Last week saw the release of ‘The Forrester Wave: Hosted Private Cloud Services in Europe, Q2 2020’, a report whose authors spoke highly of OVHcloud’s range of services, the company’s vision, its strategy and its customer base. We talk to Michel Paulin, CEO of OVHcloud, about what makes up OVHcloud’s success and the company’s strategy for the future.
BrandsIT: Let’s first talk about the Forrester Wave report. Why is this report so important to you and to cloud providers?
Michel Paulin: The report is important for us because of the leadership title we have been awarded and important for the industry because it is a valuable source of knowledge. Of course, we watch the market closely, but the report offers an objective assessment, hence it is crucial for us. We are pleased with the result because we are at the forefront and we are proud of this.
BrandsIT: Excellent. We expect to find a lot of information about the private cloud in the Forrester Wave. Which cloud do you see your customers’ future in: public or private?
Michel Paulin: In both. We should listen to what customers and analysts are saying. Four years ago, we thought that the solution at the time was great because it addressed all the problems, but the reality turned out to be more complicated, especially in large corporations with data centres. Corporate systems are modern and often made up of multiple solutions, hence multi-location cloud and hybrid cloud are the models of the future. At OVHcloud, we offer three types of cloud: bare-metal, private and public servers. This gives the customer the flexibility to choose depending on whether they have their own infrastructure or are ready to move their data to the cloud. The future is undoubtedly the cloud.
BrandsIT: What would you say about the innovation of your services? What makes you better than your competitors?
Michel Paulin: This is not an easy question. First of all, I think it comes from our fundamental characteristics. We have our own infrastructure. We have local data centres, including in Poland, which we designed. We design our servers, build them and operate them. Our business model is completely integrated. We do not rely on subcontractors, suppliers from Asia, and this approach offers many advantages. Firstly, we work on the basis of specific needs while being fully transparent. This leads to another conclusion, that trust is key in the cloud, and for us this is extremely important. Furthermore, we focus on innovation, which is the DNA for OVHcloud. We are the creators of many innovations and, for example, in July we will launch a new private cloud based on VMware, with high performance computing and networked storage. This is the first step in our plan, which we will successively implement until December, proposing a new solution every month or two. Among other things, we will introduce new high-capacity dedicated servers in November and December. We have adopted a fast-track approach to innovation.
BrandsIT: Could you explain your phase model to our readers? Is it still complex, indirect and direct? What about the benefits of collaboration for partners?
Michel Paulin: Yes, we combine an indirect and direct approach. Some of our clients prefer to talk to us directly, while others work with our partners through a partner programme. Although our partner programme only launched at the beginning of this year, we can already boast cooperation on various activities, such as those carried out in Poland with Hostersi and Cloudical. Here, I would like to emphasise that we focus primarily on the quality of cooperation, rather than the number of partners in the portfolio, which is seen by them as a great advantage. In addition, we are not in competition with our end customers and work with partners to provide them with final solutions. As a supplier, we are responsible for the infrastructure and our partners, system integrators and software manufacturers work with us on the final projects for our end customers.
BrandsIT: Great. I would like to ask you about your company strategy for the next few years?
Michel Paulin: First and foremost is trust. We believe that the cloud must be open, reversible, trustworthy, giving our clients the feeling that we are protecting their data, both private and company data, from outside intervention. Hence, RODO and national legislation are key for us. Our data protection is in line with RODO and the European Commission’s recommendations on data protection. We also protect our customers’ data from the Cloud Act, which means being subject to US federal authorities. Secondly, we are prioritising innovation in our triple-cloud world and, for example, in the public cloud, we will be launching 12 new solutions in the next few weeks so that we can propose further features and improvements. Thirdly, expansion. At the moment we have 30 data centres around the world and we have our own network. We want to offer the same services to customers all over the world and expand to every place on Earth. As far as Poland is concerned, we have an on-site data centre, a customer support team or R&D teams in Wroclaw, we have been here for 16 years and, importantly, the founder of the company, Octave Klaba, is Polish and founded this branch by himself. Fourthly, we understand that the cloud can be very complex, so we will innovate in such a way as to help our customers monitor and automate the cloud and the tools they will use to create a private, public and local cloud. These are our assumptions for next year.
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BrandsIT: What are your market share expectations for next year in Poland, Europe and worldwide?
Michel Paulin: Currently, the world is divided into 9 regions in our strategy, Poland is in the east-central one. This is where our support centre, R&D and sales and marketing departments are located, and this is the structure we plan to introduce in each region. We are recruiting intensively because we want to support our customers even more effectively. We are the only player from Europe that is at the global forefront. We will continue to try to reach countries outside Europe and continue to penetrate the US market. North America is home to our subsidiary, data centres and infrastructure. We are growing dynamically outside of France; in fact, France only accounts for 40% of our revenues. We will continue this dynamic.
BrandsIT: That is correct. That was the last question about the cloud. Is there anything else you would like to share with BrandsIT readers?
Michel Paulin: First and foremost, we are delighted to be the leader of such a prestigious ranking. It proves that a European provider can compete with American and Chinese players. I also think it is worth pointing out that OVHcloud’s strategy is to deploy our services globally. I would add that this year we conducted a local survey in collaboration with VMware, which showed that 91% of companies store data in Poland. This means that a hosted private cloud located in a Polish data centre by OVHcloud is the perfect solution for them. Our customers can build a hybrid cloud, combine their own infrastructure with our hosted private cloud services and create an extended cloud tailored to their needs. Our customers can use the same hosted private cloud, the same technologies and the same business facilities in other regions. This is very important because it responds to the specifics of the Polish market. This part of Europe is home to many excellent developers who create fantastic solutions for companies around the world. Often they start their business locally, in Poland, and gradually develop it in the regions where our data centres are located around the world and get customers everywhere. And on the other hand, if companies want to move to another region, OVHcloud makes it possible to provide services worldwide. We respond to customers’ data centre needs locally. Finally, it is worth mentioning the GAIA-X initiative, which is designed to integrate cloud providers and involves, among other things, building an integrated login capability for different cloud services. Reversibility will be a key element of this initiative. This is a unique value for European companies as it will facilitate relationship building and collaboration with other companies. We Europeans are different and we do not want to be dependent on a particular provider’s platform.
BrandsIT: Thank you for the interview, it was a pleasure.
Michel Paulin: Thank you.
