To meet the rapidly growing demand for its cloud services, Oracle has announced plans to open a third public cloud region in Saudi Arabia. Located in Riyadh, the new cloud region will be part of a planned US $1.5 billion investment from Oracle to expand cloud infrastructure capabilities in the Kingdom. The Oracle Cloud Riyadh Region will join the existing Oracle Cloud Jeddah Region and the planned Oracle Cloud Region to be located in the futuristic city of NEOM (a planned smart city in Tabuk Province in northwestern Saudi Arabia).

Increased demand for cloud computing has pushed technology companies such as Oracle, Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet’s Google to set up data centres across the world to speed up data transfer. To quickly meet the requirements of its growing cloud business in Saudi Arabia, Oracle will also expand the capacity of the Oracle Cloud Jeddah Region.

This investment is included in an MoU that Oracle has signed with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) to help Saudi Arabian businesses take advantage of the latest innovations in the cloud.

“In the last century, Saudi Arabia transformed its economy by developing the infrastructure needed to produce, refine, process and transport hydrocarbons. This century we are committed to creating the digital infrastructure that will underpin future economies,” said His Excellency Khalid Al-Falih, Minister of Investment. “Oracle’s decision to expand its cloud computing capacity in the Kingdom will play a key role in unlocking the opportunities that rapid technological advancements are creating. MISA will continue in its quest to enable the building of a robust digital infrastructure, by creating an attractive environment for these investments—for example, by establishing special economic zones that are tailored to particular industries such as cloud computing and digital transformation.”

As part of the MoU, Oracle will also work with MCIT and the Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC) to establish a commercial and operational model for an additional cloud region in Saudi Arabia that is aligned with Saudi government requirements and local data residency regulations. Oracle will also work with MCIT to help foster the development of Saudi Arabia’s cloud industry.

Unique among hyperscale providers, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) offers customer choice to deploy OCI based on regulations, data residency, or latency requirements. OCI distributed cloud includes its public regions, Dedicated Region, Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer, multicloud offerings, and recently-announced Oracle Alloy.

“Oracle’s investment will rapidly accelerate the cloud transformation across Saudi Arabia’s business and public sector,” said Richard Smith, Executive Vice President, Technology – EMEA, Oracle. “Oracle Cloud delivers pioneering innovation in technologies like AI, Machine Learning, and IoT, and it will help fuel the economic growth and digital transformation that is an integral part of the Saudi Vision 2030.”