OVH, legally OVH Groupe SAS, is a French
cloud computing company which offers
VPS,
dedicated servers
A dedicated hosting service, dedicated server, or managed hosting service is a type of Internet hosting in which the client leases an entire server not shared with anyone else. This is more flexible than shared hosting, as organizations have ...
and other web services. As of 2016 OVH owned the world's largest
data center
A data center (American English) or data centre (British English)See spelling differences. is a building, a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommuni ...
in surface area. As of 2019, it was the largest
hosting provider in Europe, and the third largest in the world based on physical servers. The company was founded in 1999
by the Klaba family and is headquartered in
Roubaix
Roubaix ( or ; nl, Robaais; vls, Roboais) is a city in northern France, located in the Lille metropolitan area on the Belgian border. It is a historically mono-industrial commune in the Nord department, which grew rapidly in the 19th century ...
,
France. OVH is incorporated as a
simplified joint-stock company under
French law
The Law of France refers to the legal system in the French Republic, which is a civil law legal system primarily based on legal codes and statutes, with case law also playing an important role. The most influential of the French legal codes is t ...
. In 2019 OVH adopted OVHcloud as its public brand name.
History and growth
OVH was founded in November 1999
by Octave Klaba, with the help of three family members (Henry, Haline, and Miroslaw).
Funding
In October 2016, OVH raised $250 million in order to raise further international expansion. This funding round valued OVH at over US$1 billion. In the fiscal year of 2016, OVH reportedly had €320 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
The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...
(4 to 7 billion
euro
The euro ( symbol: €; code: EUR) is the official currency of 19 out of the member states of the European Union (EU). This group of states is known as the eurozone or, officially, the euro area, and includes about 340 million citizens ...
s).
In October 2021, OVHcloud filed its IPO and is listed on the
Euronext Paris
Euronext Paris is France's securities market, formerly known as the Paris Bourse, which merged with the Amsterdam, Lisbon, and Brussels exchanges in September 2000 to form Euronext NV. As of 2022, the 795 companies listed had a combined market ...
, the Paris Stock Exchange as OVH. In December 2021, OVHcloud became part of the Paris
SBF120 index.
Operations
As of 2021, OVH had 32 data centers in 19 countries hosting 300,000 servers. The company offers localized services such as customer service offices in many European countries, as well as in North America, Africa, and Singapore. , 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, and a network capacity totaling over 20Tbps
As of 2017, OVH was known for its offering of
email hosting service
An email hosting service is an Internet hosting service that operates email servers.
Features
Email hosting services usually offer premium email as opposed to advertisement-supported free email or free webmail. Email hosting services thus dif ...
, considered one of the largest in the world, in addition to its general
Internet hosting service
An Internet hosting service is a service that runs servers connected to the Internet, allowing organizations and individuals to serve content or host services connected to the Internet.
A common kind of hosting is web hosting. Most hosting provi ...
s.
OVH uses in-house design and manufacturing, including custom-made servers (based on standard components) and a modular
shipping container architecture
Shipping container architecture is a form of architecture using steel intermodal containers (shipping containers) as the main structural element. It is also referred to as cargotecture, a portmanteau of cargo with architecture, or "arkitaine ...
. In 2019, the Canadian data center (
Beauharnois, Quebec
Beauharnois () is a city located in the Beauharnois-Salaberry Regional County Municipality of southwestern Quebec, Canada, and is part of the Greater Montreal Area. The city's population as of the Canada 2011 Census was 12,011. It is home to ...
) was considered a leading example of the OVH model.
Partnerships
As of 2016, OVH was one of the
sponsors for
Let's Encrypt
Let's Encrypt is a non-profit certificate authority run by Internet Security Research Group (ISRG) that provides X.509 certificates for Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption at no charge. It is the world's largest certificate authority, use ...
, a free TLS encryption service,
and OVH's hardware supplier is
Super Micro Computer Inc.
Incidents
In March 2021, OVH suffered a large fire at its datacenter in
Strasbourg
Strasbourg (, , ; german: Straßburg ; gsw, label= Bas Rhin Alsatian, Strossburi , gsw, label=Haut Rhin Alsatian, Strossburig ) is the prefecture and largest city of the Grand Est region of eastern France and the official seat of the Eu ...
, France.
SBG2 had been built in 2016 with a capacity of 30 thousand physical servers. SBG2 was declared a total loss, with early reports indicating damage to SBG1, and services across all four Strasbourg locations experiencing disruptions.
The company's chairman, Octave Klaba, took to
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, an ...
to confirm that all its staff were safe.
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.
In September 2021, the company filed a report
with the ''
Autorité des marchés financiers'' documenting the estimated damage at about €105 million.
In October 2021, the company had a worldwide outage across all their networks due to a human error.
Controversies
WikiLeaks
In December 2010, French
Gizmodo
''Gizmodo'' ( ) is a design, technology, science and science fiction website. It was originally launched as part of the Gawker Media network run by Nick Denton, and runs on the Kinja platform. ''Gizmodo'' also includes the subsite ''io9'', whic ...
edition revealed that
WikiLeaks
WikiLeaks () is an international non-profit organisation that published news leaks and classified media provided by anonymous sources. Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activist, is generally described as its founder and director and ...
selected OVH as its new hosting provider, following
Amazon
Amazon most often refers to:
* Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology
* Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin
* Amazon River, in South America
* Amazon (company), an American multinational technology co ...
's refusal to host it. 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. The case was rejected on the grounds that such a case required an
adversarial hearing.
Information disclosure and multiple vulnerabilities
In January 2019, the magazine ''WebsitePlanet'' uncovered client-side
vulnerability
Vulnerability refers to "the quality or state of being exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed, either physically or emotionally."
A window of vulnerability (WOV) is a time frame within which defensive measures are diminished, com ...
in some of the largest hosting companies in the world:
Bluehost,
DreamHost
DreamHost is a Los Angeles-based web hosting provider and domain name registrar. It is owned by New Dream Network, LLC, founded in 1996 by Dallas Bethune, Josh Jones, Michael Rodriguez and Sage Weil, undergraduate students at Harvey Mudd Colleg ...
,
HostGator
HostGator is a Houston-based provider of shared, reseller, virtual private server, and dedicated web hosting with an additional presence in Austin, Texas.
History
HostGator was founded in October 2002 by Brent Oxley, who was then a student at ...
,
iPage
iPage () is a web hosting company.
History
iPage was initially founded in 1998 as a full web service provider, but the company re-launched operations as a web hosting provider in 2009. It's currently owned by Endurance International Group. iPa ...
and OVH.
Environmental impact
OVH started to integrate innovative water cooling in 2003 in its datacenters.
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
The Gravelines Nuclear Power Station is a nuclear power plant located near the commune of Gravelines in Nord, France, approximately from Dunkerque and Calais. Its cooling water comes from the North Sea. The plant consists of 6 nuclear reactor ...
.
In January 2021, OVH with other industry players joined the
Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact, which is a pledge to achieve
climate neutrality
Carbon neutrality is a state of net-zero carbon dioxide emissions. This can be achieved by balancing emissions of carbon dioxide with its removal (often through carbon offsetting) or by eliminating emissions from society (the transition to the " ...
of datacenters before 2030.
References
External links
*
{{authority control
Telecommunications companies established in 1999
French companies established in 1999
Internet technology companies of France
French brands
Web service providers
Web hosting
File hosting
Cloud computing providers
Data centers
Networking hardware companies
Commercial building fires