Screening covered more than 350 technical criteria which appears to have trumped already holding SecNumCloud certification
After a rigorous selection process, France’s Health Data Hub (HDH) and Scaleway are entering into a partnership to provide stakeholders in health research and innovation with a secure platform. Scaleway is a subsidiary of the French telecoms Iliad Group. Scaleway will replace Microsoft in managing the health records of tens of millions of French citizens.
Microsoft Azure was chosen in 2019 to host the Health Data Hub project without a competitive tender process and has been subject to controversy ever since. It is expected that the transition will be completed late this year or early in 2027, according to Reuters.
Sovereignty
Dropping Microsoft in favour of Scaleway is seen as a wider push towards data sovereignty in the European Union as relations between the continent and the US have become unpredictable and factious. Last week Scaleway was selected as one of four cloud providers under the European Commission’s Cloud III Dynamic Purchasing System.
Similar efforts are underway in other European countries. For example, the German state of Schleswig-Holstein is moving government systems away from Microsoft products to open source alternatives: last December, the state reported it will save more than €15 million in licence costs for Windows, Microsoft Office and other personal productivity tools this year and similar in subsequent years. Denmark too is progressively moving parts of its public sector administration onto open source solutions.
Health matters
Under contract with the HDH, Scaleway’s platform will host health databases, including a copy of the main database of the National Health Data System (SNDS). The intention is to streamline access to this data and accelerate the secondary use of health data in France and across Europe.
The selection process was structured around more than 350 technical criteria covering key issues like security, resilience, performance and the ability to operate at scale.
Critically, Scaleway has Hébergeur de Données de Santé (HDS) certification – this is part of a mandatory French legal framework required for hosting health data in France. HDS was updated and was made considerably tougher when the new rules were published in May 2024 and came into force in November the same year.
As was noted at the time: “This framework has sparked extensive discussions, particularly concerning the data localization and transfers requirements amidst the ongoing concerns of French authorities regarding digital sovereignty”.
The French cloudco also “demonstrated the credibility of its roadmap toward SecNumCloud qualification” which certifies a company’s immunity to non-EU legislation like the US’ CLOUD Act. Interestingly, Orange’s Cloud Avenue has already qualified for SecNumCloud in July 2025 – see this story for more context.
Data access
According to the press statement, beyond sovereignty, the key challenge is making massive amounts of complex and disparate data usable for research and innovation. Scaleway says “data is now a key focus of [its] development, being closely linked to its investments in artificial intelligence”.
Scaleway acquired Saagie in June 2025, which is a French DataOps platform as part of this strategy and to strengthen the company’s data orchestration and quality assurance capabilities.Â
Scaleway’s platform is used by major public and private organisations for critical services that handle sensitive data, such as the French Home Office for emergency call services (the ANSC, 112) and Delubac Bank.Â
