Shadow is already preparing for the start of the school year by lifting the veil on several new products. In addition to an option allowing customers to access a more powerful PC, the company will launch a storage service (Shadow Drive) and beef up its business solutions (Shadow Business Solutions).
Now in the hands of Octave Klaba, founder of OVHcloud, Shadow is no longer defined solely through the prism of video games and aims to be a global cloud computing offer. Nevertheless, the core business of the company is still today to provide “hosted PCs” powerful enough to play (but also create and work), and this from any connected device. This is therefore the first – and main – announcement that Shadow made on the occasion of its Spotlight event: the arrival of a new option, called Power, which will give access to a high-end PC.
More Power, for €45 per month
To take advantage of it, customers will have to agree to pay €14.99 per month, in addition to the basic subscription set at €29.99 (i.e. €44.98 per month). A high price that will give access to a machine equipped with an AMD Epyc 7543P processor (4 cores and 8 threads) with 16 GB of RAM, but also a more powerful GPU. The strong economic tensions that exist on the graphics card market (between shortages and very high prices) no doubt explain why Shadow had to resolve to integrate different graphics cards into its servers. Depending on the sessions, Power subscribers will therefore be assigned either a GeForce RTX “class 3070”either an equivalent Nvidia graphics card but from the professional range (Quadro), or an AMD GPU on RDNA 2 architecture (like the cloud computing-oriented Radeon Pro V620).
The launch of this Power option is accompanied by a graphical overhaul of the interface and Shadow applications, qualified as more “responsive and intuitive” by the company. The offer will be available for pre-order this summer, but access to Shadow with the Power option will not really open until the fall. A handful of happy users will nevertheless have the privilege of early access to the service, no doubt to finalize its test phase and ensure a smooth ramp-up before opening access to as many people as possible. Shadow will also tackle two new markets this fall, Canada and Austria, where the Power option will be offered from the start.
Online storage and business solutions as growth levers
Another novelty that will land in the fold of Shadow in the fall, after a soft launch in limited quantities this summer: Shadow Drive. As the name suggests, it will be an online storage platform. Operated in partnership with Nextcloud, a company with all the relevant certifications, it will offer to store your data on servers based in Europe. Initially, only a web interface will be offered to manage data, but applications dedicated to the main platforms on the market should soon follow. To attract users, Shadow Drive will offer 20 GB of storage space for free, with the ambition of attracting them to the offer billed at € 8.99 per month giving access to 2 TB.
Finally, Shadow begins a shift towards businesses and professionals, hoping to find an important lever for growth. Thus, Shadow Business Solutions offers “a range of cloud computing solutions dedicated to organizations and entrepreneurs looking for flexible and innovative services”. Companies that can, for example, manage fleets of high-performance virtual PCs accessible to their employees wherever they are, thanks to cloud computing. The strength of Shadow compared to the competition? Having easy-to-use interfaces and a quality of service that has proven itself, while being able to offer machines with high computing power to professionals with advanced needs (such as 3D designers , architects or engineers, among others).