Oracle has launched its first cloud region in France, in response to the growing demand for cloud computing among commercial and public sector businesses. Clients and partners will get access to all Oracle Cloud services through the Oracle Cloud Marseille Region, which can help them build their businesses.
Customers that want their data to stay in France may now use Oracle Cloud services from Marseille, including Oracle Autonomous Database, Oracle Container Engine for Kubernetes, and Oracle Cloud VMware. This will especially assist banking and government firms in meeting essential regulatory compliance obligations.
Oracle also provides a comprehensive range of application modernization and cloud techniques to help French businesses compete on a global scale. The new Oracle Cloud region is strategically located in Marseille, as it is a top global Internet hub that is also one of the fastest growing Internet hubs in the world, with many submarine cables coming ashore used for international data transmission.
Oracle Cloud is currently accessible in 32 locations across the world, with ambitions to expand to at least 44 by the end of 2022, making it one of the world’s fastest-growing cloud providers.
Dual-Region Cloud Strategy
In 2022, Oracle wants to open a second cloud region in France. The second cloud region in France is part of Oracle’s dual-region cloud strategy, which enables customers to deploy resilient applications in multiple geographically separated locations – without having sensitive data leave the country – to meet business continuity and compliance requirements.
“It is crucial for performance and security that we offer private and public sector organizations the ability to have cloud infrastructure located in France to manage their most critical data and applications,” said Karine Picard, General Manager at Oracle France. “We currently see triple digital growth in our cloud business that reflects our customers desire to rapidly digitize their operations so they can better serve their customers.”
European Cloud Expansion
Oracle Cloud’s architecture would provide a durable, high-performance basis for cloud services, while its physical and virtual network design can improve performance and security, in addition to the dual-region approach that optimizes data access. The Marseille cloud region, like every other Oracle Cloud region, has three fault domains, which are hardware clusters that comprise logical data centers, to offer high availability and resiliency to hardware and network failures.
Oracle’s large network across the European Union is bolstered with the addition of Marseille, with Frankfurt and Amsterdam already operational, Milan and Stockholm set to open later this year, and Spain set to join in 2022. Oracle’s approach is to meet clients where they are, allowing them to retain their data and services close at hand. Customers can use Dedicated Region and Exadata Cloud@Customer to install Oracle Cloud entirely within their own data centers, use public cloud-based management to deliver cloud services locally, or use Roving Edge Infrastructure to deploy cloud services remotely on the edge.
Oracle is committed to sustainability, and by 2025, all Oracle Cloud regions will be powered entirely by renewable energy. Several Oracle Cloud regions, including those in North America, South America, and Europe, are already powered entirely by renewable energy, and all Oracle Cloud regions employ “cutting-edge” energy management and cooling technology to reduce their environmental effect.
The Marseille area uses a ‘river cooling’ based heat exchange technology that would be 30 times more energy efficient than traditional cooling systems to keep server temperatures down. As a result, the French cloud region would have a low environmental effect. Oracle reused or recycled 99.6% of its retired hardware in FY21 as part of its renewable energy clean Cloud program, while rigorously following to Oracle’s data privacy and security procedures.
Some Reactions from the Industry
“We are pleased to see Oracle investing in a cloud region in France as this is an important step in helping our customers leverage local, renewable infrastructure that provides security and sustainability in an eco-friendly and more inclusive digital world,” said Todd Moore, vice president, Encryption Products, Thales. “With this new data center closer to customers’ business, and leveraging the technical partnership between OCI and Thales, we will help more customers move to the cloud faster while securely remaining in control of their data.”
“Oracle’s decision to invest locally in France with the arrival of a new cloud region is a real opportunity for customers. This strategy demonstrates Oracle’s desire to be recognized as a major player in digital transformation in France,” said Philippe Montmartin, Managing Director, Oracle Business Group Lead Gallia, Accenture Technology. “Given the strategic partnership between Oracle and Accenture, the fact that Oracle has the HDS certificate (for French health data) and its work with regard to the Trusted Cloud initiative alongside Accenture’s own investments in the cloud, we are convinced that this will enable us to serve our customers even better, especially those in the public sector, who wish to migrate to the cloud.”
