Organised by PREDA together with Bull, Atos and Altran, the event was aiming at putting American and European startup companies in touch with French major players in the sector, and sought to facilitate strategic and commercial partnerships, which are key elements for business growth.

There were consequently over 50 one-to-one meetings in one day between American/European Cloud players and French decision-makers, who for their part expressed great enthusiasm with the operation's results:
It was a tremendous event. It would normally have taken us several months to set up meetings with 14 SaaS players, all of whom are excellent candidates for the French market using Atos platforms. Thanks to the Paris Region Economic Development Agency we did it in just one day! And now a dialogue has been initiated with those promising companies. Our thanks go to PREDA, stated Atos Cloud & Services VP Jerôme Brun.

This event has demonstrated the vitality and enterprising spirit found within the Paris Region. We were able to meet a wide range of ICT companies who wish to grow through both innovative and fruitful partnerships. We are grateful to PREDA teams who made those meetings possible, added Lemon Operations founder Laurent Glaendzer.

An encouraging number of American and European players confirmed their determination to develop partnerships with service companies, on both a regional and a worldwide level, and they expressed their support for the Matchmaking method as a means to achieve this objective. For our part, we are satisfied with the contacts we made, and I firmly believe that the Region is playing a valuable role in developing business and in acting as an energy catalyst, explained Bull Head of Strategy and Marketing Boris Auché.

"Our co-operation with PREDA was successful. Our objective was achieved: we found companies and offers in record time, we attended a very interesting conference, and had some lively, practical discussions with all of the participants... We already know that dialogue will continue with several of the companies that we met. And we are looking forward to the third meeting", declares Bruno Lescure, Partner at the Altran Group, accelerators of innovation and competitiveness.

The field of Cloud Computing has reached a first stage in its development, and players in the field are all looking for the growth levers specific to themselves:

-          SaaS publishers (publisher-hosted software rentals) are seeking to land some development work for major groups

-         To PaaS providers (operational platform and administration tools), the issue is now to position their product with the integrators, who bring them to the businesses

-         As for IaaS providers (Infrastructure), the market is clearly leaning towards Open Source

French companies attending were:

Alcatel Lucent

Altran

Atos

Bull

eNovance

ERWOOD

Hedera Technology

Jack in the Box

Lemon operations

MANKAY

Stratos tech

American and European companies attending were:

APPIAN

CORDYS

C12G OPEN NEBULA

ELECTRIC CLOUD

SCALITY

SUGAR CRM

VIRTUAL SCALE - NIMBULA

WORKDAY

PREDA wishes to thank all of the partners who rose to the occasion, and invites you to next year's meeting.