Austin/ Riyadh: American multinational tech conglomerate Oracle announced Tuesday the opening of its second public cloud region in Saudi Arabia. The new Riyadh cloud region has been built to help public and private sector organisations migrate all workloads to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), the company said in a statement.
The OCI will give companies access to various cloud services to modernise their applications and innovate with data, analytics, and AI. The company statement added that Center3 is the host partner for the new Oracle Cloud Riyadh region.
The new OCI is part of Oracle’s distributed cloud strategy and the company’s $1.5 billion investment to expand cloud infrastructure capabilities in Saudi Arabia. It also aims to boost KSA’s AI economy, which is expected to reach $135.2 billion by 2030.
The first Oracle Cloud Region is in Jeddah. A third one is planned to open in NEOM.
“The opening of Oracle’s new cloud region in Riyadh reflects the Kingdom’s continuous efforts to boost the digital economy based on modern technologies and innovation,” said Haytham Alohali, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology.
“This step will significantly enable international and local companies to achieve innovation and promote the adoption of AI and cloud computing technologies in various sectors, which enhances Saudi Arabia’s competitiveness at the regional and international level,” Alohali said.
With the addition of the Oracle Cloud Riyadh region, the company explained that users in Saudi Arabia are now part of a global network, gaining low-latency access to cloud services. This strategic location ensures that users in the country are well-connected and can fully utilise the benefits of cloud services, it added.
Richard Smith, Executive Vice President and General Manager of EMEA Cloud Infrastructure at Oracle said, “As part of our wider investment in cloud capabilities in Saudi Arabia, the Oracle Cloud Riyadh Region will help accelerate the adoption of cloud and AI technologies to boost innovation across all sectors of the Saudi economy while helping organisations address local data hosting requirements.”
