Wikipedia

OVHcloud

For the top level internet domain, see .ovh.

OVH, legally OVH Groupe SA, is a French cloud computing company which offers VPS, dedicated servers, and other web services. As of 2016 OVH owned the world's largest data center in surface area.[3] As of 2019, it was the largest hosting provider in Europe,[4][5] and the third largest in the world based on physical servers.[6] According to W3Techs, OVH has 3.4% of website data center market share in 2024.[7] The company was founded in 1999[1] by the Klaba family and is headquartered in Roubaix, France.[8] In 2019 OVH adopted OVHcloud as its public brand name.[9]

OVH Groupe SA
Company typePublic (Société anonyme)
Euronext Paris: OVH
ISINFR0014005HJ9
IndustryCloud computing, hosting
Founded2 November 1999; 25 years ago (1999-11-02)[1]
Headquarters
Roubaix
,
France
Key people
  • Octave Klaba
    (Founder, chairman)[2]
  • Michel Paulin
    (CEO)
  • Henryk Klaba
    (President)
  • Miroslaw Klaba
    (R&D director)
ProductsVPS, dedicated hosting service, cloud computing, public cloud, private cloud, web hosting, DSL
RevenueIncrease €897 million (2023)
−40,320,000 Euro (2023) Edit this on Wikidata
Number of employees
2,900 (2023) Edit this on Wikidata
ASN16276 Edit this at Wikidata
WebsiteOfficial website Edit this at Wikidata

History and growth

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OVH was founded in November 1999[1] by Octave Klaba, with the help of three family members (Henry, Haline, and Miroslaw).

In August 2023, it was announced OVHcloud was in exclusive negotiations for the acquisition of the Cologne-headquartered edge computing software company, gridscale GmbH.[10]

Funding

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In October 2016, OVH raised $250 million in order to raise further international expansion.[11] This funding round valued OVH at over US$1 billion. In the fiscal year of 2016, OVH reportedly had around $343 million in revenue. In 2018 OVH announced its five-year plans to triple investment starting in 2021. Which represent between 4.6 and $8.1 billion U.S. dollars (4 to 7 billion euros).[12]

In October 2021, OVHcloud filed its IPO and is listed on the Euronext Paris, the Paris Stock Exchange[13] as OVH. In December 2021, OVHcloud became part of the Paris SBF120 index.[14]

Operations

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As of 2021, OVH had 30 data centers in 19 countries hosting 300,000 servers.[15][16] The company offers localized services such as customer service offices in many European countries, as well as in North America, Africa, and Singapore.[17] As of 2019, OVH is considered one of the largest cloud computing providers in the world, with over a million customers and one of the largest OpenStack deployments in the world,[18] and a network capacity totaling over 20 Tbit/s

As of 2017, OVH was known for its offering of email hosting service,[19] considered one of the largest in the world,[20] in addition to its general Internet hosting services.

OVH uses in-house design and manufacturing, including custom-made servers (based on standard components) and a modular shipping container architecture. In 2019, the Canadian data center (Beauharnois, Quebec) was considered a leading example of the OVH model.[21]

Partnerships

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As of 2016, OVH was one of the sponsors for Let's Encrypt, a free TLS encryption service,[22][23] and OVH's hardware supplier is Super Micro Computer Inc.[24]

Incidents

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In March 2021, OVH suffered a large fire at its datacenter in Strasbourg, France.[25] SBG2 had been built in 2016 with a capacity of 30 thousand physical servers.[26] SBG2 was declared a total loss, with early reports indicating damage to SBG1, and services across all four Strasbourg locations experiencing disruptions.[27] The company's chairman, Octave Klaba, took to Twitter to confirm that all its staff were safe.[28] All customer data and backups stored in SBG2 were lost.[29] SBG1 was damaged partially while SBG4 remained intact, and SBG3 was intact but without power, though the servers at the latter sites were taken offline temporarily.[30][28] In September 2021, the company filed a report[31] with the Autorité des marchés financiers documenting the estimated damage at about €105 million.[32] In 2023, OVH was ordered to pay €250,000 to two customers that had lost data, and more than 130 other customers are engaged in a class-action lawsuit against the company.[29]

In October 2021, the company had a worldwide outage across all their networks due to a human error.[33]

