Oracle has launched a new second cloud region in the United Arab Emirates to continue providing corporate cloud services to UAE businesses. Customers will benefit from the Oracle Cloud Abu Dhabi Region and Oracle Cloud Dubai Region’s enhanced business continuity and disaster recovery capabilities.
The launch of the Abu Dhabi Region is also in line with the UAE’s Fourth Industrial Revolution Strategy, which emphasizes advancing the national economy via cutting-edge technology.
“The rapid adoption of cloud-based technologies like artificial intelligence, Internet of Things (IoT), and machine learning is vital for building a thriving digital economy and is a key priority for the UAE. With the Dubai and Abu Dhabi Regions, we have the required cloud infrastructure for organizations across public and private sectors, including SMBs, to accelerate their digital transformation,” said Richard Smith, executive vice president, Technology, EMEA, Oracle.
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) underpins both Oracle Cloud regions in the UAE, allowing clients to effortlessly move existing workloads and data platforms or develop new cloud-native applications that benefit from improved performance, cheaper costs, and built-in security. Customers will also get access to the whole range of Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications and Oracle Autonomous Database, allowing them to build the architecture that best meets their needs.
His Excellency Dr. Thani Al Zeyoudi, UAE Minister of State for Foreign Trade said: “Oracle’s decision to open a second cloud region in the UAE is a clear reflection of our nation’s embrace of digital transformation, advanced technologies and the applications of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which have become central to our economic and investment strategy for the next 50 years.”
He also said, “We are committed to developing an innovative- and knowledge-based economy that encourages the development and deployment of the technologies of the future and attracting human, financial, and technological capital to the nation is central to these ambitions. Oracle’s continued investment into the UAE will only accelerate this process, providing critical infrastructure, expertise, and insights to further elevate the UAE’s standing as a place where the boldest ideas and biggest projects can come to life.”
His Excellency Dr. Mohamed Hamad Al Kuwaiti, Head of Cybersecurity for the UAE Government, said: “The UAE Government has rapidly transitioned from being a conventional set up to a ‘smart government’ entity, and now with the increasing pace of digital transformation across the country’s public and private sector, we are progressing towards being an AI-enabled government. This progress is in line with the digital economy goals of our country, but we must also ensure that the ‘cyber resilience of the UAE is maintained to mitigate cybercrime and increase international collaboration. Oracle’s two cloud regions in the UAE are important investments towards providing cyber resilience and secure digital infrastructure for organizations to enjoy the full benefits of cloud computing.”
Emaar Properties is one of the most wealthy and well-known real estate development firms in the world. Emaar shapes new lifestyles, emphasizing design excellence, build quality, and timely delivery, with proven expertise in properties, shopping malls, retail, hotel, and leisure.
“With fast-growing business operations that span different countries, at Emaar, we are focused on creating a future-ready digital infrastructure that supports growth, helps increase revenue, lowers costs and allows us to constantly innovate. Oracle’s new cloud region in the UAE will help us accelerate our digital initiatives with latest emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning,” said the Emaar Technology spokesperson.
The Emirates Post Group owns several subsidiaries, including Wall Street Exchange, a regional currency exchange provider; Electronic Documents Centre, a major digital printing business; and Emirates Post, the country’s official postal services provider, is the country’s official postal operator.
Abdulla Mohammed Alashram, Group CEO of Emirates Post Group, said: “The world’s digital transformation is now unstoppable, and organizations have to adapt to the changes to remain relevant and competitive. In the UAE, we have seen increased implementation and integration of next-generation tools.”
He added, “In our industry, technologies play a big role to enable companies to meet the demand for speed in deliveries and cross-border services while enhancing operational efficiency and productivity. We are excited by Oracle’s next-generation cloud, knowing that its launch will lead to more improved services in the UAE and the region. It will also be instrumental in our efforts to fully digitalize our services by the end of 2021, which will significantly increase our capabilities in today’s digital age.”
