Clever Cloud announces 11 new products at its Clever Cloud Fest

More than just a service provider, Clever Cloud is at the heart of an ecosystem that brings together different initiatives. The fest was an opportunity to look back on the transformation that has taken place over the last few years, to talk about a number of products and to make some important announcements that reinforce its position as a leader in the secure, sovereign Cloud.

These announcements were made on Thursday 6 February at 2:00 PM during a keynote session accessible via social networks and live streaming platforms.

New PaaS Initiative: towards a faster, ever more secure platform

Three years ago, Clever Cloud began to reinvent itself. Under the impetus of the new management team, which has gradually expanded, the company has taken advantage of its continued growth to expand its teams, building on its two historical strengths: technological excellence and security by design.

It has strengthened its strategic independence, and now has its own infrastructure in three Paris data centres, in addition to the deployment zones it offers in France and around the world with its partners.

It has successfully obtained ISO 9001, ISO 27001:2022 and, more recently, HDS certification for hosting healthcare data. Clever Cloud is thus reinforcing its position as leader in PaaS in Europe for public authorities, businesses and major accounts.

2025 will be the year in which Clever Cloud implements its plan for a new PaaS. Faster, more complete and easier to use, whether you’re a developer, a solopreneur or a group of teams, the new Clever Cloud will meet your needs even better.

The broad outlines of this project will be unveiled by CTO Steven Le Roux during a presentation. It will be rolled out throughout the year.

Clever AI: adapting AI to business needs

Clever Cloud has announced the launch of Clever AI, a new range of products designed to adapt the integration of artificial intelligence to business constraints. It is multi-vendor, multi-model, and adds control and functionality to all the solutions on the market. Clever AI can be used in serverless mode, in dedicated instances or on-premises.

Based on the Otoroshi open source API Gateway, and developed in collaboration with Cloud APIM, Clever AI represents a major evolution in Clever Cloud’s service offering. It is positioned as a complete platform enabling companies to aggregate numerous LLMs (Large Language Models), to create a connection with an IAM tool and also to set up usage rules, blocking certain keywords in prompts, for example, and thus preventing the disclosure of confidential information. In practical terms, Clever AI aims to enable AI to be used securely and in line with business requirements.

This solution offers :

• Compatibility with numerous AI providers, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Azure, DeepSeek, Gemini, Groq, x.AI, as well as European services such as Hugging Face, Lucie, Mistral, OVHcloud and Scaleway;
• Advanced features such as authentication, caching, logging, model selection and customisation, access to a personalised chat interface and Model Context Protocol (MCP) support;
• An administrator interface accessible via Console, API or CLI, making it easy for development teams to use and integrate with third-party tools;
• The ability to create custom prompt rules. This feature enables companies to effectively prevent the leakage of sensitive data when using AI models, and so define restrictions on the type of information that AI can process or generate, as well as customising AI interactions so that they comply with internal security policies;
• Integrated compliance and usage analysis tools to provide the traceability that the company needs to ensure the high level of monitoring required, but also to continue to ensure a certification policy.

‘With Clever AI, we offer our customers a sovereign, out-of-the-box solution for integrating AI into their business processes,’ says Quentin Adam, CEO of Clever Cloud. ‘Our platform enables businesses to quickly reap the benefits of AI while maintaining control over their data and processes.’

Clever AI is available in private alpha and for testing by Clever Cloud customers, marking an important step in the company’s strategy to democratise access to AI technologies for businesses of all sizes. You can apply for early access before it goes public in a few weeks’ time.

Clever Cloud unveils its FaaS

Clever Cloud is introducing its Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) solution, enabling developers to deploy and run individual functions without managing the underlying infrastructure, based on the Web Assembly Standard (WASM).

The exclusive WSR (Wasm Svm Runtime) technology is the result of several years’ work by the Clever Cloud teams, who have developed a set of solutions for instant execution, as close as possible to the hardware layer, while remaining easy to use and open to various languages/runtimes.

What is FaaS?

Clever Functions is based on an event-driven architecture. Developers write functions that are triggered by specific events, such as :

• HTTP requests;
• Database modifications;
• Messages in a queue.

These functions are then deployed on a Cloud platform that automatically manages the allocation of the necessary resources.

