OVH marks its 20th anniversary with focus on cloud ambitions

OVH Group, the largest European hosting provider, marked its 20th anniversary and outlined its ambition is to offer a European alternative in the cloud market.

The company is adopting "OVHcloud" as its new branding. More than 70 percent of its revenue is focused on cloud solutions.

"OVH started 20 years ago with the beginnings of service virtualisation (PaaS, IaaS, SaaS and others). Today, we call this the cloud, and we want our brand to reflect this reality around the world," explains Michel Paulin, CEO of OVHcloud.

OVHcloud's DNA is firmly retaining its core values: openness, to usher in the emergence of an ecosystem based on respect for data. OVHcloud continues to defend its vision of a SMART cloud: simple to implement, multi-local, accessible and predictable, reversible and open and finally, transparent. Faced with the challenges posed by the Cloud Act, OVHcloud offers solutions that are trustworthy and respectful of European values. It promotes an open and truly reversible cloud, where all customers are free to choose a way of managing their data that suits their business challenges.

https://www.ovh.com

Read More

OVH appoints Michel Paulin as CEO

OVH Group, the largest European hosting provider, appointed Michel Paulin as its new CEO, replacing founder Octave Klaba, who will continue to serve as chairman.

Paulin previously served as CEO of Neuf Cegetel, for which he led the IPO, Méditel (now Orange Maroc) and SFR.

OVH said Paulin's nomination comes as the company embarks on a new “Smart Cloud” strategic plan, which aims to consolidate OVH’s role as an alternative leader in Cloud.

Octave Klaba commented: “With the benefit of his experience and his leadership, Michel Paulin will help us to accelerate the implementation of our new strategic plan - with him as CEO and myself as Chairman of the Board. I am convinced that his personal qualities, combined with the strong corporate culture of our teams, will ensure the group’s development.”

Read More

OVH Enters US Cloud Computing Market.

OVH Group, the largest European hosting provider, has formed a U.S. subsidiary and announced plans to enter the U.S. cloud computing market.

OVH is known for its vertical integration of data center infrastructure.  It owns its data centers and uses proprietary water-cooling technology that more efficiently cools servers and optimizes energy usage while simultaneously increasing performance.

Russell P. Reeder, veteran chief executive in the cloud services and hosting industry, has been appointed president and CEO of the new organization, which will be based in Reston, Virginia..

In late 2016, KKR and TowerBrook invested $250 million to support OVH's global expansion, including the US market. To date, OVH owns 26 data centers across four continents, thousands of miles of dark fiber, which deliver a capacity of 10+ Tbps, and 32 points of presence worldwide.

"Today, companies see no borders and must deliver great performance globally," said Russell Reeder, president and CEO of OVH US. "The US cloud market is ripe for disruption -- companies deserve better service at an affordable price. We will bring the same innovation to the US market that led OVH to its position as one of the top five hosting companies in the world, while also delivering best-in-class services and support for small, medium, and large enterprises. With our experienced and respected executive team, which helped to grow many cloud and technology companies to record revenues, including Media Temple and GoDaddy, I have no doubt we will duplicate our past success and exceed customer and shareholder expectations while disrupting the cloud hosting market."

"When I started OVH 18 years ago, my focus was to create a way for customers to take advantage of then-nascent cloud computing technology," said Octave Klaba, CEO and Chairman of the Board of OVH Group. "Today, customers face a different challenge -- buying cloud services from any one of a number of identical companies. OVH US will challenge what businesses believe to be the industry norm for cloud services, and exceed their expectations for value. Russell and the OVH US team have the industry pedigree and market expertise to start a ripple that becomes a tsunami as we take the US IaaS market by storm and set a new industry standard."

https://www.ovh.com/us/

• In February, OVH announced the acquisition of its second US data center, located in Hillsboro, Ore. A facility in Vint Hill, Va., is currently under construction. Initial offers for businesses interested in expanding to the US data centers are targeted to be available in summer from the Vint Hill location.

Read More

OVH Acquires Data Center in Oregon, Continuing U.S. Expansion

OVH announced its acquisition of a new data center facility in Hillsboro, Oregon. The name of the seller and terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The Hillsboro data center will house about 80,000 servers in 112,500 square feet. The facility joins Vint Hill, Virginia as OVH's second US data center, with a third North American data center located in Canada.

OVH said the expansion enables it to support its more than one million customers and respond to the growing demand for outsourced digital infrastructures throughout the world.

OVH now has 23 data centers around the world in 11 countries, spanning four continents.

“For years, leading tech companies have been trying to figure out how to cool their data centers for less money,” said Pascal Jaillon, Vice President of Research & Development for OVH US. “Legacy data centers have been using expensive forced air conditioning to cool servers. OVH’s innovation in data center cooling is just the first of many that will be introduced in this growing market.”

https://www.ovh.com/us/discover

Read More

OVH Plans UK Data Centres

OVH is building its first UK data centre in the inner suburbs of London. The new facility, with a capacity of 40,000 servers is expected to be operational by the end of May 2017. It will be interconnected to OVH’s point of presence in London through a double fibre path, creating redundancy. Its proximity to two substations makes it possible to provide a high electrical capacity on site.

OVH said the first data centre will be less than  half a millisecond in latency from OVH’s point of presence (PoP) in London. The facility benefits from a direct connection to its datacenters in Gravelines (then Roubaix and Paris), Amsterdam (then Brussels and Frankfurt), Montreal, and New York, through the fibre network that the OVH group has deployed worldwide to allow the lowest latency possible.

OVH is planning two additional data centres in the United Kingdom: the second site on the outskirts of London, and a third one that is sufficiently remote to be a recovery site outside the failure domain of the two other sites. These three datacenters will be interconnected, like the other datacenters of the group, through the vRack, a private network developed by OVH to facilitate the deployment of multisite infrastructures.

http://www.ovh.com

Read More