French cloud computing mega-firm OVH has opened its first UK-based data centre in London.
OVH, has a million customers around the world, 22 data centres worldwide and a bandwidth capacity of 11Tbps.
The new London facility comes as part of OVH’s €1.5 billion five-year global expansion plan. The plan involves increasing the company’s European operations while building up global presence.
In the last year it has built new data centres in Australia, Singapore, Poland and most recently Germany.
Hiren Parekh, director cloud for EMEA at OVH, commented: “This marks a significant step forward for OVH in supporting UK customers with a local dedicated gateway into our worldwide network.”
The new €1.5 billion investment plan received a €250 million capital increase from the two investment funds KKR and TowerBrook in 2016.
The data centre in south-east London provides increased speed, reliability and security for its UK customer base, reinforcing its commitment to the country despite all the controversy surrounding Brexit.
“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,” added Parekh.
The site of the new London facility was previously owned by a telco and it is near two substations. It is also close to OVH’s point of presence and is directly connected to the company’s global network of data centres. It houses 40,000 servers as well as custom engineered components such as a water-cooling system.