The benefits of FaaS

FaaS brings cost benefits, allowing you to pay only for the time the function is used, and makes it easier to implement microservices. It can be used in a simplified way with all Clever Cloud solutions, including Clever AI.

Clever Functions is currently in private alpha. You can request early access before its gradual opening to all our customers.

Clever Cloud now offers a Kubernetes solution

Clever Cloud has its own orchestrator, designed to provide automated, optimised management of Cloud applications. At the same time, Kubernetes has established itself as a market standard that can be complex to implement at scale.

To meet our customers’ expectations, we developed our own Kubernetes solution, with specific features to simplify long-term operational maintenance, incorporating Clever Cloud’s expertise and DNA. To achieve this, our teams have developed a specific, compatible database that overcomes the major shortcomings of the Etcd component at the heart of Kubernetes deployments.

This technological approach means we can better meet our customers’ needs, in terms of quality of service, functionality and scalability.

Kubernetes vs. the Clever Cloud orchestrator: a different approach

Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestrator that automates the deployment, scaling and management of containerised applications.

Historically, Clever Cloud has been a software developer for the Cloud, and then became a hosting provider. The strength of our solution lies in the creation of a virtual machine (VM) orchestrator that enables a modular, automated and scalable architecture to be created, with very few adaptations required during application development.

The advantage of this solution is that each machine is partitioned, unlike container-based operation where isolation is not total. As part of the market is using Kubernetes, it was natural for us to respond to this demand. So we’re now offering our customers a managed and hardened Kubernetes solution, offering the same level of security and fluid experience as our orchestrator.

A Kubernetes approach from Clever Cloud

Unlike traditional Kubernetes implementations, our solution integrates natively with the Clever Cloud ecosystem. This means:

• Simplified configuration optimised to meet customers’ core needs ;
• Seamless integration with other Clever Cloud services, including our CI/CD, database management and security tools;
• Tailored scalability, leveraging our experience in automated infrastructure management.

‘We’ve always seen Kubernetes as a technology that can become complex to manage over the long term if not properly imagined and managed. But we also know that it has become an unavoidable market standard. So our approach has been to rethink Kubernetes to integrate it with our philosophy: make the infrastructure invisible so that developers can concentrate on what they do best, develop.’ Quentin Adam, CEO of Clever Cloud.

Conceived as part of the CollabNext project, this Kubernetes solution is available as a private alpha and will be deployed to a growing number of customers over the course of 2025. You can request early access before it is gradually rolled out to all our customers.

The Materia range is expanding

Materia: a serverless, distributed database

In 2024, Clever Cloud announced the launch of Materia: a set of distributed, serverless data storage solutions designed for interoperability, automatically adapting to the amount of data being processed, from zero to infinity.

Replicated in our three Paris data centres, it ensures high availability and maximum resilience. Based on the same technological foundation as Apple CloudKit and Snowflake, it is compatible with many existing protocols, making it easy to integrate into applications.

The first version to be presented to the public was Materia KV, a key-value database. Today, Clever Cloud is proud to announce Materia KV JSON and Materia TS.

Materia KV JSON: simplified access to JSON data

Materia KV JSON allows you to store and access JSON objects in a single command, enabling you to make direct queries on the keys/values it contains.

The commands in this feature are compatible with the Redis® protocol and can therefore be used with any client in this ecosystem, including Valkey. Support for Materia KV JSON is part of the Materia experience, and comes at no extra cost.

Why Materia KV JSON?

• Storage and manipulation of JSON data directly in applications hosted on Clever Cloud or other service providers, without lock-in;
• A resilient solution by design thanks to its replication. When Materia KV responds, your data has been written three times;
• Simple to use, thanks to its serverless approach, access is instantaneous and there is direct integration with the Clever Cloud environment.

Materia KV JSON allows developers to manage structured objects without complexity. This functionality is currently in private alpha access. You can request early access before it is gradually made available to all our customers.

Materia TS: storage and analysis of time series

With Materia TS, Clever Cloud introduces a Time Series data management engine, based on Warp10, designed for applications requiring efficient analysis of events over a given period.

Main use cases

• Monitoring and observability: storage and querying of logs, metrics and events.
• Financial analysis: monitoring market fluctuations and transactional data.
• IoT and sensors: management of data flows generated by connected objects.

