Founded in 1999 by Octave Klaba, OVH is an independent European company based in Roubaix, Northern France. It is the number one host in Europe and is the fourth largest for domain names in the world (source Netcraft January 2012). The biggest advantage of OVH is its unbeatable value for money, which makes it stand out against its competitors in the market.
With significant technological advantages, such as an exclusive server cooling system, OVH has always promoted innovation and performance while maintaining an ecological and environmental standpoint. Also hosting numerous radio stations and the largest network of game servers, OVH is now answering the challenge of Cloud Computing.
Entrenched in the global marketplace, the company extends its expertise in Europe and beyond with over a dozen subsidiaries, including one recently opened in North America. With its ambitious business model, OVH has the tools and know-how to make a significant difference in the market. Reducing its operating costs and investing heavily in innovation, the host is committed to a long-term strategy of offering the best quality products and services at the best prices.
To succeed on the Internet, OVH has adopted a simple approach; offering better value than its competitors. Where the majority of players take a short term strategy, OVH has demonstrated greater foresight by building its own datacentres. In developing its own cooling technology without air conditioning, assembling its own servers, managing its own fibre optic network plus providing in-house technical support and commercial teams, the hosting company has complete control of the production chain.
OVH does not buy its servers, but builds them in their own assembly lines, located directly in its datacentres. The result is that each day up to 400 physical servers are assembled "just in time" according to the customers needs and delivered in less than an hour.
OVH has also invested in deploying a network across Canada and the U.S, based on the new 100Gbps coherent technology. These facilities are used to manage a high capacity redundant network (10 Tbps). This ensures 100% network availability, and low latencies. We chose to build a datacentre of unprecedented scope that will eventually record a total capacity of 360,000 physical servers. This represents a huge investment, but allows the process to be industrialised and therefore the ability to achieve economies of scale.
OVH has chosen to deploy its own global fibre optic network, a unique infrastructure on the webhosting market. Its characteristics are staggering: 2 Tbps of bandwidth, 33 peering points on 3 different continents and 24/7 operational maintenance.
With more than 120,000 hosted servers, OVH is the leading webhosting company in Europe. More than 400,000 professional customers rely on us to ensure the sustainability of their data. OVH’s data centres were designed to withstand any form of intrusion or hazard. Armoured doors, surveillance cameras, motion sensors, the latest fire detection and extinguishing systems: everything has been planned to ensure continuity of service as well as the security of data that is entrusted to us. Before the launch of our 9th DC project in Gravelines, here are video presentations of our last 3 data centres:
Roubaix 4, the company’s latest data centre in Roubaix, represents the result of 10 years of research and development in energy efficiency. With a state of the art cooling technology and a cube design around a heat removal chimney, we cut our energy bill in half and obtains a competitive advantage. It is also the cornerstone of OVH’s Cloud offers.
SBG 1 is the company’s 7th datacentre, located in Strasbourg in Eastern France. It is the first to be made entirely out of recycled containers, a concept that has been growing around the world in the recent years. This datacentre is strategically positioned on the OVH fibre optic network at the heart of Europe, to minimise latency towards Germany and Eastern Europe.
To build BHS, its 8th data centre, OVH relied on the model that made its success in Europe: total control of the webhosting production chain. Thanks to this unique organisation, the host is capable of offering its dedicated servers at the same price as in Europe, 4 times cheaper than its North-American competitors, and with the same high level of performance. With a total capacity of 360,000 servers, this first datacentre of OVH in North America already promises to break records!
To be closer to its customers in each country, OVH has developed an approach which combines a strong local presence with the values and practices of OVH that has made it so successful since its launch. Each subsidiary is managed by a local team and has its own local website in its own language. Technical teams are all trained in France for 3 months, before returning for the official launch of OVH services in their own country.
