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First investment of the Fonds pour la société numérique
Digital technology - 26 April 2012
The Fonds pour la société numérique (Fund for a digital society - FSN), managed by Caisse des Dépôts within the framework of the Program of investments for the future (PIA), is going to make its first investment in a digital confidence centre for €75mn on a total of €225mn.
This investment will allow the creation of a new major player in the digital economy.
This European-oriented French company will market a range of products called Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). It will supply on request capacity for processing, storage and bandwidth used by all companies and administrations, but also by the IT sector.
The software suite of the company will be developed based on free software, thus encouraging the openness, interoperability and standardisation, and will benefit from a high degree of security. This open approach will encourage the eco-system of innovative developers and integrators and will benefit the whole of the French and European economic network. This investment has been presented by the companies Orange and Thalès, which have stated that the project company would subsequently employ one thousand people.
This project was presented in reply to the call for expressions of interest of the FSN published in March 2011. This measure, established within the framework of the Digital Economy programme of the PIA is aimed at supporting, by financings in equity and quasi-equity, companies developing new innovative digital uses, services and contents. It is aimed, in particular, at companies whose activity is in the following sectors: cloud computing, evaluation and digitalization of scientific, educational and cultural content, basic digital technologies (notably nano-electronics and embedded software), e-health, the security and resilience of networks, intelligent transport systems, digital cities and e-education.
