Pascal Rogiest, former CEO of LuxTrust, has been appointed as general manager of Clarence, LuxConnect, and Proximus’ joint venture, which offers a disconnected sovereign cloud solution and incorporates the Gemma and Llama AI models.
With a PhD in electromechanical aerospace engineering and currently holding the VP role at satellite service provider SES, Rogiest comes in to lead the business development of Clarence. He adds to his experience at LuxTrust, 3 years at engineering company Rhea Group.
“Clarence is coming at the right time, with the right operational maturity, with the right value-proposition, to meet a growing demand for data sovereignty, stimulated by today’s unfortunate geopolitical context, combined with ever-increasing cyber threats and cyber terrorism risks.”
Pascal Rogiest, general manager of Clarence.
The joint venture by LuxConnect (60%) and Proximus (40%) will offer cloud-based applications, leveraging the two companies’ expertise in hosting, deploying, and managing highly secure data solutions. Clarence will enable several AI models, including Gemma and Llama. The generative AI search packaged solutions powered by Gemma will be available in the fourth quarter of 2024, says Gérard Hoffmann, CEO of Proximus Luxembourg.
Localising the data
Clarence will look to create value for its customers by allowing them to process and analyse data closer to where it is generated. This is made possible by the Google Distributed Cloud (GDC) on which the service is based. This technology allows the likes of public sector organisations and regulated enterprises to host, control, and manage infrastructure and services directly on their premises. Clarence will focus on serving critical data infrastructure in Benelux, but it will also look to address the demand for data sovereignty across Europe.
Proximus and LuxConnect Launch Disconnected Sovereign Cloud Solution
