Scaleway (previously Online SAS or Online.net)[1] is a French Cloud computing and web hosting company, founded by Xavier Niel in 1999 and a majority owned subsidiary of the Iliad group. The company provides physical dedicated servers and cloud computing architectures through Scaleway Dedibox and Scaleway Elements brands, domain registration services through the BookMyName brand, and colocation services in its datacenters through the brand Scaleway Datacenters. The company mostly caters towards the low end market in terms of quality and pricing.

Scaleway
FormerlyOnline SAS[1]
IndustryInternet
Founded1999; 25 years ago (1999)
FounderXavier Niel
Headquarters,
Key people
  • Arnaud de Bermingham (Chairman)
ProductsCloud computing, Dedicated Servers, Web Hosting
Number of employees
550[1]
ASN
WebsiteScaleway.com

The company is the second player in France[2] with over 3.2 Tb/s of Internet traffic.[3]

History

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In 1999, Online started its activities in web hosting and domain name registration services[4][5]

In August 2002, the domain name registrar BookMyName was bought by Iliad from its competitor LDCom.[6]

In May 2006, rental of dedicated servers through the Dedibox brand was launched.

In December 2008, Iliad bought Alice ADSL: They also took over construction and operation of Datacenters, launched in 1999 by ISDnet, bought by Cable & Wireless in January 2000[7] acquired by Tiscali France in June 2003[8] and finally renamed as Iliad Datacenter.

In April 2010, Online merges with Dedibox, another subsidiary of Iliad,[9] bringing together different hosting activities under a single brand.

In 2012, the company has opened its third datacenter of 11800 m² in Vitry-sur-Seine[10] after 11 months of construction works. The site received the first Tier-III certification in France by Uptime Institute in January 2014.

Since 2012, the company publishes in real time the PUE of its datacenters on pue.online.net, in an effort of transparency.

In 2013, Online launched labs.online.net in preview. An infrastructure as a service offer, based on dedicated hardware and without virtualization,[11] based on ARM CPUs.[12] The hardware is made in a factory near Laval in France.

In April 2015 the service left its beta status and has been renamed as Scaleway.[13] As the popularity of the platform grows, Online added servers with x86_64 based CPUs in March 2016.[14]

Repeat software entrepreneur Yann Lechelle joined as CEO in early 2020;[15] however, he parted ways with the company in December 2022.[16]

In November 2023 Scaleaway launched Kyutai in France, the first European independent and no-profit research laboratory on the topic of artificial intelligence, a laboratory that adopts an open-source and open-science approach with an initial endowment of 300 million euros.[17]

Infrastructure

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Datacenters

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Aerial view of Online DC3.

Scaleway owns and operates several data centers, all located in the Île-de-France region.[18][19]

  • DC2, with a size of 4,500 m² in Vitry-sur-Seine, within the Val-de-Marne. The building has been constructed in 1989 by NMPP (Presstalis), then successively taken over by ISDNet, Cable & Wireless, Tiscali, then Telecom Italia, and is therefore an indirect product of the acquisition of Alice ADSL by Iliad.
  • DC3, with a size of 11,800 m² in the same city is divided into several private spaces. It was built in 2012 by the group.[20] It has reached its capacity in early 2016 and works have been planned to extend its capacity by 2,300 m2.[21]
  • DC4, with a size of 8,000 m² on six floors in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, housed in the former anti-atomic fallout shelter of the "Laboratoire central des ponts et chaussées". It was built between 1936 and 1939 by architect Gabriel Héraud,[22] the building was acquired by Iliad in 2011.[23] The main part of the fallout shelter is being used for the C14 offer.[24]
  • DC5, with a size of 32,000 m² on four floors at Saint-Ouen-l'Aumône. It is the result of the acquisition of an old mail sorting center of La Poste,[25] and will handle the growth from 2017-2025 of the hoster.[21]

In the past the company operated also:

Connectivity

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Since August 2013, the network of Online is AS12876 ONLINE S.A.S. It is independent of the one of Free, which was not the case before. This allowed the company to move away from the closed interconnection policy of the internet service provider. In early 2015, the company announced to have exceeded 400 Gb/s of immediate Internet traffic.[34]

In May 2016, Online shows a total of 1,642 Gb/s of capacity on his links at their weather-map and is present at the following Internet Exchange Points: France-IX, Equinix-IX, AMS-IX and Neutral Internet Exchange[35][3]

Controversy

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Users have experienced problems including severe data loss.[36]