Materia TS provides storage adapted to the reading and analysis of time-stamped data, facilitating queries and the visualisation of trends.

Materia TS is deployed for certain customers. You can request early access before Materia TS is gradually rolled out to all our customers.

Clever KMS: Manage and secure your secrets

The new KMS service offers an advanced password and secret management tool. Developed specifically to meet the needs of an institutional customer, this solution enables secrets and encryption keys to be managed, and is designed to protect sensitive data while remaining simple to use.

Integration with existing ecosystems is at the heart of its design. Clever KMS can be used with any tool compatible with the Vault client (Hashicorp). This is what enabled us to integrate easily with Otoroshi.

Fonctionnalités principales

• Secure storage of secrets, API keys and certificates;
• Native encryption to protect data in transit and at rest;
• Integration with Clever Cloud applications, without complex configuration.

With KMS, Clever Cloud meets the growing need for security and compliance, while simplifying the management of secrets for developers. It can be deployed in serverless mode, in dedicated instances or on-premises.

Clever KMS is deployed for certain customers. You can request early access before it is gradually rolled out to all our customers.

Clever Cloud and Otoroshi: new features for more secure and flexible API management

Clever Cloud today announced the integration of new features into its Otoroshi-based API Gateway-as-Service offering, making API management more secure and flexible for businesses.

Otoroshi is an open-source solution created by Mathieu Ancelin, co-founder of Cloud APIM, that makes it easier to manage, secure and monitor APIs and microservices. It offers authentication mechanisms (OAuth2, OpenID Connect, Biscuit, JWT), as well as fine-grained access management via API Keys and quotas.

Its routing engine enables load balancing, failover and the application of advanced rules such as circuit breakers. Finally, it protects services against various attacks (DDoS, brute force, injections) and provides real-time monitoring tools.

Advanced security features and simplified access management

Otoroshi instances deployed on Clever Cloud now include:

• Biscuit support, with a complete Biscuit Studio suite for generating, verifying, mitigating and managing the roles of these secure tokens, enabling decentralised verification integrated with your APIs and services;
• Simplified configuration of the Coraza Web Application Firewall (WAF). This mechanism strengthens security by filtering malicious requests and blocking intrusion attempts before they reach backend systems;
• Simplified configuration of routes, API tokens and access protection for Clever Cloud applications, in conjunction with Network Groups;
• Native Clever KMS integration for secrets management.

‘API management offers a whole range of potential services to be developed. We’ll be unveiling them over time.’ explains Steven Le Roux, CTO.

Otoroshi is now available on Clever Cloud with its LLM extension, Biscuit Studio and support for Clever KMS. Simplified integrations are undergoing public testing and will be rolled out later this year, along with a serveress offering.

Keycloak-as-a-Service: a secure multi-instance offering

The complete identity and access management solution has been available since last year, developed in conjunction with Please Open IT. Clever Cloud is proud to announce the availability of its secure multi-instance mode, an exclusive feature made possible by the creation of Network Groups. Keycloak can now be deployed in the form of a cluster within Clever Cloud, with communication between instances taking place via a Network Group, our secure network based on Wireguard. Everything is automatic.

Designed to meet the most stringent security and compliance requirements, Keycloak offers advanced services such as single sign-on (SSO), automatic scalability and centralised identity management.

Key features of Keycloak-as-a-Service include:

• Seamless integration with existing applications;
• Easy creation and import of realms;
• Advanced authentication and authorisation features (OAuth 2.0, LDAP, SAML, OpenID Connect, etc.);
• Automatic scalability to suit all user volumes;
• Compliance with the most stringent security and confidentiality standards;
• Ongoing maintenance, offering a simplified managed solution.

‘With Keycloak-as-a-Service, we’re making identity management considerably simpler for our customers,’ says Quentin Adam, CEO of Clever Cloud. ‘This solution enables businesses of all sizes to benefit from a high-level IAM, without the usual complexity of implementation and maintenance, all for a price that we wanted to be particularly attractive.’

Keycloak on Clever Cloud has just been upgraded to version 26.1.0 and will be available in its final version shortly, benefiting from all the work carried out by our teams and Please Open It during the beta phase. To find out more about the benefits of Keycloak-as-a-Service, a full demo is available for replay on Clever Cloud’s YouTube channel here.

