Oracle opens South African cloud region in Johannesburg

Computer technology company Oracle announced Thursday the opening of a data center to provide cloud services across Africa.  

The data center, which opened this week in Johannesburg, will provide local cloud services from Oracle across Africa for the first time. According to reports, Africa will be the U.S. company’s 37th cloud region – which means an area that allows customers to get faster access from a local data center.  

“The fourth industrial revolution, which is powered by cloud-led technologies, has significantly accelerated in South Africa and the wider African continent. 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,” said Richard Smith, executive vice president, EMEA, Oracle.  

For example, other big companies such as Microsoft, Amazon, and Huawei, which have facilities in South Africa, highlight the growing importance of a local presence in a region. Driven by the increased demand for faster computing from African banks and telecom firms has attracted significant cloud operators.  

So the driver for the launch of such a project is the rapidly growing demand for enterprise cloud services on the continent, Oracle noted.  

It added: “The Johannesburg 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 company offers a wide range of application modernization and cloud strategies to help African organizations operate with global competitiveness.  

The fast connectivity offered by subsea cable landing stations and Africa’s position as the most developed economy turned the continent a key location for cloud operators like Oracle. In the meantime, smaller cloud operators are entering or expanding in the market – and not just in South Africa.  

The plans that Oracle announced don’t include more data centers in Africa this year. However, more could come next year as the company discovers areas such as West Africa, Cherian Varghese, regional managing director for the Middle East and Africa, said.  

It is worth mentioning that Oracle will open its first regions in Spain, Mexico, and Colombia this year, while additional second regions are due to open in Saudi Arabia, France, Israel, and Chile.  

Last but not least, Microsoft launched its new project, an Azure region in Johannesburg, in 2019 alongside a Cape Town region that is no longer listed.