Oracle has announced the opening of a new Oracle Interconnect for Microsoft Azure location in Johannesburg, providing direct connectivity between the Oracle Cloud Johannesburg region and the Microsoft Azure South Africa North region.
With the latest Oracle Interconnect for Microsoft Azure, customers across Africa can now use the Oracle Database Service for Microsoft Azure.
Since 2019, Oracle and Microsoft have partnered to deliver 12 Oracle Interconnect for Microsoft Azure locations around the world, including San Jose, Phoenix, Ashburn, Toronto, Vinhedo, Amsterdam, London, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, and Johannesburg.
These locations offer customers multicloud capabilities to run their business-critical applications. For example, customers using Oracle Autonomous Database on OCI can connect to Azure analytics tools and AI workloads without copying data. Customers can also run applications like Oracle E-Business Suite on Azure or OCI and integrate as part of a single solution.
“Our longstanding collaboration with Microsoft Azure gives our joint customers the flexibility and choice to innovate using the best of both our clouds. With growing customer demand for multicloud capabilities across Africa, we look forward to helping Microsoft Azure customers migrate their workloads to the cloud without the need for complicated re-platforming, while giving them seamless access to Oracle Database services on OCI,” says Nick Redshaw, senior vice-president: technology cloud, Middle East and Africa at Oracle.
“Microsoft and Oracle share a longstanding history of delivering excellence on behalf of our mutual customers and supporting their evolving needs,” says Colin Erasmus, chief operating officer of Microsoft South Africa. “Expanding the Oracle Interconnect for Microsoft Azure to Johannesburg ensures our valued customers in this region can benefit from the choice to deploy multicloud solutions.”
With Oracle Interconnect for Microsoft Azure, customers in Africa can now migrate and run mission-critical enterprise workloads across their Azure and OCI environments with a private, dedicated low-latency connection and identity federation. Customers also receive a collaborative, comprehensive service support model. Pricing is port-based with no additional charges for bandwidth consumed.
Customers can use the Oracle Interconnect for Microsoft Azure to connect components of one or more applications that require frequent communication, running some parts on OCI and others on Azure, thus benefitting from a “best-of-both-clouds” experience. They can also use either OCI Identity and Access Management or Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) for single sign-on to the two clouds and the respective applications. Customers can build high availability architectures within the regions and disaster recovery capabilities with another pair of interconnected regions using architectures published in the Cloud Adoption Frameworks for OCI and Azure.
“Cloud has become the foundational technology for organisations to modernize their critical IT infrastructure and leverage the benefits of emerging technologies such as AI/ML, analytics, IoT, security, and automation. The continuous investment in cloud data centre space in South Africa by the global cloud providers has accelerated the adoption of public cloud services across industries, including some highly regulated sectors such as government, healthcare, and banking,” said Mark Walker, associate vice president: sub-Saharan Africa, IDC.
“The total spending on public cloud services in South Africa is forecast to grow at a five-year CAGR of 24,6% between 2021 to 2026. The Oracle Interconnect for Microsoft Azure in South Africa will boost options available to local and global enterprises in the country. Given the availability of multiple in-country cloud providers, customers will be adopting a multicloud strategy based on price, functionalities, SLA, QoS, interoperability and innovation that, in turn, benefits the overall market,” adds Walker.