The IT Nerd

OVHcloud is expanding its Bare Metal server offer with two new ranges of machines that provide high performance, very high capacity bandwidth and high availability. These new machines address the needs of organizations running critical workloads which require ready-to-use platforms and are optimized to work with solutions from leading software publishers. These servers will be available in OVHcloud data centers across Canada, the US and Europe.

Large corporations, banking, health, and other industry sectors are particularly well served, alongside universities and research centers. For these organizations, there is a particular need to have a better price/performance ratio, anticipate any technical risks and develop business growth. All this with a resilient, very high-bandwidth network, and availability across a wide range of geographical regions.

OVHcloud expertise for a wide range of professional use cases

Scale and High-Grade servers are optimized for complex, resource-intensive tasks. They are particularly suited to the following use cases:

• Managing Hyper Converged Infrastructure (HCI), particularly for companies that want to consolidate their data centers.
• Software Defined Storage (SDS), which can handle the needs associated with increasing the volume of data to be managed, while controlling costs.
• Virtualization, containerization, and orchestration, for project deployment or application modernization while optimizing hardware and software investments.
• Big Data and analytics, to optimize data usage.
• Archiving and backup, as storage solutions must meet very specific needs, such as agile information flow management, fault prevention, ensuring optimal archiving of critical data, and compliance with applicable laws.
• Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), for large-scale management of remote and virtualized work environments.

Two innovative ranges to meet the highest requirements

Scale and High-Grade ranges have all the OVHcloud commitments: the latest and most powerful computing components, the best price/performance ratio; with totally transparent and predictable pricing, OVHcloud Link Aggregation (OLA) technology, which allows users to aggregate each server’s network interfaces to boost its availability, while isolating it from the public network and any potential threats, 99.99% SLA Anti-DDoS protection included. Finally, traffic is included and is unlimited.

Supplementing the Hosted Private Cloud catalog, which was recognized as a “strong performer” in North America and a “leader” in Europe in the Hosted Private Cloud market in The Forrester Wave™: Hosted Private Cloud Services, Q2, 2020 report, both ranges are operated according to the most demanding security standards in compliance with ISO/IEC 27001.

• Scale offers a range of 6 servers with AMD EPYC™ and Intel® Xeon® Gold CPUs. It is aimed at companies with high performance requirements. Scale provides the resilience and speed to enable these large companies to grow their business by improving their IT performance. The range offers a guaranteed bandwidth of up to 25 Gbps, and a service level agreement (SLA) of 99.99%, ensuring the best guarantees for hosting the customer’s infrastructure (on private or hybrid cloud).
• High-Grade, consisting of a selection of 10 servers based on AMD EPYC™ and Intel® Xeon® Gold CPUs, is designed for businesses with critical availability and performance needs. The range offers guaranteed bandwidth of up to 50 Gbps and combines computing power, a very high-bandwidth network, and a large storage capacity. It is particularly well suited to use cases involving HCI, SDS or storage, and will grow into a machine dedicated to artificial intelligence.

OVHcloud announced today that it has achieved new certifications in information security and data privacy, marking a new phase in its broader certification policy and commitment to customers.  

With the newly obtained ISO/IEC 27001 and ISO/IEC 27701 for most of its cloud solutions, OVHcloud has further consolidated its arsenal in order to strengthen customer trust in the security of its infrastructure. The scope of certification covers the following products: 

• Public Cloud: Compute, Storage (Block, Object, Archive, Snapshot, Instance Backup), Managed Kubernetes® Service, Cloud Databases, Data Processing, ML Serving et AI Training. 
• Hosted Private Cloud Premier, Managed Bare Metal, Bare Metal Servers, NAS, Backup storage, Logs Data Platform and Trusted Exchange. 

For these products and all supporting information systems, OVHcloud has implemented an Information Security Management System (ISMS) and Personal Information Management Systems (PIMS) evaluated by a third-party auditor as part of an in-depth audit. This audit resulted in the obtaining of: 

• Certification according to the ISO/IEC 27001 standard supplemented by the requirements of ISO/IEC 27017, specific to cloud services security and ISO/IEC 27018 relating to the requirements of personal data protection. This certification enables all organizations and their DevOps teams to deploy services in OVHcloud’s environment in accordance with the highest security standards. 

• Certification according to the ISO/IEC 27701 standard, to explain how the personal data hosted by its customers on OVHcloud solutions are specifically protected. This recent certification (2019), which still involves few players, is based on a global standard that reflects most of the requirements of the General Regulation on Data Protection (GDPR) in a standardised manner. 

