Oracle is expanding its cloud presence in the Middle East. According to a company representative, the plan is to open a cloud region in Riyadh. The rising need for cloud computing has led technology giants such as Oracle, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google to establish datacenters globally for faster data transfer.
Saudi authorities have encouraged international companies to invest in the kingdom and move their regional headquarters to Riyadh if they would like to benefit from its contracts. Nick Redshaw, a senior vice president at Oracle, stated that they are finalizing plans to open the Riyadh region and are still working with their suppliers to announce the exact date.
The investment to be made over several years
Oracle will also increase the capacity of its cloud region in Jeddah, which the company opened in 2020. Oracle made this announcement at the major tech conference in the Saudi capital, which global tech leaders attended.
Although Oracle may be trailing its bigger competitors in the race to control the cloud computing market, it was one of the first large tech companies to establish a data center in Saudi Arabia. The kingdom is working towards its economic transformation plan, Vision 2030, led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and has invested hundreds of billions of dollars towards it.
The Kingdom’s Vision 2030 to diversify from oil faces challenges
In the first half of 2022, FDI was just under $4.1 billion, a far cry from the targeted $100 billion by the end of this decade. Oracle is closely working with the Saudi government to finalize plans for the regional headquarters requirement and will announce further details once the plans have been completed.
The company has also secured contracts from Crown Prince Mohammed’s $500 billion flagship project, NEOM, a futuristic city and economic zone built along the Red Sea coast, which Redshaw said is one of the largest consumers of cloud capability in Saudi Arabia.
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