ABU DHABI—With its cloud business growing in the Middle East, Oracle plans to establish a state-of-the-art data center in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates. Oracle CEO Mark Hurd unveiled the plans January 26 as the latest evidence of Oracle’s commitment to the region.
“This is a big deal for us, big decision for us, big investment for us,” Hurd said in a briefing at Etihad Towers in Abu Dhabi. “It’s one of the regions leading our movement to the cloud.”
Over the past three years, Oracle has doubled the size of its workforce in the Middle East, a reflection of its growing business there. “Our success in the region is another reason to keep investing in the region,” Hurd said.
Oracle recently disclosed plans to hire another 250 cloud sales professionals in the Middle East and open new offices this year in Abu Dhabi and Dubai in the UAE, as well as in Amman, Jordan, and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
“This latest recruitment initiative will support the needs of rapidly growing businesses in the region that are embracing the agility and scalability that Oracle Cloud delivers,” said Abdul Rahman Al Thehaiban, Oracle senior vice president for the Middle East, Central Asia, North Africa, and South Africa.
Oracle plans to start construction on the Abu Dhabi data center after a logistics process, Hurd said, and have it up and running "in a reasonably short time frame." The data center will feature Oracle’s Engineered Systems—which combine highly tuned hardware, software, and networking for top performance—to support the increasing demands of area customers who tap Oracle's wide range of cloud services. “We have a very rigorous process” for building cloud data centers, Hurd said.
By locating a data center in the UAE, Oracle will be better able to manage service levels and respond to local customers who, for a variety of reasons including data governance requirements, need their data to be in close geographic proximity.
Oracle’s growing roster of cloud customers in the UAE includes investment firm KBBO Group; ADNOC Distribution, one of the largest distributors of oil and gas in the UAE; and the Dubai World Trade Center.
Looking to lengthen that list, Oracle intends to add the new cloud salespeople “as fast as we can find quality people,” Hurd said.
Oracle hosted a series of events in Dubai this week—Modern Finance Experience, Modern Customer Experience, Modern HCM Experience, and Modern Supply Chain Experience—where 1,500 customers, partners, and other attendees discussed business and technology strategies, including recent cloud projects.At a keynote presentation earlier in the day, Hurd said the Middle East and UAE are a “vibrant cloud market.”
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