With this business decreasing context, organizations have no choices but to optimize their costs and continue developing their move to digital, while keeping their IT secured and their data protected from the booming number of cyberthreats.

To accelerate their digital transformation while reducing cost, companies can leverage on some key sales events organized by their IT suppliers. Cyber Monday sales is one of these unique opportunities, cloud providers offering very attractive deals and promotions for their services.

In our case, we follow the traditions with dedicated offers on Bare Metal Cloud, Hosted Private Cloud, Public Cloud and Web Cloud, multiple tailored cloud solutions answering all business needs can be purchased at discounted prices.

Cloud computing is a very fast growing but extremely competitive market, where providers sometimes do not hesitate to highlight very low prices, not mentioning hidden costs, lack of security and data protection basic features, or using not interoperable proprietary solutions to lock you in order to eventually generate profit. To prevent from bad surprises whine selecting a cloud provider, we have listed some guidelines or key aspects we believe you should carefully look at before making any decision.

Where my data are stored?

Some cloud service providers have decided to not communicate to their clients the precise location where their data are stored, and use the concept of geographical “regions” and “zones”. You can then select such a zone… but it doesn’t really mean you know where your data are stored and replicated.

Some alternative cloud providers show more transparency, sharing detailed information with their clients about datacenters precise location, and even the actual room and server where the data is stored. You could even ask your cloud providers a report stating where your data are localized if this is required by your clients or by some authorities.

What laws apply to my data and who could access it?

The data you store within a cloud provider is basically subject to the nation’s laws of its headquarters, as well as the nation’s laws of the territories where your data is transferred, processed, and stored. This topic raised a lot of questions within the EU with the invalidation of the “Privacy Shield” last July.

For instance, if your data is hosted and operated within the EU by a US based cloud provider, the US and EU laws apply to your data meaning both GDPR and US extrateritorial surveillance programs (FISA 702, EO 12333…), as well as the CLOUD Act.

Same rules apply to Chinese cloud providers where your data are subject China National Intelligence Law.

Does my cloud provider follow best practices in terms of security & data protection?

A very common way to assess the level of security offered by your cloud provider is to make sure it provides industry standards compliance like ISO/IEC 27001, AICPA SOC II Type 2 as well as with the latest one: ISO/IEC 27701 certification for data privacy. Check-out your cloud provider Information System Security Policy documentation (ISSP), everything should be reported there.

For your most sensitive data, some national IT security agencies have developed specific standards, like ANSSI with SecNumCloud qualification in France. Moreover, in order to protect your data privacy after deleting stored data, your cloud provider must automatically execute a specific script according to in force standards, like NIST SP 800-88.

What are its commitments in terms of service continuity and availability?

Service continuity is provided by various processes ensuring power, network, equipment and applications availability.

To provide such high availability, has you your cloud provider designed its services with full redundancy at each level? In case of outage, has your cloud provider put in place some recovery processes like system configuration backups? Advanced Anti-DDoS protection can also be applied by your provider to prevent from some type of cyberthreats. Is it the case?

Last but not least, you must check whether your provider offers end-to-end SLAs. You can then be sure it will do its best to not lose money with the services it operates for you!

How can I prevent from unexpected fees in cloud services’ bills?

Some cloud providers can look extremely competitive thanks to their super low-price tags which actually do not include multiple additional hidden fees, like Ingress / Egress data transfer costs or other basic options you will definitely need.

To avoid bad surprises, you can decide to switch to a prepaid plan… which can end-up being expensive and as unpredictable as standard post-paid.

Some other cloud providers offer simplified and transparent pricing structures with no hidden fees.

How easy is it to cancel my contract, and transfer my services to another provider?

Vendor lock-in is a wildly used common practice in the cloud industry. This cloud service looks perfect to you, however it seems to be using not standard proprietary technologies, but with very appealing price tags or sales promotions. It’s easy to get trapped, but hard and expensive to recover.

To avoid this, you must seek as much as you can for open, portable, interoperable technologies. As such practices are getting well known, new standards and initiative recently emerged to help you, such as CISPE and SWIPO Code of Conducts, or now with the European initiative Gaia-X.

