Cloud services provider OVHcloud launches first data centre in India

Michel Paulin, Chief Executive Officer at OVHcloud
Michel Paulin, Chief Executive Officer at OVHcloud

OVHcloud, the European cloud firm, launched its first data centre in India, as part of its APAC expansion plans which will see the deployment of two additional data centres in Australia and Singapore by next year. Adding to OVHcloud’s network of data centres, the new Mumbai facility is part of its recently announced global strategic plan to build 15 new sites by 2024.

What does the new centre mean for regional clients?

The global expansion will provide OVHcloud customers with open, trusted, sovereign and sustainable cloud solutions that will enable them to meet growing digital needs. The news comes at a crucial time for Asia Pacific, which has witnessed an uptick in cloud adoption amidst sharper regulatory scrutiny over data sovereignty and environmental concerns.

Particularly for India, cloud-enabled digital transformation is driving explosive growth of the national digital economy, that outpaces growth of the larger economy by 2.4 times. Under the Digital India govt campaign underpinning a concerted push for digital transformation on a national scale, business and govt sectors are set to increase their reliance on the cloud.

The data centre will offer businesses enhanced support through local compute and storage capabilities to meet evolving data compliance needs, especially as the government pushes for more comprehensive data protection laws to go along with a growing digital economy.

The Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, National Data Governance Framework policy, and IT Rules, introduced in the last two years, collectively aim to balance data governance efforts with unlocking data-enabled innovation that will spur growth of the Indian digital economy.

Why is the new data centre in India a timely installation?

The launch of the facility is also timely, particularly as India takes presidency of G20 with a mandate of ‘data for development’, sets up a new Trade and Technology Council with the EU to lead on digital transformation, green tech and trade, and implements data regulations like the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill which complies with international standards of data protection including the GDPR by enacting a strong consent-based regime of data privacy. 

With these policies, data residency remains a critical compliance criterion for businesses in the financial services and pharmaceutical sectors. As a pioneer in sustainable cloud, OVHcloud has been deploying 20 years of innovation like circularity and water cooling at scale.

As such, these disruptive innovations enable the Group to reach best in class sustainability metrics, with a PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) at 1,28 and a WUE (Water Usage Effectiveness) of 0,26. By manufacturing its own servers, OVHcloud’s integrated industrial model enables a sustainable cloud by design, with Carbon Usage Effectiveness of 0,2.

Benefiting from OVHcloud water cooling tech, this centre pushes the Group’s technological and industrial expertise further by adapting its infrastructure to meet tropical conditions. 

What does the centre mean for OVHcloud?

“Already one of our top-performing markets in APAC, India continues to show remarkable potential for business growth. The strategic deployment of our first data centre in India is a firm testimony to that potential, and an affirmation of our commitment to customers and partners here,” said Terry Maiolo, Vice President and General Manager, APAC, OVHcloud.

“Our new generation of data centres, coupled with compute and scalable storage perks, will elevate our ability to offer high-performance cloud solutions to clients in India and the region that have optimised and predictable price-performance ratios, even as their needs evolve.”

“Since the expansion of our presence in the Asia Pacific market, the region has experienced phenomenal growth of its digital economy. India, Australia and Singapore remain critical markets that are driving this growth from a business transformation and digital innovation perspective. Data sovereignty and sustainability will continue to be key priorities that have to be balanced with rapidly increasing digital needs,” commented Michel Paulin, CEO, OVHcloud.

“We are confident that new data centres will further help OVHcloud’s goal of becoming the cloud provider of choice for customers in the region, in enabling them to remain compliant while benefiting from our unique proposition of an open, reversible and sustainable cloud.”  

The expansion leverages OVHcloud’s existing presence in India through the Mumbai Point of Presence opened in 2020 minimising latency between India and Europe. With the newly launched data centre, local customers will enjoy close to instant access to their data and cloud resources while also meeting increasingly stringent data compliance regulations. 

Following this launch, clients in Asia Pacific can anticipate the deployment of upcoming data centres in Sydney and Singapore by next year. With these additions, the Asia-Pacific data centres will account for six out of OVHcloud’s global network of 48 data centres by 2024.