Network Group: a step forward in network management

Clever Cloud makes it possible to deploy applications and services that are independent of each other, but which may also need to communicate via dedicated channels. Some customers have also asked us to be able to access their services within a secure network from third-party instances or from their machine.

This is how we came up with Network Groups, based on Wireguard technology and compatible with this market standard.

Network Groups bring greater flexibility to the management of network environments. This solution makes it easier to segment and secure inter-application communications on Clever Cloud. It also enables Keycloak to be deployed in multi-instance mode, or to control access to applications when used in conjunction with Otoroshi, demonstrating the potential synergies between our products.

Network Groups are part of a drive to improve the user experience by simplifying network configuration while offering advanced options for the specific needs of each customer. This feature marks an important step towards a more modular and secure infrastructure.

Network Groups are available to all our customers in public beta and will be enhanced with new integrations and features over the coming months.

Databases : Even more advanced management

The Managed Databases product range, which provides access to a database (PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Elastic, Redis®/Valkey, etc.), has also been enhanced.

Already equipped with a range of advanced features, such as automatic backups and on-demand configuration to suit requirements, the products in the database range now come with the ability to manage extensions automatically, enabling us to upgrade versions more quickly. Versions 16 and 17 of PostgreSQL are now available on Clever Cloud.

Our Elasticsearch and PostgreSQL offerings can be enhanced with extensions to order or after the fact, while benefiting from automatic migrations, with continuity of service for extensions too.

This feature enables us to adjust a set of extensions per database, and therefore per customer. The aim is to enable us to be more responsive while continuing to meet the sometimes specific needs of certain customers.

Clever Cloud unveils its Hypervisor-as-a-Service project

A few months ago, Clever Cloud announced a partnership with Vates, a French specialist in open source hypervisor solutions, to work on the creation of an on-demand Xen hypervisor solution for managing virtual machines (VMs). Today, we are proud to be able to present the first public demonstration of this project.

A response to companies’ expectations in the face of market challenges

Since Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware, the virtualisation ecosystem has been going through a period of uncertainty. The sharp rise in prices, the withdrawal of certain traditional offerings and the increasing technological lock-in have prompted many businesses to look for alternative, more open and independent solutions.

But beyond this context, demand for Hypervisor-as-a-Service (HaaS) solutions is growing, particularly for open source solutions. Companies want to take back control of their technological destiny by migrating to more sovereign solutions, without having to manage the complexity of maintaining them in operational condition.

The first bricks

In practical terms, this means that Clever Cloud is able to :

• Show an initial demonstration of how the Xen hypervisor works;
• Present usage scenarios and gather feedback from the first testers before opening up the service more widely;
• Refine the technical set-up to ensure a smooth, accessible experience. This demonstration validates the principles of virtualisation tailored to the needs of businesses that want to retain control over their infrastructure, without the constraints imposed by a single supplier.

A more complete and resilient Cloud

This announcement is part of Clever Cloud’s commitment to providing the most comprehensive offering possible, combining IaaS, PaaS and turnkey services, to support businesses in all their infrastructure needs.

‘The announcement of our partnership with Vates generated a great deal of interest, and we’re delighted to be able to demonstrate the first concrete applications. This project is part of our drive to offer a more open and sovereign infrastructure. We want to offer businesses a reliable and economically viable alternative that gives them back control of their infrastructures without imposing dependency,’ says Quentin Adam, CEO of Clever Cloud.

This project continues to evolve, with adjustments and optimisations based on user feedback, before being made more widely available in the coming months.

Azimutt, Mailpace, Metabase: numerous tools, a single platform

2024 was an opportunity for Clever Cloud to strengthen its Marketplace offering. Facilitated by its turnkey add-on providers solution, it enables any customer to create solutions that can be deployed on Clever Cloud within their account and their organisations.

But we are working with a number of partners to extend this availability to all our customers. As we have done with Keycloak and Otoroshi, we have opened up access to our platform to Mailpace and Metabase as well as Azimutt.

Azimutt is a member of our Up! start-up support programme, and we are working to simplify its integration into our platform. The service is now focused on analysing and understanding databases, with alert management, to complement our managed database offering.

