What is Hexatrust?

Hexatrust is an association of French and European leaders in cybersecurity and the trusted cloud. Its mission is to promote excellence in the digital domain by bringing together start-ups, SMEs and ETIs innovating in the cybersecurity and cloud security sectors. The association strives to defend the interests of its members in dealings with public authorities, and to promote the French and European cybersecurity ecosystem.

Hexatrust's role

Hexatrust's mission is multi-faceted:

1. Advocacy: Representing industry players to the authorities.
2. Visibility: Increase members' recognition on the national and international markets.
3. Innovation: Leading a community of entrepreneurs to promote the exchange of ideas and the development of innovative solutions.

Why is joining Hexatrust important for Clever Cloud?

Collaboration and synergy

Unity is strength. Being a member of Hexatrust enables Clever Cloud to collaborate with other French and European industry leaders. This cooperation is crucial to developing even more robust cloud security solutions that meet today's cybersecurity challenges. We also share a common vision of the European digital age, and of the importance of digital sovereignty in protecting the data of our businesses and citizens.

Technology watch and peer-to-peer exchanges

Hexatrust has set up a number of working groups and organizes events enabling its members to exchange and share feedback on tools and issues. These actions are vital for Clever Cloud and its teams, to ensure the necessary monitoring of our products' security.

In line with our strategy

Clever Cloud has designed its platform to be secured by design: immutable architecture, avoidance of trusted networks (each peer on the same network is identified, authenticated and communicates in encrypted form), development or participation in the development of open source tools (Reverse Proxy Sozu and Token Biscuit). In addition to these best practices, we are ISO 9001 and ISO 27001:2022 certified. We are also in the process of obtaining HDS (Healthcare Data Hosting) certification and SecNumCloud certification.

Conclusion

Joining Hexatrust represents a springboard for Clever Cloud on its journey towards excellence in cloud data security. By joining this community of experts, we are reasserting our commitment while contributing to the evolution of the European digital landscape.

High stakes

While the costs of mainframe infrastructures and their software licenses continue to rise, many companies, mainly in the banking and insurance sectors, still rely on these technologies to run their mission-critical operations in COBOL.

Maintaining and upgrading these infrastructures is becoming increasingly difficult, both because of operating costs and the lack of qualified developers on these technologies.

Furthermore, mainframe implies numerous lock-ins, creating a substantial technological debt and blocking companies from switching to more flexible, up-to-date solutions.

A French partnership in response

In response to these challenges, Clever Cloud and OCamlPro have announced a strategic partnership aimed at simplifying and securing the migration of COBOL systems to modern, open environments. In concrete terms, OCamlPro offers solutions that enable COBOL code to evolve thanks to access to a powerful, modern, open-source tool, SuperBOL, developed around the free, open-source GnuCOBOL compiler.

Thanks to this offer, users will be able to convert their code from COBOL to C, facilitating their migration in a safe and secure way, whether in a public, private or on-premise cloud.

The aim is to offer simplified migration of code to the public, private or on-premises cloud, with sovereign, high-availability hosting, and automated operational maintenance. This will enable companies to regain control of their code, their data, and their IS more broadly.

A shared vision

Clever Cloud and OCamlPro share a common vision of IT, focusing on the importance of open source, strategic autonomy of code and data in Europe, and security. Both are committed to promoting robust open source solutions, offering transparency, innovation and freedom to users.

What's more, this partnership provides numerous guarantees in terms of security, as well as data sovereignty. As two French companies, governed by French law, this partnership assures customers that their data will be protected from extra-territorial laws such as FISA.

Coming soon

Starting September, Clever Cloud and OCamlPro plan to open a joint testing environment, enabling interested companies to test SuperBOL on their code. This will enable them to discover our solution and test it at a lower cost.

A webinar will be held in October to present the offer, its advantages and use cases. Stay tuned!

Want to find out more?

OCamlPro

OCamlPro, a consultancy specializing in the design of software tools for computer languages, is the biggest French contributor to GnuCOBOL, the only completely free COBOL compiler, and is developing SuperBOL, a free, modern, reliable and high-performance environment to help migration to GnuCOBOL. Today, GnuCOBOL is a proven open-source solution, used for example by ObjectWay for its banking software, with a strong and dynamic open-source community.

As part of this activity, OCamlPro has been supporting the DGFiP (Direction Générale des Finances Publiques), since 2022, in one of its biggest COBOL modernization projects, by extending the GnuCOBOL compiler to handle extensions specific to the GCOS mainframe, without modifying the COBOL source code. Every day, OCamlPro demonstrates its ability to intervene in depth on GnuCOBOL and meet its customers' most demanding needs.