According to the IDC FutureScape study “Worldwide Cloud 2021 Predictions”, over 80% of enterprises evaluating cloud services for privacy-sensitive workloads will mandate the protection of data sovereignty and the ability to control the corresponding processes across the geographies concerned.  

OVHcloud has been committed for many years to constantly improving the security of its information systems. In 2013, the European cloud leader achieved ISO 27001 certification for its Hosted Private Cloud solution and then in 2019 for its Bare Metal Cloud servers.  

XMCO supported this approach as internal auditor of OVHcloud’s management system. The external certification audit was conducted by the Laboratoire National de Métrologie et d’Essais (LNE).

For more about OVHcloud’s compliance and certification policy: https://www.ovhcloud.com/en-ca/enterprise/certification-conformity/  

Capgemini and OVHcloud today announced a global alliance partnership agreement intended to address the cloud transformation needs of public and private organizations. The alliance partnership combines the power and innovation of OVHcloud’s next-generation cloud solutions with Capgemini’s deep experience in data protection, security, AI and data analytics, applications, cloud managed services and cloud native development. The combined expertise will help organizations create secure cloud infrastructure with internationally recognized levels of security.

Unifying Capgemini and OVHcloud’s commitments to secure cloud transformation, the two companies have formed an alliance partnership. Together, they intend to build complete sovereign cloud solutions in the context of the European Alliance on Industrial Data and Cloud and the Important Project of Common European Interest (IPCEI) on Cloud Infrastructure and Services due to be launched in 2021. 

The companies will cooperate to leverage their capabilities globally, offering organizations access to a unique set of services and skills for secure, end-to-end cloud infrastructure services in public, private and hybrid clouds. The solution is also intended to promote open source software and leverage GAIA-Xstandards on cloud federation, to allow interoperability, portability, trust, and transparency across infrastructure, applications and data. The global alliance partnership will notably allow to enable the development of European data spaces that bring together public and private players to generate value from data.

In line with their respective commitments to reduce their environmental footprint, OVHcloud and Capgemini will work together to enable a sustainable use of cloud services. This will include ensuring their common solutions strive towards carbon neutrality by optimizing usage of resources according to client needs, promoting a more energy efficient supply chain, managing infrastructure and hardware lifecycles and favoring a more local mix of energy sources.

The alliance partnership builds on Capgemini and OVHcloud’s long-standing collaboration with several global software vendors to propose end to end integrated sovereign solutions, leveraging the OVHcloud Open Trusted Cloud, SecNumCloud and health data hosting labels.

OVHcloud and Capgemini will work together to combine capabilities and investments to develop their collaboration globally. Capgemini will also bring its deep experience in the global cloud market, and its internally developed IP, to support joint clients in accelerating their cloud journey.

With the increasing shift to remote-work and the boom in online services, companies have had to accelerate their transition to the cloud to stay competitive. The benefits of such a rapid transition – time savings, increased productivity, reduced operating costs, etc. – are clear, however, deploying such solutions still remains a major challenge for small and medium-sized businesses businesses. The key takeaway: the transition needs to be run on a flexible, scalable, easy-to-manage infrastructure that allows an organization’s technical skills to be focused on the company’s core expertise and not on IT administration.

To effectively and sustainably support small and medium-sized enterprises in their cloud projects, OVHcloud has developed the Managed Bare Metal Essentials offering.

This new offering includes:

• A complete and ready-to-use infrastructure (Bare Metal dedicated servers, dedicated datastore storage space, network and virtualization licenses) hosted and managed in OVHcloud data centres
• Supported automation and orchestration of the infrastructure 24/7
• VMware virtualization technology, which allows the customer to size and manage virtual machines with ease

Managed Bare Metal Essentials is the best option for growing companies looking to access a scalable, dedicated cloud environment with guaranteed resources and high availability. The solution helps to control budget costs with clear price predictability. 

Jonathan Druker, Product Marketing Manager, OVHcloud has this comment: 

“This new offer is OVHcloud’s answer for companies in many sectors, from small to medium sized businesses, who need to access an affordable, secure, scalable cloud environment with dedicated resources. With Managed Bare Metal Essentials, we offer customers a service that joins the benefits of a trusted, ready-to-use private cloud, with no concessions on performance or availability.”

To meet enterprises and public institutions security, sovereignty and resilience needs for the preservation of sensitive data, OVHcloud is collaborating with IBM and Atempo to develop a Storage-as-a-Service offering. This solution will be based on IBM enterprise tape technology and an Atempo software stack hosted and operated by OVHcloud in new data centres on the French territory.

