(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Less than a month after German telco Freenet Group (www.freenet.ag) revealed intentions to sell off its web hosting division, Strato (www.strato.eu), French hosting provider OVH (www.ovh.com) has entered the race to acquire Strato, one of Europe’s largest web hosts.
In a note posted on the company forum, OVH chief executive officer Octave Klaba expressed his interest in buying Strato, which has more than 1.3 million customers between six European countries and operates more than four million domains. It is, however, unclear from Klaba’s statement whether OVH is bidding for all of Strato or only its operations in France.
Hosting 800,000 websites for 350,000 customers, OVH would become a dominant force in the European web hosting industry if it successfully bids for the German host.
Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg (www.lbbw.de) analysts have pegged the market value of the web host to be around $336 million.
In order to land the deal, however, OVH may have to contend with German Internet services company United Internet (www.unitedinternet.de), which has reportedly also shown interest in Strato, which would bolster its web hosting division, 1&1 Internet (www.1and1.com), which already boasts 8 million paying customers.
Market sources say that OVH has a revenue of as much as €45 million (about $63.4 million), according to France’s The Inquirer.
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