OVHcloud

OVHcloud is Europe's largest cloud infrastructure provider, founded in 1999 by Octave Klaba in Roubaix, France. What began as a small hosting company has evolved into a global cloud platform operating more than 30 data centers across four continents. As a publicly traded company on Euronext Paris, OVHcloud has positioned itself as the European sovereign alternative to American hyperscalers, championing data sovereignty, open standards, and competitive pricing. The company serves over 1.6 million customers worldwide, from individual developers to large enterprises and government institutions.

European Data Sovereignty

OVHcloud has made European data sovereignty a cornerstone of its strategy. The company builds and operates its own servers in its own data centers, giving it full control over the entire hardware supply chain. This vertical integration is unique among major cloud providers and ensures that no third-party has access to the physical infrastructure. OVHcloud is a founding member of the GAIA-X initiative, the European project aimed at creating a federated data infrastructure that ensures data sovereignty and portability.

For customers requiring the highest levels of data protection, OVHcloud offers its SecNumCloud qualification, certified by ANSSI (the French National Agency for the Security of Information Systems). This certification ensures that data is processed exclusively within French territory, by French staff, and under French jurisdiction, providing protection that goes beyond standard GDPR compliance. This makes OVHcloud particularly attractive to government agencies, healthcare organizations, and financial institutions.

Public and Private Cloud

OVHcloud's public cloud is built on OpenStack, the leading open-source cloud computing platform. This means customers benefit from standard APIs and avoid vendor lock-in, as workloads can be migrated to any other OpenStack-compatible cloud. The public cloud offering includes compute instances, object storage, block storage, managed databases, and a container registry. Pricing is straightforward and predictable, with per-hour billing and no hidden costs for data egress within reasonable limits.

The private cloud offering, branded as Hosted Private Cloud, provides dedicated VMware or OpenStack environments. This is ideal for enterprises that need the control and isolation of a private cloud without the capital expenditure of on-premises infrastructure. OVHcloud manages the underlying hardware and hypervisor layer while giving customers full administrative access to their virtual environment.

Bare Metal and Managed Kubernetes

OVHcloud's bare metal servers are among the most competitively priced in the market. The company designs and assembles its own servers using a proprietary water-cooling system that reduces energy consumption by up to 30%. This engineering innovation allows OVHcloud to offer powerful dedicated servers at prices that undercut most competitors. The bare metal range spans from entry-level servers suitable for development to high-performance machines with the latest AMD EPYC and Intel Xeon processors.

The managed Kubernetes service allows customers to deploy and manage containerized applications without worrying about the control plane. OVHcloud handles the Kubernetes master nodes, etcd cluster, and API server, while customers manage their worker nodes. The service integrates with OVHcloud's load balancers, persistent storage, and private networking, providing a complete container orchestration platform.

Pricing and Competitive Position

OVHcloud's pricing is designed to be transparent and competitive. VPS plans start from 3.50 euros per month, and public cloud instances are billed per hour with no minimum commitment. Unlike AWS and Azure, OVHcloud does not charge exorbitant data egress fees, which can represent a significant cost saving for applications that serve large amounts of data. The company also offers a free tier for its public cloud with 100 euros of credit for new customers to test services.

While OVHcloud may not match the breadth of services offered by AWS (which has over 200 services), it covers the essential cloud building blocks that most applications need. For European businesses that prioritize data sovereignty, transparent pricing, and GDPR compliance, OVHcloud represents a compelling alternative that does not sacrifice performance or reliability for principles.