OVH opens first UK datacentre in south London

French cloud provider OVH has blamed external factors for delaying the opening of its first UK datacentre in south-east London by several months.

As previously reported by Computer Weekly in January 2017, it was announced that this facility would open in May 2017, but the project experienced unexpected delays delays, confirmed OVH UK head Hiren Parekh.

“Like all projects of this scale, there can be delays due to external causes which are beyond OVH’s control. Because of the size of the project, it can be related to any works around the building – there are many different factors,” said Parekh.

The datacentre has 40,000 servers and aims to provide better reliability, security and speed for customers, who OVH has invited to use its Discover OVH product to test out the facility. It also will add a wider selection of its products to the London region later this year.

The datacentre opening is proof of the company’s post-Brexit commitment to London, according to Parekh.

“The UK market interfaces with international businesses, not only in Europe but around the world. So by having a physical presence in the UK, OVH is not only addressing the local market at SMEs [small to medium-sized enterprises] or even large companies, we’re also supporting international trade through new and substantial export opportunities,” he said. 

“The UK is a fantastic market, it’s obviously a very vibrant market for business and it represents huge international opportunity for OVH moving forward.”

The London datacentre joins Australia, Poland, Singapore and Germany on the list of countries the company has opened server farms over the course of the past year, as it pushes ahead with its €1.5bn expansion plan.

OVH received a €250m investment from KKR and TowerBrook in October 2016 and €400m in funding from nine banking companies in June 2017.

The company is planning to introduce two further datacentres in the US, one in the East Coast and one in the West, added Parekh, and open new facilities in Spain, Italy and the Netherlands by 2020.