OVHcloud steps on the accelerator. The European cloud provider has announced that by the end of 2024, it will open 15 new data centers, with the aim of taking its open cloud proposal to new geographies and attacking new markets with more force.
In a meeting with the Spanish media, on the occasion of the celebration of his EcoEx 2022 (Ecosistem Experience) John Gazal, OVHcloud VP for Southern Europe and Brazil, explained that this roadmap includes countries such as France, Australia, Singapore, and the United States, while also announcing that in the medium term, the French multinational also intends to launch a data center in Spain. And although he has not been more specific in terms of dates or a specific location, he has stated that “it is something that is definitely on the OVHcloud roadmap.”
Of these 15 new data centers, the manager explained that four will have a “mini” form factor and will be developed in collaboration with IBM, under an agreement between both companies to serve as backup centers on tape drives, for the huge volumes of data that many large companies continue to work with and need to store efficientlysafe way and at the lowest possible cost.
Together with the opening of the new centers, Gazal has once again emphasized the importance at this time (“perhaps now more than ever”) that European companies bet on authentic cloud sovereignty based on principles such as reversibility, openness, transparency…(“the cloud cannot be a jail” he has affirmed) and the use of standards that allow them to move calmly in the cloud world. In this sense, the French manager has shown that in alliances with companies such as VMware or Nutanix for the development of their sovereign cloud, the determined support for European programs such as Gaia-X and its positioning as a PaaS partner for all types of companies (space in which it already has 22 services and with the aim of reaching 50 in 2023), are the main strategic lines of the company for the coming years.
As future projects, Gazal also commented that the company has among its objectives the development of its own ecosystem of quantum computing, relying for this on some of the most disruptive European companies in this field and which it wants to help grow through a startup program that is increasingly ambitious. In a sense, from the company they have explained that they have already promoted the development of 2,900 startups around the world, of which 130 (90 in the last year) are Spanish.
Finally, and after reviewing some of the technological milestones that the company has carried out in the last year, Gazal wanted to focus his speech on sustainability, explaining in this sense that the objective of OVHCloud is to use 100% energy in its CPDs with low carbon emissions by 2025limiting the use of high carbon energy and betting on renewable energy and other sources of energy with low emissions.
In addition, the company has also committed to contributing to the “Net Zero” for all scopes in 2030, including scope 3, that is, the one that is mainly related to the manufacture of components. Also, in the coming months the company will implement a carbon emissions calculator directly on its platform so that customers can easily understand their ecological footprint when using their OVHCloud cloud services.
