I’ve been quiet on the blog for a few months because I’m at the beginning of an exciting new challenge. After leading icitizen for almost two years, I made the decision to return to my cloud industry roots and champion technology that will rock the US cloud market.
OVH Group, the global, hyper-scale cloud provider is following through with its promise to invest in the US, the largest market in the world. This week, OVH US unveils a new executive team comprised of experts in the cloud hosting space with a track record of incredible success. I know because this is a subset of the team that positioned Media Temple for acquisition by GoDaddy just a few years ago and helped both companies put in place the products, systems, and culture of growth. These are veteran producers, builders, and deal-makers, key skills we’ll need to upset the balance of the US cloud market.
In a time when companies are trying to figure out how to partner with the larger hyper-scale players like AWS, IBM SoftLayer, and Microsoft Azure, OVH is taking its tech-savvy and engineer-led company to the US market to give businesses a better choice for maximum value with a personal touch.
OVH was founded 18 years ago by Octave Klaba, a web developer, and his family of engineers. Since they were a boot-strapped startup, they figured out how to deliver web hosting a better way. Instead of buying expensive servers that were built for generic purposes, they built their own, specifically for cloud hosting. Instead of finding expensive co-location facilities, they built their own data centers. Instead of paying high prices and burning too much energy trying to cool their data centers, they figured out how to add proprietary water cooling technology to the custom-built servers – eliminating the need for wasteful and expensive forced-air cooling. Instead of licensing their own software, they wrote their own and are one of the largest contributors in the cloud hosting open source world.
Rapid global growth made it clear to the OVH board that it was time to come to the US. In late 2016, KKR and TowerBrook invested $250 million to help with the global expansion.
Today, companies see no borders and are forced to have great performance, globally. OVH is on a rapid scale-out plan with 26 data centers across four continents and growing. OVH has vertically integrated to provide the best performance at the best prices – globally. They’re able to achieve this by owning their own data centers, thousands of miles of dark fiber, 32 PoPs and proprietary green technology that enables OVH to operate data centers with 50% less power. This advanced tech and cost savings are then passed directly back to OVH customers.
OVH also has a great compay culture built on disruption, innovation, and trust. When you meet the people that build these amazing products, you can see why OVH is growing so quickly. All the large hyper-scale cloud providers pitch their products, but OVH is actually delivering more powerful products at a better value!
With the investment and new focus now on the US market, OVH is bringing in an experienced management team from the cloud hosting market. I’m joining as president and CEO of OVH US, which will be based in Reston, VA. The initial team includes top executives that will continue to build and grow the culture of disruption, innovation, and trust in the US.
- Dean Gels, CFO
- Brian Kuhn, Chief Digital Officer
- Robert Gregory, Chief Customer Officer
- Scott Brown, SVP Engineering and Operations
Stay tuned for more about our strategy over the coming months. Learn more about our mission and this incredible team at www.ovh.us.
