Oracle Corp. said Monday it has added new cloud computing data centers in five countries and plans to build them in 36 locations by the end of 2020, when it will compete with Amazon and Microsoft in the cloud computing market.
After a period of Unstable Cloud business start-up, Oracle, which has been engaged in business software services for a long time, launched the second generation cloud computing system, through which Oracle operates its data center, from which customers can rent their computing capabilities.
According to Forrester Research, Amazon Web services and Microsoft are the two giants with more than two-thirds of the global market share in 2019, but Oracle is trying to win back customers by expanding the geographic scope of its business.
Clay Magouyrk, executive vice president of engineering for Oracle cloud computing, said new data privacy regulations in the EU and elsewhere meant that many companies had to keep data in data producing countries, so it was important to provide them with as many local cloud data centers as possible.
Oracle's goal, he said, is to have at least two "regions" in each of the countries in which it operates so that customers can use one major region on a regular basis and another as a backup in the event of a disaster. "Overall, the strategy is to give customers data sovereignty by setting up many regions around the world," he said. "
Each cloud provider uses different terms to scale up its data center, but in most cases, a single "zone" can have multiple data centers in a physically independent location called the "availability" zone. Microsoft has 56 regions. Amazon has 22 regions, but 69 availability regions.
Oracle on Monday added "regions" in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Osaka, Australia, Melbourne, Montreal, Canada and Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The company plans to add a second region this year in Saudi Arabia and two more in the UAE.
Oracle said Japan's top 10 companies are using its cloud computing products, but did not disclose any relevant information. At the same time, Oracle's cloud computing competitors, some of which have larger balance sheets, are also increasing their data centers. Amazon, for example, plans to add 5 regions and 16 available regions.
Deepak Mohan, research director at IDC, said that given Oracle's large customer base, targeting geographic coverage would be a sound strategy after the new data regulations were introduced.
"Oracle has received some criticism over the past few years, but I think they just want to take the time to make things better," he said. "They need to do a lot more - leaders are still innovating - but I think they're definitely on the right path from the first step. "
