Oracle announces first cloud region in Africa

Oracle, the world’s largest database management company, has opened its first cloud region (a cluster of data centres) in Africa, at Johannesburg, South Africa. It joined other global players like Microsoft and Amazon who already have data centres on the African continent.

The launch of the data centre in South Africa, makes it Oracle’s 37th cloud region worldwide. They plan to have at least 44 cloud regions by the end of 2022—opening 7 additional cloud regions in Colombia, Chile, France, Israel, Mexico, Spain and Saudi Arabia. To continue one of the fastest expansions of any major cloud provider.

The Johannesburg data centre region is built on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), which enables customers to easily migrate IT workloads and data platforms to the cloud or build new cloud native applications. In addition, the organisation offers a wide range of application modernisation and cloud strategies to help African organisations operate with global competitiveness.

African organisations use Oracle to manage their mission-critical workloads and take advantage of cloud economics. Customers will benefit through significant performance improvements and reduced operational costs.

“Public cloud services adoption is accelerating at a CAGR of 25% year on year between 2020 and 2025 in Sub-Saharan Africa, and IDC projects that the growth momentum will continue,” Mark Walker, associate vice president, Sub-Saharan Africa, International Data Corporation (IDC) said.

Walker also said that based on a recent survey by the IDC, 60% of organisations in South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria are planning to adopt cloud over the next 12-18 months. This means that they’ll need the data centres that are close to them in order to experience the lowest levels of latency.

Luckily, Oracle and other global corporations are positioning for this opportunity. Speaking about the project, Richard Smith, the executive vice president, EMEA, Oracle also said, “the fourth industrial revolution, which is powered by cloud-led technologies, has significantly accelerated in South Africa and the wider African continent. In recent months, cloud technologies have played a vital role in helping African public and private sector organisations ensure business continuity, deliver essential services, and meet evolving customer expectations. The Oracle Johannesburg region offers a next-generation cloud to run any application faster and more securely for less, helping businesses build resilience, agility and achieve improved ROI.”

These recent announcements show that technological giants and multinationals are increasingly interested in the African market as internet penetration and digital literacy increase.