Oracle said on Monday that it will build a data centre in Johannesburg, firming up plans first announced two years ago.

The US enterprise software giant, co-founded by flamboyant billionaire Larry Ellison, first revealed in 2019 that South Africa was one of the countries where it planned to invest in cloud data centre facilities. At the time, it said the investment would happen by the end of 2020. South Africa was included in 20 planned new Oracle Cloud regions.

The Oracle investment follows similar investments in infrastructure by Microsoft and Amazon Web Services. Microsoft has deployed Azure data centres in Johannesburg and Cape Town, while AWS had built cloud facilities in Cape Town.

“Over the next year, Oracle will open 14 cloud regions with new locations across Europe, the Middle East, Asia-Pacific and Latin America,” the company said in a statement. (Presumably the South Africa build is grouped into the Middle East or Europe.)

“Upcoming cloud regions include Milan (Italy), Stockholm (Sweden), Marseille (France), Spain, Singapore, Johannesburg, Jerusalem (Israel), Mexico and Colombia,” it said. “Additional second regions will open in Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates), Saudi Arabia, France, Israel and Chile.”

Cloud regions

Oracle plans to have at least 44 cloud regions by the end of 2022. It also plans to establish at least two cloud regions in almost every country where it operates for redundancy and backup, the company said. Already, the US, Canada, the UK, South Korea, Japan, Brazil, India and Australia have two cloud regions. The company didn’t say if or when it plans to build a second cloud region in South Africa.

All cloud regions worldwide will be powered with 100% renewable energy by 2025. TechCentral has asked Oracle for details about how it intends to achieve this in South Africa and will update this article once this information is received. – © 2021 NewsCentral Media