Controversies

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WikiLeaks

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In December 2010, French Gizmodo edition revealed that WikiLeaks selected OVH as its new hosting provider, following Amazon's refusal to host it.[34][35][36] On December 3, the growing controversy prompted Eric Besson, France's Industry Minister, to inquire about legal ways to prohibit this hosting in France. The attempt failed. On December 6, 2010, a judge ruled that there was no need for OVH to cease hosting WikiLeaks.[37] The case was rejected on the grounds that such a case required an adversarial hearing.[38]

Environmental impact

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OVH started to integrate innovative water cooling in 2003 for its servers.[39]

OVH relies in large part on nuclear power, in particular their Gravelines data centre is known for being located next to the Gravelines Nuclear Power Station.[40][41]

In January 2021, OVH with other industry players joined the Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact, which is a pledge to achieve climate neutrality of datacenters before 2030.[42]

References

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  1. ^ a b c Clabaugh, Jeff (2016-10-06). "French firm to open 1st US data center in Fauquier Co". WTOP. Archived from the original on 2019-10-16. Retrieved 2019-10-16.
  2. ^ "OVH reorganises its governance to support new acceleration phase". OVH.
  3. ^ Wood, Eric Emin (2016-10-12). "Why OVH opened the world's largest datacenter in the Great White North". www.itworldcanada.com. International Data Group, Inc. (IDG) IT World Canada. Archived from the original on 2019-10-16. Retrieved 2019-10-16.
  4. ^ MSV, Janakiram (2019-05-26). "How VMware Is Transforming Itself Into a Multi-Cloud Company". Forbes. Archived from the original on 2019-06-19. Retrieved 2019-10-16.
  5. ^ Coop, Alex (2019-08-27). "Canadian customers' heads are still in the clouds, and so is VMware's | Financial Post". Financial Post. Archived from the original on 2019-10-16. Retrieved 2019-10-16.
  6. ^ Sarraf, Samira (2017-05-12). "World's third-largest hosting provider OVH opens Melbourne office". CRN Australia. nextmedia. Archived from the original on 2019-10-16. Retrieved 2019-10-16.
  7. ^ "Usage statistics of OVH as data center provider". 2024-06-08. Retrieved 2024-06-08.
  8. ^ Rosemain, Mathieu; Barzic, Gwénaëlle (2018-10-18). "France's OVH to triple spending to take on Google, Amazon in cloud computing". Reuters. Archived from the original on 2019-11-07. Retrieved 2019-11-07.
  9. ^ "For its 20th anniversary, OVH takes off and becomes OVHcloud". 10 October 2019.
  10. ^ "OVHcloud on the edge of glory in new market with Germany acquisition". www.channelweb.co.uk. 2023-08-08. Retrieved 2023-08-08.
  11. ^ "OVH Partners with KKR and TowerBrook for Further Global Expansion". exithub. Retrieved 9 January 2017.
  12. ^ Rosemain, Mathieu; Barzic, Gwénaëlle (2018-10-18). "France's OVH to triple spending to take on Google, Amazon in cloud..." Reuters. Archived from the original on 2019-09-07. Retrieved 2019-09-07.
  13. ^ "Shares in French tech champion OVHcloud gain 6% in Paris debut". Reuters. 15 October 2021.
  14. ^ "OVHcloud Joins SBF 120 Index Following Euronext Paris Review | MarketScreener". 10 December 2021.
  15. ^ "About - OVH Canada". OVH. Archived from the original on 2018-07-09. Retrieved 2018-07-09.
  16. ^ "Datacenters: Security and infrastructure | OVHcloud".
  17. ^ Williams, Mike; Turner, Brian (2019-08-26). "Best dedicated server hosting providers of 2019". TechRadar. Archived from the original on 2019-09-06. Retrieved 2019-09-06.
  18. ^ Max Smolaks (2019-04-29). "OVH pulls gloves off bare metal fighters as it eyes up US cloud vendors". www.theregister.co.uk. Retrieved 2020-04-18.
