Sitting on a gigantic data mine, this """"12th century gold"""", does Europe risk losing its entirety by dint of resting on the services of American IT giants?This is what experts and governments fear.

The signatures of major """"cloud"""" contracts between large European and American IT groups or institutions have followed one another recently: Google Cloud with Renault and Orange, Deutsche Bank or Lufthansa, Amazon Web Services with Volkswagen, Microsoft with the Ministry ofFrench health for French research data...

Read also: Banks combine with the GAFA to speed up in the cloud

""""Cloud"""" or """"Cloud"""": this term designates various services which allow you to obtain online computer resources -testocking and calculation -without having to have your own computer park, expensive to maintain and renew.

European data stored outside Europe

The trend worries in particular Germany, at the head of a rich heritage of data thanks to its powerful industry.

The EU is """"losing its influence on the digital sphere, at a time when it took a central role in the continent's economy,"""" they deplored.

""""A facility, even betrayal""""

At the beginning of the month, a senior French official delivered an even more abrupt diagnosis, at a meeting of computer professionals at which AFP attended the condition of respecting the anonymity of the interlocutors.

""""In many cases, it is a facility, even betrayal"""" for European companies or institutions to go """"get rid of all this"""" with non-European actors """"because it is simpler"""", A-So he said, without giving a specific example, however.""""Yet we have very good players in the cloud and data processing.""""

L'une des sources d'inquiétude des Européens vient du """"Cloud Act"""", la législation américaine qui permet aux puissantes agences de sécurité des Etats-Unis d'avoir accès dans certains cas aux données hébergées par les fournisseurs américains, où qu'elles se trouvent sur la planète.

""""Ma société est américaine, et je sais très bien quelles sont les implications d'une telle législation"""", avertissait récemment un patron franco-américain, sous couvert de l'anonymat. """"Et vu ce qui est en train de se passer dans la rhétorique américaine, ces choses là ne vont pas changer en mieux.""""

Beyond even data integrity, it is the ability to exploit it and take advantage of them that worries many European experts and decision-makers.

Like mining countries

Si en Europe """"on est juste capable de produire des données, en ayant besoin d'autres pour parvenir à les exploiter, alors on va être dans la même situation que les pays qui ont des ressources minières mais qui ont donné la capacité à d'autres de s'enrichir avec, avec des retombées extrêmement faibles"""" pour eux-mêmes, expliquait le haut fonctionnaire français cité plus haut.

Les gouvernements allemands et français ont annoncé en juin dernier le projet """"Gaia X"""", pour faire émerger une offre européenne.

Rather than trying to encourage a giant GAFA type company, capable of offering a multitude of services - storage, computing power, data processing and artificial intelligence tools, encryption and safety tools - Paris and Berlinwant to bring out a network of European companies operating according to the same standards and standard.

Une sorte de """"place de marché"""" ou chaque client potentiel trouverait tout ce dont il a besoin, sans quitter la juridiction européenne.And which would work according to a decentralized logic, perhaps more compatible with the future challenges of the processing of industrial data and in particular those from connected objects.

4 minutes

To share :