Oracle has announced the opening of its second public cloud region in Saudi Arabia to meet the rapidly growing demand for its AI and cloud services, and enable public and private sector organisations migrate all types of workloads to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).

Part of Oracle’s distributed cloud strategy and Oracle’s US $1.5 billion investment to expand cloud infrastructure capabilities in the kingdom, the new Riyadh cloud region will provide organisations access to a wide range of cloud services to modernise their applications and help them innovate with data, analytics, and AI.

Center3 is the host partner for the new Oracle Cloud Riyadh Region.

The new region promises to boost the kingdom’s AI economy, which is expected to reach $135.2 billion by 2030. The Oracle Cloud Riyadh Region joins the existing Oracle Cloud Jeddah Region and the planned Oracle Cloud Region in NEOM to extend Oracle’s footprint in Saudi Arabia.

Oracle is the only hyperscaler capable of delivering AI and a full suite of 100+ cloud services across dedicated, public, and hybrid cloud environments, anywhere in the world. This includes Oracle Autonomous Database, HeatWave MySQL Database Service, Oracle Container Engine for Kubernetes, Oracle Cloud VMware Solution, OCI Generative AI service, OCI AI Infrastructure, and OCI Supercluster.

“The opening of Oracle’s new cloud region in Riyadh reflects the Kingdom’s continuous efforts in boosting the digital economy based on modern technologies and innovation,” said Eng. Haytham Alohali, vice minister, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology.

“This step will significantly enable international and local companies to achieve innovation and promote the adoption of AI and cloud computing technologies in various sectors, which enhances Saudi Arabia's competitiveness at the regional and international level.”

Richard Smith, executive vice president and general manager, EMEA Cloud Infrastructure, Oracle, said: “With the rapid expansion of our cloud footprint in Saudi Arabia, Oracle is committed to helping the country achieve its goal of developing one of the strongest digital economies in the world.”

“As part of our wider investment in cloud capabilities in Saudi Arabia, the Oracle Cloud Riyadh Region will help accelerate adoption of cloud and AI technologies to boost innovation across all sectors of the Saudi economy, while helping organizations addressing local data hosting requirements.”

With the Oracle Cloud Riyadh Region adding to the existing Oracle Cloud Jeddah Region, customers and partners can gain low-latency access to cloud services to help them derive better value from their data.

Customers can also leverage high availability and backup and disaster recovery capabilities across the two regions in Saudi Arabia to enhance business continuity and help address local regulations and requirements for local data hosting.

In addition, OCI’s sovereign AI capabilities provide customers with increased control over where they locate their data and computing infrastructure and how they manage it. As a result, customers can make use of AI capabilities designed with the requirements of digital sovereignty frameworks in mind.

OCI’s unique cloud architecture enables Oracle to launch dedicated cloud regions with hyperscale cloud services inside customer data centres and deploy more public cloud regions faster by starting with an optimal footprint and scaling as needed.

This approach helps meet the needs of all countries and markets without compromising cloud capabilities, while also providing the consistent performance, SLAs, and global pricing for which OCI has become known.

"We are thrilled to collaborate with Oracle as they expand their cloud infrastructure in Saudi Arabia with the new Riyadh cloud region,” said Fahad Alhajeri, chief executive officer, center3.

“This strategic initiative delivers on our shared vision of fostering technological innovation and advancing the digital economy of the kingdom.

“Oracle's cloud regions in Saudi Arabia will play an important role in enhancing data sovereignty, driving digital transformation, and empowering businesses across the country to achieve greater agility and growth.”

“Oracle’s continued expansion of its cloud footprint in Saudi Arabia is vital as companies increasingly leverage AI and GenAI capabilities,” said Jyoti Lalchandani, regional managing director, Middle East, Türkiye, Africa & India, IDC.

“Local cloud infrastructure helps organizations ensure faster data processing, enhanced security, and their compliance with national regulations, helping them innovate more efficiently and effectively.

“This strategic move not only supports the Kingdom’s vision to leverage artificial intelligence to drive digital transformation, but also empowers companies to harness the full potential of AI, driving competitive advantage and creating local value and growth in the kingdom.” – TradeArabia News Service