Multinational computer technology corporation Oracle has confirmed a massive cloud region expansion that will, for the first time, include Africa.
This wasn’t unexpected. Oracle first announced plans for a cloud region in South Africa in 2019. However, according to a press statement on Monday, Oracle plans, over the next year, to expand its cloud region footprint to support what it calls strong customer demand for Oracle Cloud services worldwide.
Oracle will open 14 cloud regions with new locations across Europe, the Middle East, Asia Pacific, Latin America and Africa. Upcoming cloud regions include Milan (Italy), Stockholm (Sweden), Marseille (France), Spain, Singapore, Jerusalem (Israel), Mexico, Colombia and Johannesburg (South Africa). Additional second regions will open in Abu Dhabi (UAE), Saudi Arabia, France, Israel and Chile. Oracle plans to have at least 44 cloud regions by the end of 2022.
Oracle says its Cloud Regions "provide global, secure, high-performance environments to move, build, and run all your workloads, from Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to Oracle Cloud Applications".
To help customers build business continuity and disaster protection, while helping them to address their in-country data residence requirements, Oracle says it plans to establish at least two cloud regions in almost every country where it operates. It has also pledged to power all Oracle Cloud regions worldwide with 100 percent renewable energy by 2025.
As the Data Centre Dynamics website points out, other cloud giants are already in Africa, notably Microsoft, which opened an Azure region in Johannesburg in 2019. AWS launched a Cape Town region in 2020 and has an Edge location in Johannesburg. Google Cloud has no cloud regions in Africa at the moment.