Computer technology giant Oracle is boosting its cloud business in Asia. Oracle’s investment in Singapore involves the opening of the Oracle Cloud Singapore Region, bringing the total of the firm’s cloud regions globally to 33. The new cloud region will be serving the broader Southeast Asian region where demand for enterprise cloud services has picked up, the company said.
Oracle has also committed US$3 million worth of Oracle Cloud credits and free trainings to startups in the city-state to boost traction, and will be providing free Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) training and certifications until March 31, 2022.
OCI is Oracle’s next-generation cloud infrastructure designed to run applications faster and more securely. It’s a complete cloud infrastructure platform featuring all the services needed for firms to move their existing workloads and data platforms to the cloud, as well as to build new cloud native applications.
Customers of OCI also gain access to the full suite of Oracle Cloud Applications, as well as Oracle Autonomous Database, giving them the opportunity and choice to create the architecture that best suits their business needs.
In addition, OCI’s extensive network of more than 70 FastConnect global and regional partners offer customers dedicated connectivity to Oracle Cloud regions and OCI services. For Singapore, these partners include Colt Technology Services, Console Connect, Equinix, Lumen, Megaport and Singtel.
Expanding Indian footprint
In India, Oracle is expanding its cloud business, deepening its partnership with Bharti Airtel and its data center network Nxtra to expand its cloud presence and gain exposure to more than a million potential enterprise customers.
The collaboration will see Oracle Cloud’s solutions being made available through Airtel Business’ integrated portfolio. Airtel Business serves over one million enterprises in India, including large corporations, startups, governments and small and medium-sized enterprises.
The deal will also enable Oracle to expand its cloud Mumbai region, allowing it to serve more customers. The expanded Oracle Cloud Mumbai Region will be available in 2022.
In addition, Oracle and Airtel will be setting up a Cloud Centre of Excellence in Gurgaon where a dedicated team of specialists from both organizations will be focusing on modernizing Airtel’s internal workloads and helping customers adopt cloud. The team will also be working on joint intellectual property (IPO) solution development focused on multicloud solutions, business-to-business (B2B) customer experience solutions, unified communications solutions, and more.
Oracle’s new investments in Asia-Pacific (APAC) are part of a planned expansion of its cloud business. Over the next year, the firm plans to open at least 11 new cloud regions across Europe, the Middle East, APAC, and Latin America.
Rising cloud adoption in banking
This past year has seen cloud providers stepping up investments to boost business. These moves, not only from Oracle but also Huawei and Microsoft, come on the back of surging cloud adoption as businesses further move online.
A new survey of IT executives in the banking sector, conducted by The Economist Intelligence Unit and supported by Temenos, found that adoption of software-as-a-service (SaaS) and cloud infrastructure has accelerated since the beginning of the pandemic.
82% of banking IT executives said that they now have a clear strategy for adopting cloud. More than seven in ten (72%) believe that incorporating the cloud into their organization’s products and services will help them achieve their business priorities, and just under half (47%) said that it will do so “to a great extent”.
Banking IT executives cited cost (42%) as the biggest driver of cloud adoption, followed by the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) (34%), business agility (25%) and improving customer experience (21%).