Oracle plans million-dollar investment in Saudi Arabia
Oracle Corp. specialises in providing cloud services and integrated platforms and is one of the world's largest software companies; now, it will invest a large amount of money, specifically 1.5 billion dollars, in Saudi Arabia as it opens its third public cloud region in Riyadh, a US company official confirmed.
The Saudi country will be a base for deploying its cloud computing offerings. Oracle's plan to operate in the cloud is intended to allow customers to deploy multiple applications, that is, geographically separate locations within a country to meet resiliency needs.
''We are finalising plans to open up the Riyadh region. We are still working with our vendors before we can announce the actual date,'' said Nick Redshaw, Oracle senior vice president, in an interview from Dubai.
Some of the technology companies, such as Oracle, Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet's Google, are to set up data centres around the world to speed up the transfer of data.
Saudi officials have encouraged international companies to invest in the Kingdom and move their regional headquarters to the capital Riyadh to take advantage of government contracts.
Dr Ahmed al-Theneyan, Saudi Arabia's Deputy Minister of Technology, Industry and Digital Capabilities, referred to his country's aspirations for innovation and economic growth through advanced digital technologies in order to achieve good potential for the country.
The Saudi Kingdom has dedicated millions of dollars to economic transformation, knowing that Saudi Arabia is the largest economy in the Middle East and the richest Arab country.
Technology and innovation stimulate creativity and modernisation in the world. Therefore, the new initiatives that will be launched to support the country will be an attempt to further increase interest in technological change and development work.
The majority of the population is computer literate. The Saudi people are a very intelligent people and they adapt very easily to technology, it is a very familiar sector for them.
All new technology brings with it challenges related to trust, knowledge, skills and so on. And what you're going to want to get is proper management.
Richard Smith, Executive Vice President of Technology at Oracle, said: ''We are fully committed to supporting Saudi Arabia's economic goals in line with Saudi Vision 2030. Conceived and designed with security principles in mind, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure is the cloud of choice in Saudi Arabia. With this partnership, we are now expanding our presence in the Kingdom to continue to support the digital transformation initiatives of the country's public and private sector organisations."
The Vision 2030 programme aims to achieve a commitment to building smart cities, improving well-being, providing decent work, and delivering innovation-driven economic growth, which is why technical infrastructures are being created.
Ahmed al-Theneyan pointed out that "robotics has a huge potential to improve our lives and increase productivity, it just needs to be applied and used in the right way".
Cherian Varguese, regional general manager of Oracle, in one of his tweets said that being an innovator means being the first to try new things, making bold strategic investments with an eye on the future, setting ambitious goals and, most importantly, learning from the best minds in the world and harnessing their immense potential.
The manager reports that he expects the Saudi Kingdom to use this unique platform to make ground-breaking technology announcements and present visionary projects.
It will work to achieve the company's vision of making the Kingdom the leading digital hub that connects three continents: Asia, Europe and Africa. In addition, Saudi Arabia's technology sector is worth more than 40 billion dollars.
Americas Coordinator: José Antonio Sierra.