Use of open source and standardized technologies are another, complementary way to prevent being stuck with one single provider.

Do we share the same values with my cloud provider?

Your cloud becomes a key supplier operating critical assets for your business, this required a very high trust level.

Your provider must help you increase your competitiveness and grow your business. You cloud provider is actually like a business partner however, in some cases, it can also appear as an embarrassing partner.

Is there a risk to face a competitive situation with your provider in the future? What image does it carry in your industry? Where does it pay its taxes? What are its sustainability and green policies?

Your trust combined with market recognition

As this year is very unique, OVHcloud has decided to launch unseen deals and discounts for the Cyber Monday, with an extended range of services covering all business needs, in every country where we operate.

To better support and empower our enterprise customers, we have developed new strategies. Those got rewarded this year by major analysts like Forrester that qualified OVHcloud as the European leader for Hosted Private Cloud, or IDC that listed OVHcloud as the only European company among worldwide Public Cloud providers.

More than ever before, we stick to our SMART Cloud (Simple, Multi-local, Accessible, Reversible, Transparent) values, providing innovative, open and secured solutions, a cloud you can trust fully respecting our client’s fundamental rights and freedom.

Our various programs are the concrete embodiment of this conviction: grow and succeed together, while ensuring everyone remains in control of their data, innovates, and thrives in freedom.

OVHcloud Partner Program

Our partner program, deployed internationally, has been designed to support the digital transformation of companies and organizations. This year, against a backdrop of accelerating digital transformation due to the global pandemic, our collaboration with this powerful network has become even more structured.

These partners are very complementary to our business, as they are high added value resellers or service providers that wish to support their customers as they migrate to OVHcloud infrastructures. They provide advice, support expertise, or add their own technological building block. To support our partners in achieving their missions, we provide training, sales support and technical support for our solutions. In recent months, 300 partners have been trained through more than 50 sessions delivered by our experts.

In accordance with our commitments, OVHcloud’s Partner Program is non-exclusive. Our partners retain their freedom and can continue to collaborate with other cloud players on the market. But the offers or services they provide to our own customers through our partner portal must be based on our trusted cloud. We need to ensure that our customers, who would benefit from support from a partner, have their infrastructure compliant with their local regulations, and that their data remains sovereign.

For partners, joining this program represents a competitive advantage, as their customers are becoming increasingly aware of how to use a cloud that respects freedom and citizens’ rights. We also offer our partners localized support, specific to their geographical area, through our dedicated teams. They can also work within the program, which includes 3 different levels, and as many additional benefits for each. Following their growth, they have the opportunity to move from Standard to Advanced partners (one-third of our partners currently), to Strategic partners (which we will be opening very soon, for those who support large companies). This powerful network of partners contributes daily to strengthening our global ecosystem and spreading our shared values.

OVHcloud Startup Program

The startup support program was created to encourage the start-up of innovative projects. By supporting them from the earliest stages of their development, we help reveal their most disruptive aspects. This program is international in order to meet the high demand in all the countries where we are present. We support nearly 2,000 startups in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. This year, the program has been strengthened by opening up to scale-ups and diversifying its support offer. They can get financial support in the form of credits for our cloud infrastructure, technological advice to support their growth, and mentoring to support their business development. We want to act as a boost for these startups and scaleups by contributing to the development of their network and their reputation. In return, we benefit from their feedback, since they are often the first users of our new products and participate in our R&D cycle.

Our program stands out in the market for its lack of exclusivity, and we do not use technological locking (usually imposed for this type of support). When exiting the program, we do not force startups or scaleups to use our cloud infrastructures, nor do we take part in their capital. This unrestricted model guarantees them high reversibility and technological interoperability but by choosing to continue operating on our infrastructures means keeping control of their data.
This program supporting innovation is fundamental to the development of ecosystems of local entrepreneurs who share our values, in each of the countries in which we operate.