Notes and references

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  1. ^ a b c "About Us". Scaleway. Retrieved 2021-07-21.
  2. ^ Dominique Filippone (13 July 2015). "OVH à la 4e place du marché mondial de l'hébergement" (in French). Le Monde informatique. Retrieved 13 May 2016.
  3. ^ a b "Scaleway netmap".
  4. ^ "Welcome to Online.net (archive)" (in French). February 2000. Archived from the original on 2000-02-29. Retrieved 13 May 2016.
  5. ^ "Our company". Retrieved 19 February 2018.
  6. ^ "Online rachète les activités de BookMyName à LDCom" (in French). Le Journal du Net. 21 August 2002.
  7. ^ "Cable & Wireless rachète ISDnet - Actualités". www.reseaux-telecoms.net.
  8. ^ "Tiscali reprend les activités de Cable & Wireless en France". www.journaldunet.com.
  9. ^ "Free regroupe ses activités dhébergeur et lance un nouveau site". www.universfreebox.com. 16 April 2010.
  10. ^ "Arnaud Bermingham (Iliad) : "Un 'datacenter bunker' dans Paris"". 20 December 2012.
  11. ^ "Online Labs announce Scaleway". Online Labs. Archived from the original on 2016-03-03. Retrieved 2018-03-02.
  12. ^ "Why French telecom Iliad is launching an ARM-based cloud service — and why it matters". 29 December 2014.
  13. ^ Sébastien Gavois (3 April 2015). "Scaleway : Online lance son " cloud " à base d'instances dédiées, dès 0,02 € par heure" (in French). Retrieved 13 May 2016.
  14. ^ "Iliad/Free : l'hébergeur Online ajoute le x86 à son Cloud Scaleway" (in French). 10 March 2016. Retrieved 13 May 2016.
  15. ^ "Scaleway nominates Yann Lechelle as CEO". 28 March 2024.
  16. ^ "Yann Lechelle quitte la direction générale de Scaleway". 20 December 2022.
  17. ^ "A 300 million super laboratory for artificial intelligence in Paris". November 21, 2023.
  18. ^ "Datacenters - Documentation" (in French). 23 June 2015. Retrieved 13 May 2016.
  19. ^ "Nos datacenters" (in French). Archived from the original on 16 May 2016. Retrieved 13 May 2016.
  20. ^ Cécile Debise (13 May 2014). "Dans le géantissime data center DC3 d'Online" (in French). Retrieved 13 May 2016.
  21. ^ a b Arnaud de Bermingham (January 2016). "DC3 - Datacenter complet - Travaux d'extension" (in French). Archived from the original on 15 August 2016. Retrieved 13 May 2016.
  22. ^ Hélène Schwoerer; Christine Hugues (March 2012). "Transformation du url du Laboratoire Central des Ponts et Chaussées" (PDF) (in French). Retrieved 13 May 2016.[permanent dead link]
  23. ^ "Online (groupe Iliad) fait l'acquisition d'un abri anti-atomique à Paris (archive)" (in French). 27 May 2011. Archived from the original on 30 May 2011. Retrieved 13 May 2016.
  24. ^ "Service d'archivage C14". Online SAS. Archived from the original on 2018-05-14. Retrieved 2018-03-02.
  25. ^ David Feugey (27 January 2016). "Online, filiale d'Iliad, va booster son réseau de datacenters en 2016" (in French). Retrieved 13 May 2016.
  26. ^ Simon T. (Generation NT) (11 July 2007). "Visit of a datacenter of Dedibox from Iliad" (in French). Retrieved 13 May 2016.
  27. ^ Marc Brice (30 October 2005). "New network traffic map of the Ile de France region" (in French). Retrieved 13 May 2016.
  28. ^ Eric Delporte (14 December 2000). "Un géant de l'Internet s'installe à Bezons" (in French). Retrieved 13 May 2016.
  29. ^ "Exodus : viurl des quartiers de haute sécurité" (in French). 22 May 2001. Retrieved 13 May 2016.
  30. ^ François Morel (3 April 2002). "Hébergeurs : que sont devenus PSINet Europe et Exodus France ?" (in French). Retrieved 13 May 2016.
  31. ^ "Document de référence 2007" (PDF) (in French). 15 April 2008. Retrieved 13 May 2016.
  32. ^ "Document de référence 2009" (PDF) (in French). 29 April 2010. Retrieved 13 May 2016.
  33. ^ Online.net [@online_fr] (18 November 2013). "Nous venons de couper définitivement DC1. Plusieurs dizaines de milliers de serveurs migré. Une page de notre histoire qui se tourne ..." (Tweet) (in French). Retrieved 13 May 2016 – via Twitter.
  34. ^ "Scaleway FR on Twitter". Twitter (in French). Retrieved 2020-08-20.
  35. ^ "Network of Online (AS12876)" (in French). 23 January 2016. Retrieved 13 May 2016.
  36. ^ V4l3n0r (2024-03-09). "How's Scaleway Object Storage Failed me: files lost, terrible customer service and lack of best practices". r/DataHoarder. Retrieved 2024-03-15.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
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