Jyoti Lalchandani, Group Vice President and Regional Managing Director, Middle East, Turkey & Africa, IDC said: “Public cloud services adoption is accelerating at CAGR of 28% year on year between 2020 and 2025 in the UAE and IDC projects that the growth momentum will continue. The priority organizations underscore cloud’s role in enabling innovation have given to cloud in their digital transformation initiatives. Cloud-based technologies have helped organizations weather the covid-19 crisis, and cloud is now helping them build a resilient organization that can withstand uncertainties.”
“Our survey of the CIOs in the UAE highlights that an in-country data center is an important factor for 78% organizations that are planning to adopt cloud over the next 12-18 months. Oracle’s two cloud regions in the UAE will boost local cloud infrastructure availability. IDC believes that cloud has become an inseparable element of an organization’s digital transformation and innovation roadmap,” added Jyoti.
Oracle has been working in the UAE to develop a strong local IT talent pool. Oracle has upskilled 1,098 students in emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning, and blockchain as part of a recently completed skills development initiative with the UAE’s Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT) and its commercial arm, the Centre of Excellence for Applied Research & Training (CERT).
The next-generation architecture of OCI provides a high-performing, resilient basis for cloud services, and its physical and virtual network design optimises performance and security. Each Oracle Cloud region, for example, has at least three fault domains, which are logical data centres made up of hardware that provide high availability and resilience to hardware and network failures.
Oracle’s innovative dual-region cloud architecture enables customers to install robust applications in various geographically isolated locations inside the UAE for business continuity and regulatory requirements. OCI provides a free inter-region latency dashboard that provides insights into real-time and historical latency for Oracle Cloud regions around the world to assist clients plan data centre installations to fulfil application needs and optimise their cloud infrastructure.
Oracle is committed to sustainability, and by 2025, all Oracle Cloud regions will be powered entirely by renewable energy. Several Oracle Cloud locations in North America, South America, and Europe are already powered entirely by renewable energy, and all Oracle Cloud regions employ cutting-edge energy management and cooling technology to reduce environmental impact. Oracle repurposed or recycled 99.6% of its retired hardware in FY21 as part of its renewable energy clean Cloud programme, while rigorously following to Oracle’s data privacy and security procedures.
Customers can access Oracle Cloud regions from anywhere in the world, and they support every Oracle service and feature. Oracle Autonomous Database, Oracle Container Engine for Kubernetes, Oracle Cloud VMware solution and Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications are among the products included.
Customers can connect to Oracle Cloud regions and OCI services through OCI’s broad network of more than 70 FastConnect global and regional partners, giving them the finest alternatives available everywhere in the world. FastConnect is a simple, scalable, and cost-effective approach to build a dedicated and private network connection with faster bandwidth, reduced latency, and more consistent performance than public Internet connections.
Furthermore, OCI and Microsoft Azure have formed a strategic collaboration that allows joint customers to run workloads on both clouds. This partnership offers a low-latency cross-cloud interconnect between OCI and Azure in eight regions (Ashburn, Toronto, London, Amsterdam, Tokyo, San Jose, Vinhedo, and Frankfurt) and a federated identity for joint customers to deploy applications across both clouds and a collaborative support model. Customers may run full-stack apps across several clouds while preserving high-performance connectivity without having to re-architect their applications. They can also migrate existing applications or create cloud-native apps that combine OCI and Azure services.
Oracle has announced plans to expand its cloud region footprint in order to meet increased global demand for Oracle Cloud services. Oracle will create ten new cloud regions with new sites across Europe, the Middle East, Asia Pacific, and Latin America during the next year.
Milan (Italy), Stockholm (Sweden), Spain, Johannesburg (South Africa), Mexico, and Colombia are among the upcoming cloud areas. In Saudi Arabia, France, Israel, and Chile, new second regions will open. By the end of 2022, Oracle expects to have at least 44 cloud regions, continuing one of the quickest expansions of any major cloud provider.
Currently available Oracle Cloud regions:
