) completely unfazed by Androm\u00e8de.\u00a0 IBM alone claims that since 2009, they have invested 300million euros(!) in France to develop their business here.\u00a0\u00a0 HP isn’t worried either, stating that they believe Androm\u00e8de\u00a0will develop the overall IT ecosystem, which will benefit everyone.\u00a0 I hope this assumption is correct and some good does come of all this.
\nAndrom\u00e8de\u00a0has been controversial within France’s tech community since day one and there are still many lingering questions.\u00a0 One of the first that comes to mind is whether this move by the French government falls afoul of the EU rules against all forms of state aid that could result in an anti-competitive situation<\/a>.\u00a0 Of course, as always, there are loopholes to these things and the EU has a big one.\u00a0 One of the types of aid that ‘may’ be considered acceptable is: “aid to promote the execution of an important project of common European interest”<\/em>.\u00a0 So, perhaps because the European Commission is pushing at the moment to develop a cloud computing strategy for Europe<\/a>, Androm\u00e8de\u00a0fits neatly into furthering their objectives and, as a result, they’re willing to give France a pass on this one?
\nThen there’s the obvious question around whether in the middle of a financial crisis when belt tightening is required, if it’s good policy for the state to essentially give away 150 million euros to large, multi-billion euros firms (even if the spending is a part of the ‘grand emprunt’ – France’s government borrowing initiative).\u00a0 Needless to say, 150 million is a drop in the bucket in terms of what is needed to resolve France’s fiscal challenges, but every little bit helps.\u00a0 Of course Androm\u00e8de\u00a0started under Sarkozy’s mandate, but as he’s done with many of the other ‘Sarkozy’ initiatives, Hollande could change course and stop the program all together or implement it differently.
\nThen, of course, there’s also the dubious assertions floating around that given their scale and available resources, SFR, Bull, Thales, and Orange are best positioned to make a project of this magnitude a success.\u00a0 There is no evidence that throwing a chunk of money at this problem is going to move France any closer to creating something that can fully compete with the likes of Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Salesforce.com, IBM, etc.\u00a0\u00a0 There are many French startups that we’ve met along the way that, while small, are really starting to build up real expertise and some success in the cloud space in France and elsewhere.\u00a0 Other than perhaps Bull, what type of substantive knowledge, strength, and\/or competitive advantage to these companies have in the area of cloud computing? Why not look to France’s existing cloud computing startups\/SMEs who are already working hard to put France on the map?
\nIdeally, the bulk of a startup’s success should come from their own (tireless) efforts rather than through reliance on substantial aid and support from the government.\u00a0 However, in this case, investing these resources in France’s burgeoning cloud startup\/SME ecosystem would have been a smart move as it would’ve still have gotten the government its ‘French cloud’ (probably even a better one) while also putting some substance behind the government’s promises to support entrepreneurship and innovation more effectively.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a move that’s certain to frustrate France’s entrepreneurial ecosystem even more, Androm\u00e8de’s structure is finally place. \u00a0Androm\u00e8de has now morphed into two companies, also known as ‘National Champions’ (I guess this is the government’s attempt to create some competition?).\u00a0 The first company is called Numergy which comprises SFR and Bull and the second called<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":64804,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10564],"tags":[255,3293,1055,3834,350,258,3835,1257,1980,3296],"class_list":["post-5289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tech-2","tag-amazon","tag-andromede","tag-azure","tag-bull","tag-hp","tag-ibm","tag-numergy","tag-orange","tag-sfr","tag-thales"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}