Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) has revealed plans to launch new sovereign cloud regions across the European Union in 2023 to better serve its European customers.
Both private companies and public sector organizations across the EU will be able to use these new OCI sovereign cloud regions to host data and applications that are sensitive, regulated, or of strategic regional importance. They are also designed to further enable customers to demonstrate alignment with relevant EU regulations and guidance.
Scott Twaddle, vice president of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure product and industries, said in a blog post: “Our customers tell us they want the benefits of cloud but have requirements for where data is located, the regulations they must meet, and the personnel operating the underlying infrastructure. OCI’s new sovereign cloud regions will operate under a comprehensive set of policies and governance that enhance our existing capabilities for data residency, security, privacy, and compliance. These additional policies will establish a framework for data and operational sovereignty, including how customer data is stored and accessed, and how government requests for data are handled.”
The first two sovereign cloud regions for the EU will be located in Germany and Spain, with operations and support restricted to EU residents and specific EU legal entities. The sovereign cloud regions will be logically and physically separate from the existing public OCI Regions in the EU, which are in Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Paris, Marseille, Milan, and Stockholm.
Oracle plans to migrate customers using Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications within the existing EU Restricted Access cloud service to the new OCI sovereign cloud regions. These customers will gain the additional operational enhancements of the new sovereign cloud regions and will have full native access to OCI cloud services.
Andrea Cesarini, Accenture Oracle business group lead, said: “With Oracle’s sovereign cloud regions for the EU, we bring our clients the ability to host sensitive data and applications in a public cloud that is both within the EU and designed to facilitate customer compliance with EU data privacy and sovereignty regulations. This offering allows us to leverage any and every OCI public cloud service for our future projects.”
Jarkko Levasma, government chief information officer and director general for Ministry of Finance of Finland, added: “Having cloud services with data centers that are located in the EU and operated, updated and supported by EU residents, while maintaining isolation from non-EU cloud regions, is an important part of our Cloud adoption. This will open up possibilities to adopt infrastructure, platform and software as a service in Finland for the government.”
