Oracle plans to significantly increase its investment in Abu Dhabi as it seeks to meet the growing demand for artificial intelligence and cloud services in the UAE. Oracle operates two cloud regions in the UAE, in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. The company, which is hosting Oracle CloudWorld in Dubai on Wednesday, did not disclose details of the investment, reported by The National.
The adoption of artificial intelligence and cloud services continues to grow in the Middle East, driven by government efforts to develop the economy of the future, as well as a surge in young consumers and a developing digital landscape. This has given global cloud providers an incentive to expand in the region. In addition to Oracle, global companies including Microsoft, Amazon, IBM and Alibaba Cloud have opened cloud and data centers in the Middle East.
Khazna Data Centers to build data center
Last week, global private equity firm KKR and Gulf Data Hub said they had teamed up to invest more than $5 billion in the Dubai-based company’s data center infrastructure in the Gulf. It would be KKR’s first such investment in the region, with the company also taking a stake in GDH for an undisclosed sum.
Abu Dhabi-based Khazna Data Centers, meanwhile, is building a 100-megawatt data center in Ajman. The facility will be the company’s largest in the emirate, and its capacity is expected to more than double to 850 megawatts by 2029 from about 360 megawatts in 2024, chief executive Hassan Al Naqbi told The National last year.
Du uses Oracle’s cloud infrastructure
Oracle has 11 cloud regions in the Middle East and Africa that are operational, including Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Jeddah, Johannesburg and Jerusalem, with another 14 “coming online.” This includes public cloud regions and those managed directly by individual customers. It previously announced plans to open one in Neom, a $500 billion high-tech megacity in Saudi Arabia, and last year the company confirmed that it would be coming “soon.” Oracle has 171 cloud regions worldwide.
In the UAE, telecom provider du is using Oracle’s cloud infrastructure to offer sovereign AI services to the governments of Dubai and the Northern Emirates. Oracle also announced that it will train and certify 350,000 people in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, Morocco, Kuwait and Jordan on the most in-demand technologies to help meet demand for Oracle Cloud in the Middle East. The program will be delivered digitally through Oracle MyLearn, Oracle University’s learning platform.