• The US cloud giant is to invest $2bn in Germany and $1bn in the Netherlands
• The move comes hot on the heels of recently announced plans to invest $5bn in the UK
• Oracle has also been partnering with a growing number of telcos to support their own sovereign cloud ambitions

Oracle continues to tap into Europe’s growing demand for sovereign cloud and AI solutions with plans to invest a total of $3bn in local infrastructure in Germany and the Netherlands over the next five years.

In Germany, the US cloud giant is spending $2bn on expanding the presence of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) as well as AI infrastructure capacity in the Oracle Cloud Frankfurt region. The aim is to sell more AI and cloud computing services to public and private organisations in Germany, including sovereign AI and multicloud capabilities. 

Oracle noted, in particular, that its EU Sovereign Cloud offering, with a cloud region in Frankfurt, helps customers with “sensitive, regulated or strategically important data and applications benefit from the latest AI innovations and move to the cloud”.

It added that OCI’s distributed cloud enables organisations to deploy more than 200 AI and cloud services at the edge, in their own datacentre facilities, across clouds, or in the public cloud.

Thorsten Herrmann, senior vice president and country leader of Oracle Germany, also pointed to the German government’s goal of “strengthening Germany as a centre for AI investment and innovation in Europe”, while Karsten Wildberger, federal minister for digital affairs, observed that Oracle’s “strategic investment underscores that Germany is an attractive location for digital innovations and investments”. 

Moving over to the Netherlands, Oracle plans to invest $1bn in the Dutch market, also with a focus on the expansion of OCI as well as AI infrastructure capacity in the Oracle Cloud Amsterdam region.

Wilfred Scholman, vice president and country leader for the Netherlands at Oracle, noted that the nation’s government has “clearly expressed its ambition to build a strong technology ecosystem, allowing for AI innovation with both economic and societal impact”. 

Banking on sovereignty demand

Oracle is certainly signalling its commitment to scaling its AI and cloud presence amid the rush to support sovereign cloud services and exploit government ambitions to play a leading role in the AI era. 

Oracle’s German and Dutch engagements come only a few months after it announced plans to invest $5bn over the next five years to meet the rapidly growing demand for its cloud services in the UK.

In addition, the company is collaborating with telcos as they switch their strategic and investment focus to AI infrastructure. For instance, in Italy, Telecom Italia (TIM) Enterprise agreed last year to implement OCI services into its offerings and become the partner of a second Italian Oracle Cloud region, in Turin.

Oracle has also been developing telco relationships in Asia and the Middle East. For instance, Thai network operator AIS (Advanced Info Service) struck a deal to develop its sovereign services on Oracle’s cloud infrastructure and recently launched AIS Cloud to service domestic customers. 

In Saudi Arabia, Saudi Telecom Company (STC), announced last year that it will make sovereign cloud services available in Saudi Arabia with infrastructure platform Oracle Alloy. More recently, du in the United Arab Emirates unveiled plans to use Oracle cloud infrastructure to offer sovereign cloud and AI services to domestic customers.  

The company is of course not alone in its endeavours to tap into this burgeoning market: China’s Alibaba Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure are also pumping big bucks into their infrastructure. 

At the same time, strategic collaborations between the cloud services giants are not uncommon. Oracle has established Oracle Database@AWS with AWS and Oracle Database@Azure with Microsoft, and also formed a partnership with Google that allows customers to combine OCI and Google Cloud technologies.

- Anne Morris, Contributing Editor, TelecomTV