Oracle reveals its plans to open two Oracle Cloud Regions in Morocco. This plan will provide enterprise cloud services to local and regional African organizations. In addition, the plan will enable Oracle customers and partners to migrate workloads from data centers to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and follow local regulations. It will allow customers and partners to access various cloud services to modernize their applications and transform with Data, AI and Analytics.
Also Read: What is General Data Protection Regulation and Why is it Important?
About Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is Oracle’s comprehensive suite of cloud services designed to help businesses run a wide range of applications and services in a highly secure, high-performance environment. It provides a full range of services, including computing, storage, database, networking, and more, enabling companies to build, deploy, and manage workloads in the cloud effectively.
What is a Cloud Region?
A “cloud region” refers to the specific geographic location where your public cloud resources are physically situated. It is a common misconception that the “cloud” is merely an intangible, ethereal storage space. In reality, the cloud comprises devices that process data, known as data centers, located in specific places.
Factors to Consider When Choosing a Cloud Region
- Proximity: Select a region geographically closest to users or customers to minimize network latency and maximize performance.
- Feature Availability: Ensure the necessary services, such as high-performance computing, machine learning, data analytics, and IoT, are available in the chosen region. Service availability can be influenced by regulatory restrictions, infrastructure limitations, and varying user demand.
- Compliance and Data Sovereignty: Different regions have varying regulations and compliance requirements for data storage and processing. Some jurisdictions prohibit user data storage outside their territories. Select a region that meets your specific compliance needs.
- Disaster Recovery: Evaluate the number and distribution of availability zones in each region. More availability zones provide better redundancy and resilience during outages or disasters.
- Cost: Cloud service provider pricing can differ significantly between regions. Consider the cost implications of using resources in the selected region.
- Network Connectivity: Network infrastructure and connectivity options vary by region. High-capacity backbone connections, redundant network paths, and dedicated connections to cloud service providers can impact applications’ performance, reliability, and cost.
Oracle’s Expansion in Morocco
The planned public cloud regions in Casablanca and Settat highlight Oracle’s commitment to Africa and will drive the digital transformation of enterprises, startups, universities, and investors in Morocco and the broader region.
A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to establish these Oracle Cloud Regions in Morocco was signed by Mr. Mohcine Jazouli, Minister Delegate to the Head of Government in charge of Investment, Convergence, and Evaluation of Public Policies; Ms. Ghita Mezzour, Minister Delegate to the Head of Government in charge of Digital Transition and Administrative Reform; Mr. Ali Seddiki, General Director of the Moroccan Agency for the Development of Investments and Exports (AMDIE); and Oracle leaders during GITEX Africa 2024.
Cloud Services Expansion:
- Oracle is the sole hyperscaler offering AI and a suite of 100+ cloud services globally across dedicated, public, and hybrid environments.
- The planned regions will provide OCI’s full suite of services, including Oracle Autonomous Database and OCI Generative AI.
- OCI’s unique architecture enables rapid deployment of public cloud regions with optimal scalability.
Benefits for Customers and Partners:
- Low-latency access to cloud services for better data value extraction.
- Enhanced redundancy and disaster recovery capabilities for improved business continuity.
- Compliance with Morocco’s regulations on data residency and sovereignty.
What does Oracle’s distributed cloud lineup include?
- Dedicated cloud: With OCI Dedicated Region, customers can run all OCI cloud services in their own data centers, while partners can resell OCI cloud services and customize the experience using Oracle Alloy. Oracle also operates separate U.S., UK, and Australian Government Clouds and Isolated Cloud Regions for U.S. national security purposes. Each of these products provides a full cloud and AI stack that customers can deploy as a Sovereign Cloud.
- Hybrid cloud: OCI delivers key cloud services on-premises via Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer and Compute Cloud@Customer and is already managing deployments in over 60 countries.
- Public cloud: Hyperscale public cloud regions serve any size of the organization, including those requiring strict EU sovereignty controls. See the full list of regions here.
- Multicloud: Options, including Oracle Database@Azure, MySQL HeatWave on AWS and Microsoft Azure, and Oracle Interconnect for Microsoft Azure, allow customers to combine key capabilities from across clouds.
FAQs
1. How will Oracle’s planned cloud regions in Morocco contribute to digital transformation?
These regions underscore Oracle’s commitment to Africa and will drive the digital transformation of enterprises, startups, universities, and investors in Morocco and the broader region.
2. What are the common challenges organizations face during cloud migration?
- Data security and regulatory compliance are major concerns as organizations move to the cloud
- Skills gap
- Cloud migration complexity
- Resistance to cloud adoption
- Embrace innovation and move to the cloud
3. What are the benefits of Cloud regions?
- Security
- Availability
- Cost
- Scalability
- Agility
- Cost reduction
- Data security
- Disaster Recovery
- Physical security
4. What role does cloud infrastructure play in cloud computing?
Cloud infrastructure forms the backbone of cloud computing by separating and virtualizing hardware and software components. For private clouds, it is managed by cloud service providers or internal IT departments, delivering virtualized resources like servers, storage, and network components over the Internet or a network.
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