Open Trusted Cloud

In 2020, to address the confinement situation in multiple countries, we temporarily deployed an initiative called Open Solidarity. Many of our partners and customers providing remote working, education and healthcare solutions have joined this solidarity effort to help companies digitalize their data. With their trusted cloud-based solutions, they were able to support the digital transformation of companies concerned with protecting the security and confidentiality of their data while safeguarding their competitiveness.

Continuing this operation, we have developed the Open Trusted Cloud program to meet a real customer need: be able to easily identify solutions based on a trusted, open and interoperable cloud, The “Open Trusted Cloud” label acts as a true differentiator in their market, guaranteeing their commitment to respecting freedom and citizens’ rights.

Thanks to a number of contributors, we are continuing to develop this portfolio of labelled solutions, which are able to provide the best guarantees in terms of data protection. And we encourage all companies that share our commitments to join the Open Trusted Cloud program to spread the ethical cloud label around the world and use it as a lever for growth.

OVHcloud Marketplace

Recently launched and only available in France for the moment, the OVHcloud Marketplace was created to support the growth of SaaS and PaaS publishers hosted on our infrastructures. Today, it encompasses more than 250 solutions based on our trusted cloud. They are completely complementary to our solutions, and meet all companies’ needs for turn-key solutions such as collaborative suites, emailing, website creation, company social networks, cyber security solutions…

Beyond a catalogue of digital solutions, a community of sellers, united by the same commitments, is taking shape. A collaborative platform has just been deployed to unite the sales community and create synergies by facilitating exchanges, whether it is the sales community between itself to discuss technical convergence, common commercial interests, or even alliance on certain calls for tenders or our experts to support our new infrastructure solutions, features and services. In the context of the current health crisis, some of them have also spontaneously offered their preferential tariff solutions in solidarity to support hard-hit professionals and especially traders (you can find them in the solidarity selection section) .

As with all our other programs, we have adopted an alternative approach to the standard marketplaces on the market. No commercial exclusivity is imposed on our sellers, and we do not charge commission. Only a 3% transaction fee is charged to participate in the management costs inherent to the platform. Each of our sellers is also certified, so that all OVHcloud final customers in the OVHcloud Marketplace can benefit from secure transactions.

The OVHcloud Marketplace will be progressively deployed globally in 2021, to bring our visibility as a European cloud leader and global presence to our entire ecosystem. Pre-registration is open for all interested sellers outside of France.

To summarize

Like our ecosystem, our 4 programs are rich and diverse. Their growth is supported by market awareness for a more responsible cloud and by the commitment of each company that adheres to these programs. These companies want to drive change and make strong commitments to a cloud that is more ethical and respectful of citizens’ rights, particularly with regard to data protection. Our OVHcloud Ecosystem Experience, through many testimonials that you can find here, has proven that this ecosystem can grow in collaboration and trust. We are continuing our common efforts towards an ecosystem open to responsible innovation and respect for users, and we will continue to develop our programs to serve this belief.

Let’s keep the momentum going to create even more trusted solutions together! You can continue to share your sovereign products or solutions with the hashtag #WeAreChangemakers. Together, we can consolidate this strong ecosystem, united by a common foundation of European values.

For all of us, 2020 was a year of unprecedented challenges. OVHcloud has chosen to unite its ecosystem by transforming its historic physical event, the OVHcloud Summit, into a 3-day virtual event that included prestigious guests and international testimonials. Many contributors from different countries accepted this huge challenge with us. And despite the increasingly complicated conditions due to the evolving healthcare crisis, they demonstrated an unwavering commitment based on our shared values and the ideas we all wanted to defend around freedom and digital sovereignty.

If you were unable to attend the keynotes or the many sessions, led jointly by our experts and those from our partner or customer ecosystem, the 3-day replay is now available.

We hope you will enjoy this event as much as we enjoyed organising it!

We would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to all of our sponsors, and to the ecosystem of partners who contributed to the event: Appcraft, Vodalys, Mediawen, Uzik.

