European cloud provider OVHcloud has launched a Local Zone Edge location in Zurich, Switzerland.
Local zones are suitable for workloads with latency-sensitive services such as real-time analytics, e-commerce websites, content delivery networks (CDN) for replay and streaming videos, and cloud gaming. Services include compute, block storage, and networking. They also offer OVH customers greater options around data residency.
“OVHcloud, the leading European cloud provider, today announces the opening of its Local Zone in Zurich,” the company said this week. “The new data center infrastructure offers customers in Switzerland new options for accessing OVHcloud's public cloud services with low latency and local data residency.”
Originally announced last year, the French cloud and data center firm said the new launches were driven by technology from Gridscale – a converged infrastructure firm that OVHcloud acquired in 2023.
The company launched the service in February with two locations; in Madrid, Spain, and Brussels, Belgium. A Dutch zone opened in Amsterdam earlier this month. It has also launched in Milan, Italy.
The company hasn't said which facilities these zones are hosted in.
"The opening of the Local Zone in Zurich is a milestone for OVHcloud's growth strategy in the Swiss market, which is important to us," said Falk Weinreich, general manager Central Europe at OVHcloud. "With the new Local Zone, we offer our Swiss customers access to a local cloud infrastructure on-site, with which they benefit from even more secure, faster, and more efficient services."
Throughout 2024, OVHcloud plans to open up to 15 Local Zones, although the company hasn’t said what facilities the zones’ infrastructure will sit in.
Last year, OVHcloud said it was aiming for 150 new Local Zones in the next three years, with other planned locations in Europe, including Prague (Czech Republic) and Marseille (France).
A recent blog on OVH’s site also notes a planned Dallas Local zone, though a launch date wasn’t shared.
"The need of Swiss companies for regional cloud infrastructure is enormous. We are therefore very proud to be able to start our global roll-out of 150 Local Zone locations in the Swiss market. This will enable us to support our customers' digital transformation even better from now on. The more critical business processes are digitized, the less delays in data processing will be tolerated," said Henrik Hasenkamp, CEO of Gridscale. "With the new Local Zone in Zurich, we are offering companies in Switzerland the opportunity to use OVHcloud's public cloud services in a highly flexible, data-sovereign, and cost-efficient manner."
OVH has more than 30 data centers in operation and under construction in France, Canada, the US, Australia, Germany, Poland, Singapore, India, and the UK. These are a mix of self-built and leased locations.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers its own Local Zone service, offering a limited number of services close to population centers for latency-sensitive applications, often in areas where the company doesn’t have an existing public cloud region.
AWS has 18 zones in 17 US metros, along with more than a dozen Local Zones in international markets across Europe, Latin America, Africa, and APAC. The company is currently undergoing a refresh, launching second-generation zones in existing markets with an expanded range of available services and compute instances. Despite multiple requests from DCD, AWS hasn't detailed what facilities the Local Zones sit within or what compute infrastructure they use.
