Oracle to Invest Over $1 Billion in AI and Cloud Computing in Spain
Darius Baruo Jun 21, 2024 03:24
Oracle plans a significant investment to open a third cloud region in Madrid, enhancing AI and cloud services for Spain’s financial sector and other industries.
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Oracle has announced plans to invest more than $1 billion to establish a third cloud region in Madrid, Spain. This major investment aims to bolster AI skills development and provide enhanced cloud services to various industries, including the financial sector, according to Oracle.
Boosting Spain’s Digital Resilience
The new public cloud region is expected to help Oracle customers and partners across all sectors in Spain migrate mission-critical workloads to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). This migration will support compliance with regulations such as the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) and the European Outsourcing Guidelines. Telefónica España will serve as the host partner for this new cloud region.
Spanish government officials have welcomed Oracle’s investment. José Luis Escrivá, Spain’s minister for digital transformation and public administration, stated, “The opening of the third Oracle cloud region in Spain is excellent news for our country. The investment announced by Oracle provides a significant boost that will help Spanish enterprises and public sector organizations innovate with AI and continue advancing on the path of digital transformation.”
Advancing Cloud Capabilities
Oracle’s upcoming cloud region in Madrid will enable organizations to modernize applications, innovate with data analytics, and leverage AI technologies. Oracle provides a comprehensive suite of over 100 cloud services, including Oracle Autonomous Database, MySQL HeatWave Database Service, Oracle Container Engine for Kubernetes, Oracle Cloud VMware Solution, OCI Generative AI service, and OCI AI Infrastructure.
“Spanish enterprises and public sector organizations are rapidly embracing the cloud to gain access to the latest digital technologies such as AI, and the upcoming public cloud in Madrid will help them address data residency requirements as well as regulations in key sectors such as financial services,” said Albert Triola, country leader, Oracle Spain. He added, “With our plans to invest an additional $1 billion in Spain over the next 10 years, we are reaffirming our commitment to helping Spanish organizations of all sizes and industries accelerate their adoption of cloud technologies to boost business performance and resilience.”
OCI: A Resilient and Scalable Cloud Foundation
The new Madrid cloud region will provide customers and partners with low-latency access to cloud services, enhancing their ability to derive value from data. This includes high availability and disaster recovery capabilities, which are crucial for business continuity and compliance with EU data residency regulations.
Financial services organizations, in particular, will benefit from Oracle’s cloud capabilities. Oracle has developed specific practices to help these organizations meet regulatory requirements, such as DORA. The company has also created advisory guidelines to assist clients in evaluating OCI in the context of their regulatory needs.
OCI’s architecture allows Oracle to deploy dedicated cloud regions with hyperscale services within customer data centers, enabling rapid expansion of public cloud regions as needed. This ensures consistent performance, service-level agreements (SLAs), and global pricing.
Endorsement from Leading Spanish Organizations
Major Spanish organizations have expressed support for Oracle’s new cloud region. Sergio Sánchez, operations, network, and IT director at Telefónica España, commented, “Our partnership with Oracle has been paying off for decades. We have a stronger position in the market, combining the best capabilities of both companies.”
Enríque Rodríguez, director of technology services at Banco Sabadell, said, “We rely on Oracle to migrate our critical workloads to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure while complying with local regulatory requirements. The arrival of the third Oracle Cloud Region in Spain will open significant opportunities for us in terms of utilizing new technologies such as AI across different areas of our business.”
Rafael Blesa, general manager of information systems at Naturgy, noted, “The upcoming arrival of Oracle’s third cloud region in Spain is great news as it will allow us to migrate low-latency and critical infrastructure support systems to the cloud while improving their security and resilience.”
Ravin Dhalani, CIO at MASORANGE, added, “We are excited about Oracle’s upcoming third cloud region in Spain, which will help us advance our innovation on OCI.”
About Oracle Distributed Cloud
Oracle’s distributed cloud offers a range of services, including:
- Public cloud: Hyperscale public cloud regions for organizations of all sizes, including those requiring strict EU sovereignty controls. See the full list of regions.
- Dedicated cloud: OCI services in customer data centers with OCI Dedicated Region, Oracle Alloy, and government-specific clouds in the U.S., UK, and Australia.
- Hybrid cloud: Key cloud services on-premises via Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer and Compute Cloud@Customer, managing deployments in over 60 countries.
- Multicloud: Options such as Oracle Database@Azure, MySQL HeatWave on AWS and Microsoft Azure, and Oracle Interconnect for Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.