OVH opens its first UK data centre in London
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OVH opens its first UK data centre in London

Europe’s largest cloud computing firm opens its first UK-based data centre in London.

OVH, a French-owned data company, has more than one 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. It hopes to increase the company’s footprint in Europe and at the same time is building its global presence. In less than a year the company has built new data centres in Australia, Singapore, Poland and most recently Germany. The new facility in London will be its fifth. 

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.

Although OVH has supported UK businesses with its cloud services since 2007, it said it believes that the UK is a key part of that expansion plan. The new data centre in south-east London provides increased speed, reliability and security for its UK customer base, reinforcing its commitment to the county 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 telecoms operator and it is near two substations, providing the required high electrical capacity. 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. 

OVH said that it plans to tap into London’s tech talent pool to join its new London team. Through its ‘Discover OVH’ programme, customers are being invited to test the new data centre, with plans for its wider catalogue of products and services to be available by the end of the year. 

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