Deployed via a Clever Cloud gateway for our customers, Azimutt is available as a free version or via paid subscriptions directly within our platform.

Over the course of 2025, we will be strengthening these partnerships, as well as taking advantage of the synergies between these services, as we are already doing with Mailpace and Metabase, or Keycloak and Otoroshi, which are used within Clever AI.

FrankenPHP, mise, Redirection.io, uv: responding to change

As ecosystems evolve, so do the needs of developers. Over the last few years we’ve seen far-reaching changes in application tooling, whether through the proliferation of JavaScript runtimes, or the arrival of solutions that are turning usage on its head, such as the uv package manager for Python or FrankenPHP.

Clever Cloud has chosen to embrace these transformations by natively integrating these tools, whose use will be simplified from the first months of the year. You can already use the meta packager, uv, shown in our latest images, to manage your Python applications and packages, while FrankenPHP will be available in the form of a dedicated runtime.

This modern PHP server is designed to improve the performance and flexibility of PHP applications. It has been developed by Kevin Dunglas, known for his work on API Platform and his involvement in the PHP and Symfony ecosystems.

What sets FrankenPHP apart from other PHP servers such as Apache + mod_php, Nginx + PHP-FPM or Caddy, is that it relies on Go and Caddy to offer more efficient execution and simpler configuration. In particular, it enables:

• Native execution of PHP applications without the need for PHP-FPM;
• Advanced management of workers and scalability;
• Improved integration with modern technologies, such as WebSockets and asynchronous workers.

FrankenPHP aims to simplify the deployment of PHP applications while optimising their performance, in particular by reducing latency and improving response time. Clever Cloud has decided to integrate FrankenPHP to offer PHP developers a more powerful and easy-to-use environment. With this support, Clever Cloud users will be able to simply run their PHP applications directly on FrankenPHP, benefiting from its optimisations and ease of management.

But the tools don’t stop at putting applications into production. We are also gradually integrating solutions from partners such as Redirection.io to make it easier for our customers to use them in production, with the integration of their subscription-based offering.

Demonstrations of these different solutions will be held throughout Clever Cloud fest.

Clever Cloud Africa: a strategic partnership for a sovereign Cloud in West Africa

Clever Cloud and DataConnect, a subsidiary of New Digital Africa (NDA), are joining forces to co-build the first stage of a secure, sovereign Cloud in Côte d’Ivoire. This collaboration between Clever Cloud, a French creator of deployment and hosting solutions in PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) mode, and the leading African provider of managed infrastructure services, marks an important step in the development of an autonomous digital ecosystem in West Africa. Already widely acclaimed by the Ivorian press, the actual launch of Clever Cloud Africa will take place in the second quarter of 2025.

This joint initiative, based on a shared vision between the two companies, aims to combine Clever Cloud’s technological expertise with DataConnect’s in-depth knowledge of African markets. The aim is to co-develop innovative Cloud solutions that meet the specific needs of businesses and public authorities in the region.

The partnership is based on several areas of collaboration:

• The co-creation of sovereign Cloud solutions tailored to local needs;
• Developing and training local IT talent;
• Strengthening the regional technology ecosystem;
• Supporting the digital transformation of organisations.

Quentin Adam, CEO of Clever Cloud, underlines the collaborative dimension of the project: ‘Through this partnership, our ambition is to contribute with our local partners to the emergence of talent and value in the regions. Côte d’Ivoire was an obvious choice for us to co-construct a sustainable value proposition for companies and public-sector players looking to build their strategic autonomy in West Africa.’

Cette collaboration, initiée en Côte d’Ivoire, a vocation à s’étendre progressivement à d’autres pays d’Afrique de l’Ouest et Centrale, en s’appuyant sur des partenariats locaux dans chaque territoire.

Le Clever Cloud Fest était l’occasion d’annoncer officiellement ce partenariat, en présence de Jean-Jacques N’Docho, Directeur Général Adjoint de NDA Group, qui a fait le déplacement depuis la Côte d’Ivoire.

Jeudi 6 février, en amont du Clever Cloud Fest, un petit-déjeuner dédié à l’international, organisé par la région des Pays de la Loire, fut l’occasion d’échanges entre la délégation ivoirienne et élus et chefs d’entreprises locaux.