When one knows that his tone raised, and his temperament is mischievous – he does not hesitate to present the results of its business, OVHcloud, a guitar in hand, after having taken over Whole Lotta Love Led Zeppelin – you may be amazed to see how anger has put Octave Klaba on may 11. He explained on Twitter : “It is the fear of trusting the players in the French ecosystem that motivates this type of decision. The solution always exists. The lobbying of the religion Microsoft happens to believe otherwise. It is a struggle. We will keep going and one day you will win. Together. “
This entrepreneur, born in 1975 in Nowa Ruda, Poland, which has built in twenty years, and with his father Henri a company of 3,000 employees in Roubaix, has not digested to see an american manufacturer, in this case Microsoft, to be chosen to host the majority of the health data the Health Data Hub, will play an increasing role in the health policy of France.
Sovereignty
Would it have been better to rely on the French players in the name of sovereignty ? Certainly, the american giants in the sector have a technological know-how undeniable – Amazon spends $ 22 billion per year in research, it is almost as much as the combined budget of the companies of the CAC 40, according to figures from PwC. But Octave Klaba asks good questions. Because if the investment – via the BPI, for example – may allow start-ups to take off, the public procurement can be an effective lever of industrial policy.
Since his rant, Octave Klaba has spoken at length on the phone with Stephanie Combes, director general of the Health Data Hub, in which he expressed his desire to change things. “There is a desire overflowing to demonstrate that the ecosystem is French at the height of this type of mission !” explained to him the one who believes ” to be able to do better than Silicon Valley “.
health Challenge
The data collected by the Health Data Hub can play a leading role in health policy. An example of this ? “Gathering of the scanners in the chest, and results of PCR tests on the technology platform will develop tools of artificial intelligence to improve the detection of severe cases of Covid,” explains the former head of project at ministry of Health, Stéphanie Combes.
The Health Data Hub has a budget of 80 million euros for four years. “We do work for the moment, 35 officers and 15 service providers,” says the director Insee, which followed the course of Polytechnique and the Ensae. Daily, the Hub works with other u.s. firms such as Palo Alto Networks, but also with the French publisher of software Wavestone or the integrator Open, based in Paris. “Between September 2018 and January 2019, we met a large number of market participants, including OVH. Microsoft was chosen because it met the security requirements, and functional. “
A “losing battle” ?
OVH, which in the meantime became licensed for health data, is it out of the game ? “We are not bound hand and foot to Microsoft. We could totally rely on other actors. We do not have a contractual commitment over several years that imprisons us in this choice. It would simply be necessary that it exists in the actor to which we would make the scale the same functionality. “
“The battle was lost ten years ago, when he would have had to be financed largely OVH to make it a global player,” says his side Guillaume Meulle of the fund, XAnge, which ” deplores the storage of data of health of the French on a cloud abroad “. But for him, ” rather than walk the machine to go back in time, it would be better to get interested in the battles that are coming – the artificial intelligence that will exploit this data, for example. Large outsourcers take too little risk and do not buy the start-up, which will be large groups of tomorrow. We should inspire the United States, where the Small Business Act imposes spending controls to small structures. “
Would this be applicable in France ? “We continue to follow closely the franco-German initiative Gaia-X, which aims to grow european champions in the cloud,” says Stéphanie Combes. Reshuffle the cards could be the opportunity for a crowd of French publishers of cloud, to show what they are capable of individually or collectively. Because the talents are many in france, of Outscale, signed by Dassault systèmes, Thalès, through the services of telecommunications operators and national, not to mention Scaleway, Rapid.space, Claranet or Euris.
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