Sponsors Platinum

Sponsors Gold

Sponsors Silver

For its 2020 edition, the annual OVHcloud event is evolving to meet the challenges of the accelerating digital transformation, by becoming the OVHcloud Ecosystem Experience, a fully online event. Connect with us on November 3^rd, 4^th & 5^th, 2020 to interact with technological and industrial leaders and discover how OVHcloud is changing the game with our ecosystem to fuel businesses with ethics and sustainable solutions.  

If you share our values and engagement, then interact with us live at #EcosystemExperience #WeAreChangemakers! Join us online to learn with the experts, our technological and business partners, customers and innovative start-ups through exclusive workshops, demonstrations and conferences. Discover the OVHcloud product worlds as well as our partners’ solutions. 

The OVHcloud Ecosystem Experience is also an opportunity to learn more about members of the Open Trusted Cloud program, partners from the OVHcloud Partner Program, vendors from the OVHcloud Marketplace, and startups that are accompanied by the OVHcloud Startup Program… and how we grow together! There will also be sessions called Career Talks, where you can learn more about the different job functions at some of our sponsors’ companies as well as at OVHcloud

On the agenda

We’ll host three keynotes and numerous sessions and testimonials around solutions and services that respect freedom and fundamental rights (in particular the right to data protection). It’s the occasion to discover and exchange around the use cases of an ecosystem federated around the same values and commitments, and operating on a trusted, alternative and competitive cloud.  You will find the full programme at OVHcloud Ecosystem Experience Agenda. 

If you want build a personalized program and fully synchronize your agenda, just subscribe online to the Ecosystem Experience to receive access to the event platform. This will give you additional functionalities and allow you to interact and network with other attendees, schedule meetings with our sponsors, download some material regarding the sessions …

Event highlights 

Keynotes

Keynote #1 on November 3^rd at 10:00 AM (CET) will focus on data sovereignty to ensure your independence and competitiveness; the ecological challenges of the cloud and the digitization of uses; European collaboration to streamline massive investments in a trusted cloud. 

Speakers include: 

• Michel Paulin, CEO, OVHcloud 
• Bruno Le Maire, French Minister of Economy, Finance and Recovery
• Carla Arend, Senior Program Director: Lead Analyst, Cloud in Europe, IDC  
• François Sterin, CIO, OVHcloud 
• François Cuny, Deputy CEO for Innovation, INRIA 
• Falk Weinreich, GM Central Europe, OVHcloud 
• Max Ahrens, CTO, T-Systems 
• Guillaume Poupard, General Director, ANSSI 

Keynote #2 on November 4^th at 10:00 AM (CET) will look at the power of ecosystem collaboration; support programs for success together; a short-term technological roadmap built with our partners and customers. 

Speakers include: 

• Pat Gelsinger, CEO, VMware 
• Lauren Nelson, VP, Research Director Infrastructure & Operations, Forrester 
• Alain Fiocco, CTO, OVHcloud 
• Luc d’Urso, CEO, Atempo 
• Ludivine Boutry, CDMO, OVHcloud 
• Julien Chaumond, CTO, Hugging Face 

Keynote #3 on November 5^th at 10:00 AM (CET) will be given by Octave Klaba, founder of OVHcloud. Octave will share his strategic vision on the evolution of the cloud; The commitment of an entrepreneur to anticipate changes in society. 

Star Sessions

And don’t miss our star sessions with the best experts of our ecosystem: 

• The sky is not the limit: SERCO storage and distribution of EC/ESA Copernicus Satellite images
  
• Energy matters in the Cloud: discover the partnership between INRIA and OVHcloud
  
• Global leader in AI-based translation, SYSTRAN, chose OVHcloud
  

• GAIA-X: shaping Europe’s data spaces through a federated multi-Cloud infrastructure
  
• Being part of the Community – why Open Source matters
  
• Why did the French Ministry of Territories’ Cohesion choose Sopra Steria and OVHcloud?
  

We hope that you will be many to connect for the live keynotes as well as for the numerous sessions proposed by our ecosystem! 

More info and registration 

OVHcloud, an European leader for Hosted Private Cloud!