With the ever-exponential growth of data produced by the Cloud, data storage optimization has become essential, both because of costs and compliance risks. As organizations look for ways to store, manage and leverage value for this ever-growing amount of data, Tape will play a strategic role in addressing storage infrastructure challenges.

Tape solutions offer the lowest cost per terabyte of storage available today; the technology provides the security, scalability and durability to safely store critical inactive and cold data over the long term. When stored properly, data on tape today will still be legible in 30 years’ time. Put simply, storing data on tape costs mere pennies per terabyte and when not in use, requires zero energy consumption unlike hard disks and flash drives. 

Tape meets Hybrid Cloud for a scalable, secure and affordable data strategy
OVHcloud will launch a cloud storage offering aimed at both public and private organizations, which will guarantee total security and resilience for the long-term preservation of their sensitive data. This long-term storage solution is based on the IBM Enterprise 3592 Enterprise Tape technology and orchestrated by Atempo’s technology platform, Miria. In addition OVHcloud will innovate through the in-between addition of erasure coding 9+3 technology, allowing smart replication and split of users’ data.

To address data localization concerns of professionals, the solution will be hosted and operated by OVHcloud in four new dedicated facilities, all located in France and each separated by several hundred kilometers. Security is a key priority for OVHcloud, who recently obtained the ANSSI Security Visa for the SecNumCloud which qualifies its Hosted Private Cloud solution and demonstrates the highest level of IT security, in line with recommendations from the French National Agency for Information System Security, for hosting sensitive and strategic data. 

The combined expertise of IBM, Atempo and OVHcloud will provide users with a unique solution that meets the regulatory requirements for data conservation, will be S3 compatible and feature ultra-competitive and predictable pricing for an unmatched price/performance ratio. 

About OVHcloud
OVHcloud is a global player and the leading European cloud provider operating 400,000 servers within its own 31 data centres across 4 continents. For 20 years, the Group has been leveraging an integrated model that provides full control of our value chain, from designing our servers to managing our data centres through to orchestrating our fibre-optic network. This unique approach enables OVHcloud to cover, independently, the full spectrum of use cases for our 1.6 million customers across 140 countries. OVHcloud now offers customers latest-generation solutions that combine high performance, predictable pricing and full data sovereignty to support their unfettered growth.

About Atempo
Atempo is a leading independent European-based software vendor with an established global presence providing solutions to protect, store, move and recover all mission-critical data sets for thousands of companies worldwide. With over 25 years’ experience in data protection, Atempo offers a complete range of proven solutions for physical and virtual servers’ backup, workstations, and migration between different storages of very large data volumes. Atempo’s three flagship solutions, Lina, Miria and Tina are labeled ‘As used by French Armed Forces’ and ‘France Cybersecurity’.
Selected to join the French Tech 120, a government program designed to nurture 25 unicorns by 2025, Atempo is headquartered in Paris and is present in Europe, the US and Asia with a partner network in excess of 100 partners, integrators and managed service providers.
For more information:  www.atempo.com.

Here are four cloud related predictions for 2021 from OVHCloud that might interest you:

Data sovereignty becomes central to secure innovation

Data localization – and data sovereignty – is a major strategic factor, as there is an increasing demand for a European, trusted, and sovereign cloud. More and more companies question where their data is localized, and under which jurisdiction? The European DNA is very strong on data protection and individual rights. GDPR, invalidation of the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield, or the GAIA-X initiative for example, send out a strong signal that in Europe we want to have an open IT ecosystem, where we control the location of data but also its portability and interoperability. At a European scale, there is strong push towards local innovation to avoid being dependent on external actors for the most sensitive data.

A growing need for data storage

As worldwide data usage is expected to reach 175 zettabytes by 2025 (according to IDC), data storage has become critical for companies mostly with regard to business imperatives, costs, and compliance related risks. Data is the new goldmine, as it allows organizations to improve operations with predictive analytics, to build new added value services or products, etc. and this is why standard – yet comprehensive, affordable and reliable – cloud storage solutions are key to cloud adoption and to answer business needs.

Major growth in AI and Machine Learning

The constant flow of data represents enormous value from which to extract insights with AI and Machine Learning. However, despite the huge investments made by corporations, it’s still very challenging to utilize this value, as data science resources are limited and finding the right data system engineering skills is often difficult. Costs can also easily spiral out of control and are very unpredictable. Companies will have to turn to cloud providers who provide complete portfolios of easy-to-use and powerful AI solutions, with full control over budget.

