Quote:
Originally Posted by rowan
So you're saying the effective provisioning cost per RU is 0 euros?  |
Nope I'm saying that they have clearly condemned those to a loss knowing that the large majority of clients that use them have other "more expensive" units to cover the costs.
Looking at their pricing compared to other hosts, and to their success compared to other hosts, I'd say they're business model is rack em, stack, pack em, build another DC, lather, rinse, repeat. And at some point a profit is made.
They launched a Magazine last year (yearly mag) and I read over it (all in French) and the owner, Octave, laid out his thinking for his business which was to provide the internet to the people of France, and slowly span out to all European companies in such transparency that the client could feel part of the infrastructure.
I've been with them just a few months and I can tell you what they provide is light years ahead of any other host I've seen. Any and every tool a sysadmin could want is at your fingertips. And that's not just limited to servers...
I've been on their xDSL mailing list for a month as I'm going to migrate my home internet over to them, and the people on that list and what they do blows me away - mainly small IT businesses that build internet/telephony infrastructures for other companies based around OVH's xDSL offering, where they group say 4 different office locations to a single point of access (ie one large private lan) that connects directly to eg the RBX3 DC and off onto the internet, a single phone # that can be handled by automation to redirect to the different extensions in those 4 diff locations, stuff like that - creation of real infrastructure networks that can only be done if you have routing access/control of a large ISP.
I'll be getting their ADSL offering shortly once they've ungrouped my NRA in a few weeks (cutting my internet/telephone monthly bill in half). Then I'll migrate over to their SDSL offering when that's ungrouped ~April/May time. ?25/5mbs synchronous with direct 1-hop routing (3ms ping) to their DC will do me just fine. When the closest competitor is offering ?100/1mbs SDSL, that is damn aggressive pricing. Just for shits and giggles I can then have one of my OVH servers play firewall and DHCP server for my home internet LAN [/geek]
OVH is a lot lot more than just "web hosting" and the openness and bare bones offering is exactly what I want. It's not for everyone though, especially those that like the comfort of fully managed so they can submit tickets asking to add another domain
I know I've pissed a few people off on this board (incl. one host I know of) with going on about them, but hey just spreading the word because I know there are lots of people here that could benefit (and save a butload of ?s) by moving over to them, and so long as I continue to make most of my cash by administrating servers, I'll continue to do so
