Oracle has opened it Oracle Cloud Johannesburg Region, the company’s first cloud region in Africa.
“The fourth industrial revolution, which is powered by cloud-led technologies, has significantly accelerated in South Africa and the wider African continent,” says Richard Smith, executive vice-president: EMEA at Oracle. “In recent months, cloud technologies have played a vital role in helping African public and private sector organisations ensure business continuity, deliver essential services, and meet evolving customer expectations.
“The Oracle Johannesburg region offers a next-generation cloud to run any application faster and more securely for less, helping businesses build resilience, agility and achieve improved ROI.”
The Johannesburg region is built on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), which enables customers to migrate IT workloads and data platforms to the cloud or build new cloud native applications. In addition, Oracle offers a wide range of application modernisation and cloud strategies to help African organisations operate with global competitiveness.
Mark Walker, associate vice-president: sub-Saharan Africa at IDC, says: “Public cloud services adoption is accelerating at CAGR of 25% year on year between 2020 and 2025 in Sub-Saharan Africa and IDC projects that the growth momentum will continue.
“The role of cloud in enabling innovation is underscored by the priority organisations have given to it as part of their digital transformation initiatives. Cloud-based technologies have helped organisations weather the Covid-19 crisis and cloud is now helping them build resilient organisations that can withstand uncertainties.
“Our survey of CIOs in South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria highlights that an in-country data centre is an important factor for 60% of organisations that are planning to adopt cloud over the next 12-18 months.
“The Johannesburg region will boost regional cloud infrastructure availability. IDC believes that cloud has become an inseparable element of an organisation’s digital transformation and innovation roadmap.”
This is Oracle’s 37th cloud region worldwide, and the company plans to have at least 44 cloud regions by the end of 2022.
Over the next year, it plans to will open seven additional cloud regions in Spain, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, France, Israel, and Saudi Arabia.
Customer reactions
Airports Company South Africa, which owns and manages a network of nine airports in South Africa, including the three main international gateways: OR Tambo International, Cape Town International and King Shaka International, process more than 40 million passengers annually.
“Airports Company South Africa is mandated to advance South Africa’s national agenda of economic growth and development while delivering a sustainable and profitable business,” says Mthoko Mncwabe, CIO of Airports Company South Africa/ “Cloud-led digital transformation is vital for us to maintain an agile and profitable business model. The Oracle Cloud Johannesburg Region will offer us the flexibility to explore the latest technologies that can support our digital roadmap.”
The Government Pensions Administrative Agency (GPAA) ensures the effective, transparent and accountable administration of pension funds on behalf of the Government Employees Pension Fund (GPEF) and the National Treasury of South Africa.
“GPAA is in the process of replacing legacy applications and refreshing its IT infrastructure,” says Meiring Coetzee, CIO of the GPAA. “The timing of the Johannesburg region opening is perfect to enable us to lift and shift our existing and future Oracle deployments to the cloud. This will enable us to cut down on on-premises infrastructure and assist with the management of Oracle services, cybersecurity and disaster recovery.
Telkom is Africa’s largest telecommunications company. “Telkom plays a leading role in South Africa’s digital revolution, providing the latest converged ICT solutions for a range of business and residential customers,” comments Reubin Layman, CIO of Openserve, Telkom SA.
“The Johannesburg region will boost the local infrastructure capability of South Africa and the wider continent, and help organisations kick-start their digital transformation journeys.”
Kgomotso Lebele, technology lead at Accenture Africa, says: “Our deep partnership with Oracle has always been one of Accenture’s most strategic and important initiatives to help our clients leverage the cloud and thrive in a cloud-first world.
“In this era of rapid transformation, cloud has proven to be a powerful tool for organisations to master change – in fact, we have found that cloud-focused organisations in Africa and Asia Pacific were able to achieve 1,5-times more cost reduction and were reported to be 3,7-times more likely to innovate as compared to their competitors.
“We have seen the benefits Oracle Cloud Infrastructure brings to our clients and know that the Oracle Cloud Johannesburg Region will further accelerate organisations’ cloud adoption and their ability to become agile, intelligent and digital businesses.”