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OVHcloud rents out computer servers and cloud computing power to businesses and developers who want to run websites and software without owning their own hardware.
OVHcloud is a French cloud company that sells the raw plumbing of the internet: servers, storage, and computing power that other businesses rent by the month instead of buying and running themselves. If you run a website, an app, or a chunk of software, you need machines somewhere to host it. OVHcloud provides those machines, either as dedicated physical servers you rent outright or as flexible cloud capacity you spin up and down on demand.
The company was built by the Klaba family, and it still stands out for an unusual choice: it designs and assembles much of its own hardware, including servers and even its own water-cooling systems, rather than just reselling gear from big vendors. That vertical integration lets it keep costs low and squeeze more efficiency out of each machine. Its pitch to customers is simple — cheaper prices than the giant American clouds, predictable billing, and a promise that your data stays in Europe under European rules. That last point matters a lot to European businesses and governments worried about US data laws. OVHcloud serves a wide range of customers, from individual developers and small web hosts up to large enterprises and public sector bodies. Its biggest rivals are the hyperscalers — Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Alphabet's Google Cloud — which are far larger but also far more expensive and more US-centric. OVHcloud's bet is that plenty of customers want a credible European alternative that is cheaper and keeps their data closer to home.
The business has had hard moments. In March 2021 a fire destroyed one of its data centers in Strasbourg, knocking many customers offline and raising serious questions about backups and resilience. The company later listed on the Euronext Paris stock exchange, and it has been pushing into higher-margin services like its public cloud and private cloud offerings to grow beyond plain server rentals. It remains a smaller player globally, but a significant one in Europe, where its combination of low prices, own-built hardware, and European data residency gives it a real reason to exist.
Saved answer · last researched 25 Oct 2026