OVHcloud has been recognized as a Leader in the European Hosted Private Cloud market according to the latest Forrester report on Hosted Private Cloud Services In Europe, Q2 2020. We were cited for the ability to unify services while ensuring a Cloud Act emancipated European offering.

OVHcloud is best suited for organizations focused on strong cloud infrastructure solutions for customers of various sizes

The Forrester Wave™

At OVHcloud we are a global cloud player providing full freedom of choice to its customers through 4 product categories (Hosted Private Cloud, Baremetal Cloud, Public Cloud and Web Cloud), fully interconnectable and addressing all customers use cases.

Forrester’s report evaluates our Hosted Private Cloud and our Baremetal offerings.

We believe that Forrester’s evaluation of product features indicates that OVHcloud provides a strong technological stack, having received the highest scores possible in the criterion  of permissions, roles and image library which is defined as having strong evidence of role-based access control and integration with directory services. Our storage capacities received the highest score possible in the storage options criterion.

In addition to product feature-related aspects, the OVHcloud Hosted Private Cloud received a on the highest score possible in the data center locations criterion, as well as in the onboarding experience criterion – which we feel is illustrated by the fast accessibility to a new platform in under 60 minutes and a personal onboarding, to smooth user ramp-up on the product.

OVHcloud received of the highest score possible in the operations experience e criterion which we believe illustrates the importance for OVHcloud to provide reactive and proactive support at all steps of the customer lifecycle, contributing to customer success by being a close partner in their growth.

In addition to the above scores, OVHcloud was rated the highest possible in the Hosted Private Cloud vision, market approach and certification criteria. We address  the most demanding regulated sectors such as the public sector and healthcare and finance industries.

A strong vision for the future of the Hosted Private Cloud market

OVHcloud product offering reflects OVHcloud core values, notably to allow full freedom of choice to its customers and data security.  Extensive data protection is ensured by top-of-class market certifications (e.g.HDS for healthcare, SecNumCloud in progress for sovereignty of Government data) and the full control for OVHcloud customers over the location of their data.

Our OVHcloud Hosted Private Cloud solutions are based on market leading solutions (OVHcloud is a verified VMware cloud provider) and powered by latest hardware technologies (OVHcloud designs and build its own servers and datacenters).

Our main objective is therefore to provide performant (in terms of compute, storage and network), resilient, secured and easy-to-manage solutions to our customers with full price predictability.

For instance on Storage capabilities, a key requirement for Cloud customers and a fundamental brick of our offering, OVHcloud offers a full range of options from NFS to full NVMe hyperconverged storage with the vSAN technology which also demonstrates the best price/performance ratio observed on the market. 

Our offering is also built around a multi-product approach which provides customers the ability to mix products across the OVHcloud universes and build fully customizable solutions tailored to customers specific needs.

Building the future together with OVHcloud Ecosystem

We have identified several opportunities to support our customers in their digital transformation and their hybrid cloud strategies by offering a continuity between on-prem and off-prem infrastructures. First of all, OVHcloud will continue to streamline the integration with VMware. In the near future and to continue to offer strong freedom of choice, we will also be releasing new platforms and new storage solutions for Hosted Private Cloud.

Our Hosted Private Cloud offering is highly secured, fully reversible, with dedicated resources, and easy to connect to customer legacy solutions and all OVHcloud products, therefore providing freedom of choice to customers. In addition, it includes a private network with unlimited and unmetered ingress and egress traffic. Furthermore, Multi-AZ environments will be available across different regions.

OVHcloud will launch in 2020 a broader range of hosted private cloud products, from cost effective to enterprise grade hosted private clouds. OVHcloud is also working on new propositions for customers requiring dedicated zones to answer challenges related to data protection, regulations or sovereignty.

Last but not least, we are co-building our strategy around a wide and active ecosystem, made of strategic alliances, communities and partners, allowing to grow together. We are proud to share with our ecosystem this recognition which is the result of a successful collaboration.

Do you want to know more?

If you want more details about OVHcloud Hosted Private Cloud Services and download The Forrester Wave™ analysis, please click here.