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Can you tell us about your role and the scope of your responsibility ?
I ’ ve been with the business for over six years now and I ’ m responsible for operations within the UK , Ireland and the Nordic regions . I work closely with the teams here on sales , marketing functions and developing the business dynamic , locally or regionally .
As one of the leading data centre providers in Europe , what trends do you see developing in the region and how do these differ from other areas across the globe ?
There ’ s a big focus on sustainability . There ’ s also a focus around how you unlock the power and value of data and how businesses are having the correct IT strategy solutions or platforms and infrastructure in place to keep pace with this . There ’ s a significant shift to multicloud and a big focus on cost control postpandemic . During the pandemic , everyone had to scale fast and it didn ’ t matter where it came from , but I think that as we move forward , people are more conscious of the security aspects surrounding the cloud , the cost control of cloud and how we can move forward as well . There are also some other initiatives happening like the use of open data and security of data .
What specific challenges do you come across in the data centre space and how do you suggest industry leaders should adapt ?
I think that ’ s the big question – how businesses tackle some of the issues .
These are predominantly around data protection , regulatory industries , security and compliance issues . I think one of the ways OVHcloud is responding to these issues is ensuring that customers can utilise large volumes of data without having storage issues and unlocking the value of that through the business intelligence or Machine Learning – gaining valuable insights . I think sometimes there can be a lack of digital skills in organisations to implement those IT strategies or policies and it ’ s important that we see more and more partnerships that people are specialising in the areas they know best and partnering with others to ensure they can achieve their business goals . As previously mentioned , there ’ s an element of cost control too and people are looking at multi-cloud or hybrid cloud strategies in order to best manage workloads .
How important are sustainable operations and how do you ensure this ?
OVHcloud has deployed a strong sustainable strategy since the inception of water cooling 15 years ago – we have a Circular Economy through second and third life of service . So there is a reuse of buildings , or data centres and when we look at energy , water and carbon efficiency . We have a Power Usage Effective rating ( PUE ) ranging between 1.1 to 1.3 , and a water usage efficiency of 0.24 – 0.29 L / kWh IT . Our carbon usage effectiveness is 0.15 – 0.18 T ( CO 2 e / MWh ) all of which is certainly industry-leading . We have a sustainability strategy to become carbon neutral on operations by 2025 and net zero by 2030 – and 100 % of high-quality renewable energy by 2025 and 0 % waste to landfills . We have six key
Hiren Parekh , VP for Northern Europe at OVHcloud
levers to sustainability ; one is to monitor the consumption , second is how optimising that and leveraging renewable energy sources , maximising component life cycle and also reducing supply chain impact . And finally , how do we embark on the ecosystem journey working with partners . We have a partnership with Inria – National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology – to enhance sustainability monitoring and turn it into a customerfacing asset . This partnership helps OVHcloud customers to address their sustainability challenges by providing realtime energy consumption and their carbon footprint , through an API or web portal .
Can you tell us more about OVHcloud ’ s vision as a leader in the field – what do you hope to achieve ?
I think in a world where data is at the heart of all aspects of our private , social and professional lives , we want to be the trusted cloud provider – which enables each person to create and do business , freely . We want to offer an open , reversible and interoperable cloud , which is a fair and a responsible alternative . We want to put innovation to www . intelligentdatacentres . com
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