A growing need for edge or hybrid technology

Alongside the development of the conversations on data sovereignty, is a need for the cloud industry to develop a multi-local approach. The recent partnership between OVHcloud and German operator T-systems is a good example of this: OVHcloud brings its own infrastructure and technological stack within the T-Sytems datacentre. This partnership responds to various legal issues: compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) first of all, but also to prevent exposure to the U.S. Cloud Act.

With the holidays now behind us, data over the final quarter of 2020 showed a significant increase in online shopping in Canada – a testament to the new normal we now find ourselves. As the increased desire of consumers to buy during these peak moments is fantastic for online retail it also brings with it the challenge of not only managing this online traffic, but retaining it. This is where setting the foundation of a strong cloud infrastructure comes into its own.

Global cloud leader OVHcloud, which offers dedicated servers, cloud and web services and is continuing to make waves in the Canadian market, encourages a few key practices businesses can implement moving forward, including:

• Ensuring a seamless experience online 
• After a period of just three seconds, a user leaves a page if it loads too slowly. Retailers therefore need to prepare their websites so that they can absorb peak loads and load times do not suffer significantly from the increase in simultaneous connections.
• Understanding the public and private cloud and what works for your business 
• Businesses need to better understand what capabilities work best to handle additional resilience against traffic fluctuations. A public cloud can most easily adapt to an increase in resource demand while the private cloud is more readily available as a dedicated resource pool for an organization, offering a high level of security, control and flexibility.
• Thinking ‘small but mighty’ with performance
• If you’re a smaller online retailer, virtual private servers (VPS) are valued as a cost-effective alternative, while another way to optimize the performance of a website without necessarily changing the infrastructure is to use content delivery networks (CDNs).

It’s clear from this that businesses need build their infrastructure, maintain this momentum and retain customers choosing to shop online well into 2021. And OVHcloud can help them with that.

OVHcloud, the European leader with a global footprint in the cloud industry, announced today it joined the Open Invention Network (OIN). This engagement affirms OVHcloud’s approach in terms of Open Innovation and will strengthen the company’s ecosystem, by supporting a world-class open source innovation community.

One of the keys to the success of OVHcloud over the years lies in the company’s ability to develop and promote innovation, both in IT itself, but also in its industrial practices. This innovative DNA is core to constantly researching and developing new technologies and optimizing the performance of OVHcloud’s solutions portfolio. By joining OIN, OVHcloud contributes more to the open source community and therefore protects its open ecosystem, on which its always relied to build more flexible and cost effective solutions to support the evolution of its users’ needs. 

The open working methods have always been at the heart of its corporate culture. As a global alternative cloud provider, OVHcloud actively encourages a whole ecosystem of advocates to collaborate, innovate, and deliver to open communities. In accordance with its company values of trust and working together, and its product values of transparency, reversibility and interoperability, OVHcloud has chosen to join OIN in order to accelerate its open innovation strategy, and thus confirms its commitment to digital sovereignty and an open approach to software technology.

OVHcloud is now committed to licensing the OIN community with its current and future Linux System patent portfolio, in order to promote open innovation and preserve the open community.

Open to all, OIN’s community practices patent non-aggression in core Linux and adjacent open source technologies by cross-licensing Linux System patents to one another on a royalty-free basis. Patents owned by Open Invention Network are similarly licensed royalty-free to any organization that agrees not to assert its patents against the Linux System. You can join the OIN community by signing the OIN license online at  http://www.j-oin.net/

OVHcloud announced today a strategic partnership with Google Cloud to accelerate French and European organizations’ ability to digitally transform and reimagine their business.  The partnership aims to bring cutting-edge technologies, built on trusted infrastructure, to European organizations to help them meet their growing needs for strict data controls, security, transparency and privacy while deploying cloud native applications. OVHcloud will introduce a new Hosted Private Cloud offering by bringing Google’s open source-compatible Anthos technology to its own highly scalable dedicated infrastructure, fully operated and managed in Europe by OVHcloud teams.

Fueling European data with the latest innovations and full control

In recent years, organizations and policy makers have emphasized the need for cloud providers to protect customers’ data in an even more transparent way, highlighting the need for greater levels of security and privacy, inspectability and survivability. In response, OVHcloud and Google Cloud are forging a partnership with open source, transparency, interoperability and reversibility at its core.  The two companies intend to empower European organizations to accelerate their digital transformation and benefit from the latest developments in cloud technology in a trustworthy manner.

