How OVHcloud Leverages Whaller to Power Up Its Communication

OVHcloud is a French company and a leading European cloud provider. They offer public and private cloud solutions, dedicated servers, VPS, web hosting and telephony services to clients across 140 countries. With over 1.6 million customers, they also support startups through infrastructure development and cloud migration. As part of this effort, since 2015 OVHcloud has created a mentoring programme that connects startups with internal OVHcloud experts.

How does OVHcloud use Whaller to boost its communication?

We interviewed 👇

Christopher Apédo-Amah
Startup Program Manager at OVHcloud for France, Africa and the Middle East,
in charge of the mentoring programme
 

How did you discover Whaller?

 
Whaller had already been an OVHcloud client for several years. I became familiar with the solution personally, but it was in early 2020 that we decided to switch over. Our marketplace programme was already using Whaller, and since Whaller shares our values around data sovereignty and protection—and is pursuing SecNumCloud certification—it was a natural fit.
 

Why choose Whaller?

 
Mentoring requires a specific setup. We needed a platform to save time and bring together mentor descriptions, matching processes and communications. Whaller’s all‑in‑one approach was ideal—after using it to build our startup community for three years, extending it to mentoring made perfect sense.
 

What did you expect from the tool?

 
We needed to clearly communicate with members involved in mentoring and to segment them by expertise and sector. In Session 3, we had 36 mentors grouped into 10 skill areas like communication and marketing. The platform had to allow startups to identify and request mentoring easily.
 

How do you use Whaller?

 
We use Whaller in two distinct ways:

• Daily community engagement—sharing news, events, calls for projects, and visibility at our startup program events;
• Mentoring programme coordination—a time‑bound, project‑specific use case.

Which features are most useful?

 
We worked closely with Cléa Ancelly, Whaller’s Customer Experience Director, to design the mentoring space.

• We created two “sphere families”: one for ongoing startup engagement, another for mentoring;
• We added custom profile fields for mentors, making their expertise clearer to startups;
• We set up open spheres for easy access, differentiating mentors from startups;
• Special roles—mentor and mentoring‑manager—help us filter users efficiently in searches.

How does Whaller support your organisation?

 
Beyond community engagement, Whaller helps retain alumni. After the startup programme ends, members remain active on the platform—enabling ongoing exchange and network building. The platform’s flexibility allows us to support future projects.
 

What sets Whaller apart?

 
Three key advantages:

• Data sovereignty—Whaller is hosted on OVHcloud;
• Personalised support—ensuring quick setup and adoption;
• Client‑driven development—customers influence the product roadmap.