OVH, of of Europe’s largest cloud hosting provider, is officially opening the doors of its first UK data centre as 
part of its ambitious €1.5 billion global expansion plan. After Australia, Singapore, Poland and more recently Germany, this is the fifth data centre OVH opens in less than a year. The opening of the new data centre will cement OVH’s stronghold in Europe and help it continue to build its global presence. Following a capital increase of €250 million from two investment funds by KKR and TowerBrook in 2016, OVH announced a €1.5 billion investment plan for the next five years, with the UK playing a key part in that. It currently has more than one million customers around the world, 22 data centres across four continents, with a bandwidth capacity of 11 Tbps.
The new facility in South-East London provides greater speed, reliability and security for its growing customer base, and the company’s move demonstrates its commitment to the UK market in spite of Brexit. OVH, which has supported UK businesses with cloud solutions since 2007, announces that the new data centre houses 40,000 servers and has been built using components engineered by OVH, including a water-cooling system installed last month (June).
Hiren Parekh, Director Cloud, EMEA, commented: “This marks a significant step forward for OVH in supporting UK customers with a local dedicated gateway into our worldwide network. We are offering low latency, guaranteed bandwidth and enhanced DDoS protection for all of our customers. It is particularly beneficial for those working in the finance sector or public services, where hosting data in-country is a key requirement in order to be compliant with data protection and governance, and the protection standards of their customers.”
The site, previously owned by a telecommunications operator, is situated near two substations that provide the necessary high electrical capacity; it was also chosen due to its proximity to OVH’s point of presence (PoP) in nearby central London and is directly connected to the company’s global network of data centres that uses its own low latency fibre-optic solutions.
Customers are being invited to test out the new data centre via the company’s ‘Discover OVH’ offer. Its wider catalogue of products and services are expected to be available by the end of the year. OVH adds that it will be looking to London’s tech talent pool to join its ranks as part of those UK expansion plans.
