Oracle Corp on Monday said that it has completed adding new cloud data centers in five countries. The company also shared its plans of having 36 cloud data locations by the end of this year. Oracle has been fast trying to catch up with the likes of Amazon and Microsoft in the cloud business.
Understandably, Oracle is trying to increase its geographical base in the cloud business to reach out to more customers. The company now has plans of at least expanding its data centers to 'two regions" where it has its operations, so that there is one primary region and one backup region in case of a disaster.
Oracle's big plans
Oracle on Monday added five new cloud data centers at Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; Osaka, Japan; Melbourne, Australia; Montreal, Canada; and Amsterdam in the Netherlands. The company plans to take this number to 36 by the end of 2020. In fact, the company has plans of adding another region in Saudi Arabia by the year and a couple of more in the United Arab Emirates.
Oracle has been fast trying to catch up with its competitors who too are continuing to add data to the world. "Overall, the strategy is to put lots of regions around the world to give customers data sovereignty," said Clay Magouyrk, executive vice president of engineering in Oracle's cloud unit.
Oracle tries to catch up
Oracle didn't have a great start to it cloud business which saw the likes of Amazon and Microsoft taking the lead. Today, Microsoft and Amazon have majority of the market share in the cloud business, occupying almost two-third of the global market share. Oracle doesn't want to lag further and is trying to attract business customers by expanding globally.
The decision to expand geographically bodes well for Oracle given that the said data privacy regulations in the European Union and other parts of the world will require data to be retained in the country from where it is originated. Hence, an increasing number of businesses will look for regional cloud data centers.
According to Oracle, 10 biggest businesses in Japan avail its cloud computing offerings and the company is trying to lure more customers. Vendors of cloud services use a variety of terminology to promote their data center existence. However, they can always create multiple data centers in a particular region with different physical locations. These care called "availability zones".
This has seen the likes of Amazon and Microsoft adding more data centers in its regions. Oracle too is taking the same route. Presently, Amazon has 22 regions with 69 availability zones, while Microsoft has 56 regions. Per the recent decision, Oracle may not be able to match the likes of Amazon and Microsoft anytime soon but will definitely try to get somewhat close to its rivals.