Contact: SuperBOL team is at your disposal for any further information superbol@ocamlpro.com or here.

Continuing its commitment to digital sovereignty, Clever Cloud is proud to announce its participation in CISPE (Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe association).

Continuing our commitment

This participation underlines Clever Cloud's commitment to providing a transparent, reliable cloud infrastructure that complies with stringent European data protection regulations, while protecting its customers from the extraterritorial laws. By joining CiSPE, Clever Cloud joins other European cloud service providers committed to offering innovative, sovereign solutions tailored to the needs and values of European customers. 

Clever Cloud, a strong commitment

Clever Cloud has been strongly committed to the subject for several years: a member of Gaia-X from the outset, a founding member of Euclidia and heavily involved in the Open Internet Project.

"Our participation in CISPE is in line with our mission and our values. Together, we are building the foundations of a resilient European digital ecosystem, capable of meeting the current and future challenges of sovereignty and independence, as well as the environmental impact and social responsibility of our industry" declares Jean-Baptiste Piacentino, VP Alliances at Clever Cloud.

The CISPE’s job

The CISPE association plays an essential role in the European digital landscape, serving as a collaborative platform for exchanging best practices, regulatory challenges and technological innovations. This consortium of 26 companies aims to boost Europe's competitiveness in cloud computing. To achieve this, it works to ensure fair competition for European suppliers in the global market, while respecting European values and regulations.

Do you have a question? Contact us now!

Paris, Nantes - France, January 17, 2023 – Clever Cloud and Scaleway unite to offer a PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) solution hosted in DC5, one of the most energy and water-efficient data centers in Europe, built and run by Scaleway. The two major European cloud players make it possible to deploy websites and web applications in record time, without prior knowledge of cloud technologies.

Web Platform - powered by Clever Cloud: making the deployment of web applications faster with a managed and sovereign service

The goal of Clever Cloud and Scaleway joining forces is to offer developers, startups, SMEs, and agencies a high performance and sovereign alternative to automate the deployment of their web applications in a sustainable ecosystem.

Web Platform - powered by Clever Cloud allows developers to deploy code directly via pushes to GitHub, using any runtime, and does not require knowledge of server and infrastructure management.

Thanks to a number of add-ons, including services such as managed databases and storage, Web Platform allows developers to scale their web applications in record timing, and considerably reduce their time-to-market.

“Web Platform allows users to benefit from the compatibility of the two providers’ catalogs, and the increased possibilities of this bold, innovative and sovereign offering. We are delighted to be working with Scaleway once more, and we’ve built a sustainable partnership not only to serve the ecosystem and our clients, but also to respond to market needs.” Quentin Adam, CEO, Clever Cloud.

Bringing together two key European cloud players

The launch of Web Platform enhances the catalogs of both Scaleway and Clever Cloud - two companies known for their commitment to building an alternative, European, sovereign, and sustainable cloud.

DC5, Scaleway’s next generation data center, is integrated into the Clever Cloud offering, allowing developers to deploy their applications in a carbon neutral data center which uses 30-40% less energy and 90% less water than a traditional data center.

Web Platform - powered by Clever Cloud completes Scaleway’s range of managed services and products. Scaleway clients will now be able to considerably accelerate their website launches thanks to a powerful, sustainable, and sovereign offer.

“This partnership unites the complementary strengths of Scaleway and Clever Cloud. The new offer is another milestone toward the simplified adoption of the cloud in a sovereign environment which respects our planet.” Gaspard Plantrou, Senior Vice President PaaS, Scaleway.

About Scaleway 

Founded in 1999, Scaleway, the cloud of choice, helps developers and businesses to build, deploy and scale applications to any infrastructure. Located in Paris, Amsterdam and Warsaw, Scaleway’s complete cloud ecosystem is used by 25,000+ businesses, including European startups, who choose Scaleway for its multi-AZ redundancy, smooth developer experience, carbon-neutral data centers and native tools for managing multi-cloud architectures.

With fully managed offerings for bare metal, containerization and serverless architectures, Scaleway brings choice to the world of cloud computing, offering customers the ability to choose where their customer’s data resides, to choose what architecture works best for their business, and to choose a more responsible way to scale.

For more information: https://www.scaleway.com/en/web-platform-powered-by-clever-cloud/

About Clever Cloud

Founded in 2010, Clever Cloud is a company based in Nantes specializing in IT automation. It creates and provides the software building blocks necessary for the flexible deployment of applications on self-service SaaS architectures. Its clients include such big names as Airbus, AXA, Caisse d’Épargne, Cegid, Docaposte, MAIF, McDonald’s, Solocal, SNCF, TBWA, etc.

For more information: https://stagingv6.cleverapps.io/contact/

A collaboration to deploy next generation storage solutions based on Kalray's DPU processor in Clever Cloud's new Paris data center

Nantes, Grenoble – France, July 5, 2022 - Clever Cloud, a European provider of automation and optimization solutions for websites and applications hosting, and Kalray (Euronext Growth Paris: ALKAL), a leading provider of a new generation of processors and acceleration cards specialized in Intelligent Data Processing from Cloud to Edge, announce a partnership aimed at strengthening the relationship between the two companies for the deployment of next-generation storage solutions.

Clever Cloud, which is currently setting up in a third Parisian data center and strengthening its technical platform, has chosen to partner with French company Kalray and its Flashbox™, a new generation of NVMe storage array that can accommodate up to 24 PCI Express (NVMe) SSDs, for its high-performance storage solution.

Performance, resilience and openness

Without a host CPU (Central Processing Unit), the Flashbox™ leverages K200-LP™ accelerator cards featuring the Coolidge™ DPU (Data Processing Unit) that takes advantage of the unique and patented MPPA® (Massively Parallel Processor Array) architecture developed by Kalray. This chip takes advantage of the power of 80 parallel cores and enables data centers adopting NVMe SSD storage to remove bottlenecks and improve performance, while consuming minimal power and resources.

A unique concept on the market today, the Flashbox™ as proposed by Kalray benefits from ultra-fast interfaces and low power consumption. It can deliver up to 12 million IOPS through a 2x 100 Gb/s network interface and is based on market standards such as Storage Performance Development Kit (SPDK), NVMe/TCP or RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCEv1/v2). It will eventually be offered by storage vendors using Kalray cards.

"Kalray's solution meets all our needs and the criteria that are important to us, whether in terms of sovereignty, openness, resilience, energy efficiency or performance", said Quentin Adam, CEO of Clever Cloud.

The Flashbox™ is currently being tested in Clever Cloud's infrastructure and will join its new Paris data center where it will work alongside the latest generation of compute servers Clever Cloud is installing there. It will enable Clever Cloud to offer greater flexibility to its customers in managing storage, but also to support the launch of new offerings.

This is part of the development of Clever Cloud's Storage API, which allows various storage sources, whether local, remote or via third-party cloud service providers, to be simply allocated to the virtual machines that host users' applications. This open, multi-cloud approach is what makes Clever Cloud so successful.

Clever Cloud and Kalray: for a "made in France" R&D

Clever Cloud and Kalray are also partnering in several projects where they are working closely together to leverage Kalray's K200-LP™ cards as accelerators to offload Clever Cloud's network layer functionalities or computations related to the protection and redundancy of data stored within Clever Cloud's servers.

"The collaboration with Kalray is not just about two French companies that have an interest in working together, but about two projects that have, at their heart, the creation of value through innovation, where the partnership is also between the technical teams", adds Steven Le Roux, CTO of Clever Cloud.

“We are very pleased to be working with Clever Cloud, with whom we share common values, both in terms of innovation and the philosophy of our solutions, which are designed to be easy to use, flexible, scalable and open. Kalray has a unique position in Europe in this market of very high-performance and low-power processors. We are proud to be able to build innovative French storage solutions with Clever Cloud and thus contribute to the technological sovereignty of France and Europe”, declares Eric Baissus, President and CEO of Kalray.

The Flashbox™ will be showcased at the upcoming Flash Memory Summit, a major event in the field, from August 2 to 4, 2022, in Santa Clara Convention Center, CA, USA (booth #940).

About Clever Cloud

Founded in 2010, Clever Cloud is a company based in Nantes, France, and specialized in IT automation. It creates and provides the software building blocks necessary for the flexible deployment of applications on self-service PaaS architectures. Its clients include such major names as Airbus, AXA, Caisse d'Épargne, Cegid, Docaposte, MAIF, McDonald's, Solocal, SNCF, TBWA...

About Kalray

Kalray (Euronext Growth Paris - FR0010722819 - ALKAL) is a fabless semiconductor company, a leading provider of a new class of processors, specialized in Intelligent Data Processing from Cloud to Edge. Kalray’s team have created and developed its leading-edge technology and products to help its clients maximize the market possibilities presented by a world dominated by massive, disparate and pervasive data.

Thanks to Kalray’s patented manycore architecture, Kalray’s MPPA® Intelligent Data Processors are natively capable of managing multiple workloads with no bottlenecks to enable smarter, more efficient and energy-wise data-intensive applications. Kalray's offering includes processors, acceleration cards with associated software environment and appliances, allowing its customers to design the best solutions in fast growing sectors such as modern data centers, 5G, AI and Edge Computing, autonomous vehicles and others.

Founded in 2008 as a spin-off of CEA French lab, with investors such as Alliance Venture (Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi), Safran, NXP Semiconductors, CEA and Bpifrance, Kalray is dedicated through technology, expertise and passion to offer more: More for a smart world, more for the planet, more for customers and developers.

There have been some changes in licensing models for certain software vendors recently, Elastic in particular. While we are not going to go over those in detail, we want to reassure you that Clever Cloud is an Elastic official partner, and as such nothing changes for our customers. We will continue to support and extend our Elastic integration.

Now that it has been cleared out let me tell you more about how we envision partnership at Clever Cloud. We believe that Cloud providers, as infrastructure providers, should be enablers of other Software Vendors. It might seem like a triviality but seeing how some other cloud providers behave, it seems unclear.

Responsabilities as a Service

A cloud provider is infrastructure. Infrastructure is a necessary condition to business. Being necessary can put you in an abusive position. It’s even more true when you have a monopolistic position on a market. Basically you can behave like a bully or a child.

If you want to address AWS or the Apple store users, you have to play by their rules. And the bigger they are the more they get to decide what rules apply. This also gives them power to retaliate.

They could for instance tell the world they are in a partnership with you while it’s false. Some will take it for granted because they don’t necessarily know you. Then offer the same service without giving back, capitalizing on all the efforts made by the vendor and its community.

Here we need to state that laws and regulations have always lagged behind innovation in the Software industry. This is partly the reason why we see new Software licences(AGPL, SSPL and the likes) being adopted to protect IPs or trademarks from possible abuse.

That’s not right. Usually supporters of these methods will answer something like “yes but it’s legal”. Resorting to this authority argument usually means you have nothing else to say and know you are losing ground on everything else. (and in Elastic’s case, the “it’s legal” argument hardly holds as AWS has been abusing Elastic’s trademark).

It’s about doing the right thing. Don’t be a bully.

Because we think it’s important to do what’s right, we have always had the following approach towards Vendors.

Before providing anything as a service we propose a revenue sharing model: the vendor gets a cut of the money we made with the product. This is currently the best way we found to respect a cloud consumption/pay as you go model. Granted this goes against the traditional yearly subscription model and how sales teams traditionally operate. But we are talking about a partnership here.

What can Clever Cloud bring you?

If this is of interest to you let's go quickly over some Clever Cloud facts.

• Clever Cloud is a European company and as such is not subjected to the US Cloud Act.
• It works as a public, private, hybrid or on-premises cloud, and is available on other public Cloud like OVH, and several others are planned this year.
• As our infrastructure and orchestrator is proprietary we will manage all the product integration, which usually results in 0 integration cost for the vendor.
• We will handle level1/level2 support.

When integrating a product we make sure we don't require any help from the vendor, to result in us sending them money every quarter without any effort on their part. They should not have to engage resources. It’s our job to provide this for them. This situation is often reversed because of the monopolistic situation of the major Cloud providers.

Let it be known that we always come to vendors with this proposal when considering to add their product to our catalog. And we have had a wide range of reactions. From “why would you give me money this is open source” to “You need to buy this much upfront. If you can’t why don’t you ask your VCs to pitch in ?”. And everything you can think of in the middle.

Again, Cloud providers must be enablers for software vendors.

Our Technical Differencies

Running a cloud platform is something technical and as such we have several specificity you may want to know about:

There is always a point in our conversation where we talk about how the vendor support team can only support us if we use this specific version of Linux. And as it turns out we use a different version than most. We rely on Exherbo, an upstream, source based distribution. Here's two main points to why.

Being upstream allows us to use the latest version of each software, with the latest security patches. Look there was a time where it was super important to be on a battle-tested version of X or y. Because the primary security issue was to avoid segfault. It was a software stability issue. it's 2021. Things have changed. The main security concern is to have your SSL library up to date to protect yourself from external attack. Take the heartbleed security bug for instance. Our infrastructure was long patched when this became a known issue.

Being source based allows us to be in control. We can patch all our infrastructure faster. And since we compile everything we make sure it's optimized for the hardware it runs on. Most other distributions are just compiled to support everything, so it's optimized for nothing. It's the price to pay for genericity.

This is also the reason why as a PaaS provider we encourage people to simply deploy their source code instead of an unoptimized binary. And why when we provide closed source solutions, we are more than happy to sign an NDA to access the sources and make sure it's compiled for our platform. In this process we are also more than happy to contribute anything we may find interesting.

Become a Registered ISV

Now you should have a fairly good understanding of our partnership vision, and the role we envision for Cloud providers in our global economy. If you are a software vendor looking for a partnership, we would be happy to talk :)

Simply send us an email to devrel@clever-cloud.com.