Global cloud hosting provider OVHcloud has made headlines with the unveiling of its third data center in Sydney, Australia. This latest addition is part of the company’s strategic expansion in the Asia-Pacific region, which includes recent data center launches in India and Singapore. This network now encompasses six data centers across Asia-Pacific, demonstrating OVHcloud’s commitment to delivering sovereign cloud solutions to businesses aiming to grow in these markets.

The new data center facility in Sydney is notable not only for its scale but also for its innovative use of water cooling technology, which OVHcloud has been pioneering for over two decades. This technology supports the data center’s infrastructure optimized for mission-critical workloads, meeting the increasing demand for high-performance compute cloud solutions. This demand is driven by the burgeoning adoption of emerging technologies such as 5G, edge computing, and generative AI. These technologies require substantial computing power, a need that is only expected to grow as the global cloud services market is projected to hit US$2.5 trillion by 2031.

At the heart of the Sydney data center’s capabilities are OVHcloud’s high-performance Scale dedicated servers. These are the first of their kind in Australia, equipped with the latest AMD and Intel processors, which enhance the data center’s ability to support high-demand applications, thereby making innovation and high performance more accessible to local and regional customers.

Michel Paulin, Chief Executive Officer at OVHcloud, highlighted the dual focus of the new data center: “The increased popularity of emerging technologies has triggered an influx of demand for high computing performance. Many organizations are struggling to balance this need while keeping carbon footprints top of mind. As a pioneer in water cooling technology for more than 20 years, we are confident in our ability to assist organizations in powering their businesses and their ESG goals as well.”

OVHcloud operates over 450,000 servers across 43 data centers on four continents, serving 1.6 million customers in more than 140 countries.

Water Cooling Technology

The Sydney facility’s water cooling technology is integrated into a vertically designed rack that facilitates server-level cooling. This system eliminates the need for traditional air conditioning within server rooms, which results in significant cost savings and reduces environmental impact. Notably, it requires only a single glass of water to cool an OVHcloud server due to the efficient closed-loop circulation of the cooled water.

Such technological advancements have propelled OVHcloud to achieve exceptional sustainability metrics, boasting a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) as low as 1.29 and a Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE) of just 0.30l/kWh. Both figures significantly undercut the industry average. The company’s integrated industrial model, which includes manufacturing its own racks and servers, achieves a Carbon Usage Effectiveness (CUE) of 0.18.

Terry Maiolo, Vice President and General Manager for APAC at OVHcloud, commented on the strategic significance of the new Sydney data center: “With Australia being one of the most densely served economies by data centers per capita, this marks a pivotal development for Australian businesses as more organizations consider the sustainability of data centers on their radar.”