  19. ^ David Legrand (2017-03-27). "OVH lance une offre E-mail Pro basée sur Microsoft Exchange... mais sans ActiveSync". www.nextinpact.com (in French). Retrieved 2020-04-18.
  20. ^ "Press release for market report". 2020. Archived from the original on 2021-03-21. Retrieved 2020-04-18.
  21. ^ "Beauharnois data centre a model of OVH DIY scale". insightaas.com. 2019-03-05. Retrieved 2021-03-12.
  22. ^ Lomas, Natasha (2016-04-12). "Let's Encrypt free HTTPS certification push exits beta". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on 2019-10-16. Retrieved 2019-10-16.
  23. ^ Gilbert, Guillaume (December 22, 2015). "OVH Commits to Let's Encrypt to Provide Free SSL Certificates". OVH.COM. Retrieved 21 January 2016.
  24. ^ Mawad, Marie (2018-10-18). "OVH Keeps Super Micro as Supplier, Vets Hardware In-House". www.bloomberg.com. Bloomberg. Archived from the original on 2020-02-22. Retrieved 2019-09-06.
  25. ^ Rosemain, Mathieu (2021-03-10). "Blaze destroys servers at Europe's largest cloud services firm". Reuters. Retrieved 2021-03-10.
  26. ^ "OVH Strasbourg Campus Data Center". baxtel.com.
  27. ^ Sharwood, Simon (2021-03-10). "OVH data centre destroyed by fire in Strasbourg – all services unavailable". The Register. Retrieved 10 March 2021.
  28. ^ a b Miller, Rich (2021-03-11). "OVH Data Center in France Destroyed by Fire, All Staff Safe". Retrieved 2021-03-10.
  29. ^ a b Judge, Peter (22 March 2023). "OVHcloud ordered to pay €250k to two customers who lost data in Strasbourg data center fire". Datacentre Dynamics. Retrieved 15 March 2024.
  30. ^ Sverdlik, Yevgeniy (2021-03-10). "CEO Says Fire Has Destroyed OVH's Strasbourg Data Center (SBG2)". Retrieved 2021-03-10.
  31. ^ "DOCUMENT D'ENREGISTREMENT" [Document of Registration] (PDF) (in French). OVHCloud Group. 17 September 2021. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2021-10-16. Retrieved 12 October 2021.
  32. ^ Peter Judge (29 September 2021). "Fire could cost OVHcloud €105 million, IPO filing reveals". Data Center Dynamics. Retrieved 12 October 2021.
  33. ^ @olesovhcom (13 October 2021). "Suite à une erreur humaine durant la reconfiguration du network sur notre DC à VH (US-EST), nous avons un souci sur…" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  34. ^ Greenberg, Andy (September 13, 2012). This Machine Kills Secrets: How WikiLeakers, Hacktivists, and Cypherpunks Are Freeing the World's Information. New York (New York), USA: Random House. ISBN 978-0-753-54801-1. Archived from the original on September 7, 2019. Retrieved 2015-07-23. Within days, they had registered the URL and set up an SSLprotected site and a Tor Hidden Service in an OVH data center in the French city of Roubaix, the same one that briefly housed WikiLeaks' publications until they migrated to Sweden.
  35. ^ Vinocur, Nick; Love, Brian (2010-12-03). "France seeks to bar hosting WikiLeaks website". Reuters. Archived from the original on 2019-09-08. Retrieved 2019-09-08.
  36. ^ Greenberg, Andy (2010-12-03). "Despite Attacks, WikiLeaks' Swedish Host Won't Budge". Forbes. Archived from the original on 2016-03-05.
  37. ^ "French web host need not shut down WikiLeaks site: judge". Agence France-Presse (AFP). 2010-12-06. Archived from the original on 2013-01-03. Retrieved 2019-09-07.
  38. ^ "Following the wikileaks case". OVH. 6 December 2010. Archived from the original on 15 March 2012. Retrieved 15 October 2013.
  39. ^ "Servers on Demand: Custom Water-Cooled Servers in One Hour". Data Center Knowledge. September 16, 2013.
  40. ^ Julien Costagliola di Fiore (2017-05-04). "Energy efficient datacenter" (PDF). OVH.
  41. ^ Teva Meyer (2017-12-11). "Le nucléaire et le territoire : regards sur l'intégration spatiale des centrales en France" (in French). ENS Lyon.
  42. ^ Sterin, François (2021-01-21). "5 keys to understand the Climate Neutral Datacenter Pact". OVHcloud Blog. Retrieved 2021-09-15.
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