Open Source: A building block to widen the European ecosystem

As part of this partnership, OVHcloud and Google Cloud will bring their leading technology and skills to the forefront. The companies plan to build joint solutions that empower customers to draw all the benefits of a multi-cloud and open approach, as well as drive a critical ecosystem of third-party developers.

The agreement also signals a strong commitment to delivering innovation to benefit customers, supporting digital skill development and fostering collaboration with the open source community.

OVHcloud, the leading European cloud provider with global reach today announces the gathering of the cloud community online for its 8^th annual event: OVHcloud Ecosystem Experience. The virtual event brings together 150 speakers from all around the world, across 90 sessions, to propose a deep dive into the cloud ecosystem for 3 days and plans to welcome over 10, 000 guests.  

Each day includes a keynote address, with the format revamped to welcome both the OVHcloud leadership team and exclusive guests from several countries. These key sessions provide a focus on how the ecosystem can change the data game and propose a trusted, sustainable and performant alternative to the most hegemonic global players.

An ecosystem for more sovereignty over data

OVHcloud renews its commitment towards data sovereignty across the globe. Building on a matrix gathering over 3000 partnering companies, around four universes and dedicated programs such as Open Trusted Cloud and OVHcloud Marketplace, the European cloud leader invested massively to strengthen its technological and geographic footprint in 2020.  

With a stronger focus on its multi-local value, OVHcloud constantly reinforces its infrastructure to meet every regional specificity, freed from extraterritorial influence, wherever its 1.6 million customers are. The company also expanded its teams to effectively provide cloud users with local business and technical expertise.

As part of its constant engagement towards European strategic independence, OVHcloud also positions itself at the core of the GAIA-X framework to scale European values across the cloud industry and market worldwide. This commitment is also reinforced with large-scale innovative projects such as the strategic partnership entered with T-Systems, to co-build a unique sovereign platform on public cloud technologies. Last, the company steps up on its security roadmap to obtain key labels of trust such as SecNumCloud in France, AgID in Italy or C5 in Germany or join trusted frameworks such as G-Cloud in the United Kingdom.

An ecosystem to make a data revolution, in a sustainable way

Frugality and efficiency are core to OVHcloud’s sustainable track record for over 15 years.  Indeed, its vertically integrated model today is a key asset to reduce its footprint, while boosting its price leadership, by design. The company implemented water-cooling back in 2003, which results in a leading Power Usage Efficiency (PUE) range from 1.1 to 1.3 whilst the industry average is touching 2. Despite its choice of water systems, OVHcloud reaches a unique Water Usage Efficiency index of 0.2. 

The company steps up with an ambitious commitment overtime: reaching carbon neutrality with a pure renewable energy mix by 2025; moreover, OVHcloud plans to achieve net zero emissions by 2030. To do so, OVHcloud defines 5 key levers to deliver a strong sustainability agenda: monitoring, design, renewable energy, circular economy and ecosystem mobilization.. As part of this roadmap, OVHcloud initiated a partnership with the leading European technology research institute Inria, to enhance monitoring and transform it into a customer facing asset.

An ecosystem to disrupt the data world

Over the past few years, OVHcloud has been working to redesign its worldwide backbone network infrastructure and has built a system which can handle a global increase in traffic. On top of this brand-new scalable, power efficient, and resilient architecture, the global cloud leader has also rethought its ability to address a wider range of use cases with a core focus on resiliency and ability to scale.

Thanks to its brand new High-End ultra-performance infrastructure, OVHcloud takes on a new journey to improve, by combining best in classtechnologies to address specific enterprise-grade use cases, and even ready-to-use clusters of servers.

Also, to address growing storage and AI needs, OVHcloud has enriched its solutions catalog, by accelerating its storage roadmap with the recent acquisition of OpenIO and EXTEN technology, and by providing a complete AI toolbox with cutting-edge solutions. Thanks to this, businesses will be able to build their own AI-solution or consume turnkey AI-applications powered by the OVHcloud ecosystem, with fully transparent and predictable pricing.

OVHcloud AI Solutions will make selected partners’ AI technology tools and vertical solutions available to offer a seamless and unified customer experience. To do so, there will be a full integration of the partners tools and offerings in all the OVHcloud universes and across them. To this end, OVHcloud has selected 30 top European AI experts able to deliver and scale end-to-end solutions.

Numerous announcements will follow throughout the year.