Investments in France: AWS shows the muscles

Six billion euros of funding over fifteen years in France

To justify what he’s about to say, you must crush some contextual info. This is a chance to study that the implementation of a cloud area at AWS is deliberate over fifteen years.

“Once we spend money on a cloud area, we set up a fifteen-year plan. From 2017 to 2021, this represents roughly 700 million euros of funding in France,” says Julien Groues, Managing Director AWS France and Italy.

This sum consists of “the institution, institution, upkeep and operation of the AWS area in Paris”. As a reminder, the cloud big had began to settle in 2011 by establishing a peripheral community location Amazon CloudFront within the Paris area. It is in 2017 that he had opened his Paris cloud region with three “remoted and bodily separated” availability zones.

From 2022 to 2031, AWS plans to take a position a further €5.three billion within the area. In a press launch, the provider specifies that this consists of “all bills immediately attributable to the mission, together with the commissioning of extremely specialised and proprietary gear and software program, in addition to native bills associated to the development and operation of information facilities.

“This represents an funding of 6 billion euros over 15 years”, summarizes Julien Groues. “It’s estimated that this can contribute 16.eight billion euros to the GDP of France [sur la période 2017 à 2031] “, rejoices the chief.

This estimate corresponds to the “worth generated by way of AWS”, the group’s bills in France and the operation of the information facilities.

Over the following fifteen years, the group estimates that its exercise in France will generate “roughly 5,271 full-time jobs” yearly amongst “subcontractors within the knowledge middle provide chain”. These will work for telecommunications operators, non-residential building specialists, energy producers, and knowledge middle maintainers and operators employed by AWS.

The provider doesn’t solely use subcontractors. “In the present day, we now have round 1,000 Amazon staff in France supporting AWS operations,” says Julien Groues. Once more, this determine had by no means been disclosed. “There are extra technical roles than business ones,” he says.

Usually, “these staff help the infrastructure, develop companies, promote the adoption of those companies by our prospects and our companions”, describes Julien Groues. “They’ve a technical and business help function”.

Different AWS staff, who should not essentially primarily based in France, maintain French prospects, specifies the supervisor. In line with the data accessible on LinkedIn, clearly to be taken with a grain of salt, AWS would have roughly 128,000 staff. By comparability, Amazon employed greater than 1.6 million individuals in 2021, together with 1.three million in america alone.

Recruitment to help buyer tasks

A recruitment plan is deliberate at AWS France and issues “tons of of recent staff”, however the French chief didn’t specify the outlines.

On September 30, 2022, in keeping with the recruitment web page on the AWS web site, 205 positions have been open in France, together with 176 in Ile-de-France. Essentially the most sought-after function is options architect: 83 positions have been open, together with 62 hooked up to the Courbevoie workplace. Their function is to advise and take part within the improvement of options on behalf of AWS prospects. The content material of job postings is imprecise sufficient to aim to recruit “specialists” in all cloud technical areas.

In line with Julien Groues, these architects are required to use the ideas referenced within the AWS Effectively-Architected guides. Amongst French prospects, recurring developments concern the selection of AWS applied sciences, value optimization, the applying of cybersecurity and knowledge compliance guidelines, and “since this 12 months, the discount of CO2 emissions “. Though AWS claims to respect the GDPR and has ensured that it has gone “past” the suggestions of the EDPB, the primary motive for using the Paris cloud area by prospects stays efficiency.

The AWS APN associate community consists of greater than 200 firms, of which 120 firms are headquartered in France, together with Orange Enterprise Providers, Capgemini, Sopra Steria and Atos. Thus, the report launched by AWS signifies that Capgemini has carried out 7,500 cloud tasks and claims “greater than 25 lively buyer references”, together with Storengy and Engie.

Julien Groues additionally remembers that many French publishers provide their service on the AWS market like round 2,000 resolution publishers. In complete, this market would convey collectively greater than 12,000 “services” bought by 325,000 lively prospects.

The provider likes to recall that it’s current in “80% of CAC40 firms and 70% of French unicorns”. This could due to this fact give 32 purchasers out of the 40 firms with the biggest capitalization registered on the Paris Inventory Alternate and 18 of the 25 French startups whose valuation exceeds 1 billion . As well as, AWS ensures that “tens of hundreds of French firms and startups” use its companies.

There’s nonetheless a “huge brake on the transition to the cloud and using AWS companies”, notes the overall supervisor. The dearth of coaching and digital expertise is pushing the cloud big to supply its personal coaching and certifications. “Since 2017, in France, we now have educated greater than 100,000 individuals within the subject of the cloud. We’ll proceed to develop our coaching provide,” he says. The group intends to coach 29 million individuals by 2025, however it’s above all a query of perfecting the training of builders and engineers. For instance, AWS re/begin coaching, a 12-week program run by Simplon in France, solely trains about 100 novices in retraining per 12 months.

SecNumCloud necessities: AWS discusses with its prospects

Though it’s crammed with indicators, it’s modern to query the manufacturing of such a report. Moreover an promoting device like some other, the train appears to affix influence practices tender measures put in place by the cloud giants to attempt to remind civil society and governments of their significance within the European financial panorama.

The report was launched on September 28, about ten days after Bruno Le Maire, French Minister of Economyand Thierry Breton, European Commissioner for the Inside Market, took the chance of the inauguration of an OVHcloud datacenter to current their ambitions when it comes to digital sovereignty.

“We’re engaged on these topics,” says the overall supervisor. “We’re conscious of the version 3.2 of the SecNumCloud certification printed by ANSSI. It is essential for our prospects to satisfy this certification, so it is essential for us,” he notes.

Alternatively, the cloud big has no announcement to make regarding a attainable three way partnership with a French firm, as Google did with Thales. to found S3NS, or Microsoft with Capgemini and Orance to imagine Blue.

As a reminder, acquiring SecNumCloud certification has been conditional since March 2022 on non-subjection to extra-European legislation. Clearly, an American firm can’t immediately provide SecNumCloud companies – which is above all a repository of necessities referring to knowledge and software safety. Alternatively, it might probably affiliate with a European firm which holds nearly all of the shares of the three way partnership working gear and companies created in america.

“We work with our prospects to grasp their expectations with respect to those necessities. Our prospects inform us that if it is a matter of getting SecNumCloud licensed servers on which they should handle digital machines, they don’t seem to be ,” continues Julien Groues.

The chief describes there with out saying it a number of the SecNumCloud presents accessible in the marketplace, for instance at Cloud Temple, OVHcloud and 3DS Outscale. Nonetheless, PaaS and SaaS companies receive also the precious sesamenotably at Oodrive.

“Clients respect the scalability and sturdiness of storing their knowledge and purposes on AWS, however most of all they need to have the ability to use managed companies, serverless, instruments like SageMaker “, he boasts.

And to Stephan Hadinger, Head of Know-how at AWS, to recall that his employer has already obtained C5 certification in Germany and ENS (Esquema Nacional de Securidad – Nationwide Safety Scheme) in Spain. These two authorities safety requirements don’t defend firms and home entities from US extraterritorial legal guidelines.

The technical supervisor insists that the CLOUD Act has very little impact on AWS prospects thanks to encryption and its Nitro confidential computing system.

“If our prospects have encrypted the information and the information is saved exterior of america, by design of our contracts, certifications, and technicalities, within the worst-case state of affairs, the one factor that may recuperate American justice is encrypted knowledge with out the keys, ”he says. “The affect is nil or nearly nil: the information can’t be used”, he repeats.