In an announcement on Friday, French telecom operator, Orange, said that it is buying shares held by the French defense group, Thales (22.2%) and the Caisse des Dépôts (33.3%), a state-backed lender in its cloud computing joint venture Cloudwatt, giving Orange full ownership of the company.
By acquiring Cloudwatt, said Orange, it will strengthen its enterprise cloud services offering – a major focus of its "Essentials 2020" strategic plan. The technologies and services offered by Cloudwatt complement Orange’s own portfolio and represent an opportunity to accelerate the deployment of a sovereign public cloud both in France and in Europe.
With support from the French state, Cloudwatt was launched in 2012 to provide an alternative to big U.S. companies dominating the sector but it struggled to take off.
