Thales bags French SOCRATE, POINCARE contracts
Thales has been awarded two contracts by the French defence procurement agency (DGA), it announced on 30 March. The contracts include deployment of the POINCARE network and upgrade of the SOCRATE resilient network.
The contracts form a part of the DESCARTES programme to upgrade all French Ministry of Defence data and telephony infrastructure networks. The POINCARE network’s rollout is expected to complete in 2018, while the SOCRATE upgrade will begin in 2017 and complete in 2021.
Under the SOCRATE network upgrade contract, Thales will provide a high-data rate network to cope with the growing number and severity of cyber threats. The upgraded network will interconnect more than 250,000 users at over 100 strategic sites, including the ministry's new Hexagone-Balard headquarters in Paris.
The upgraded network will also feature the Nexium View solution from Thales to speed up the incidence response time of the ministry's IT and communications agency and anticipate their impact on operations as well as supervise the network in real-time.
Under the POINCARE contract, Thales will partner with NextiraOne to interconnect the ministry's 1,200 sites in mainland France and overseas.
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