Saudi Arabia: Oracle is making a late surge into the Middle East cloud market with a new centre in Saudi Arabia, and plans to open further ‘regions’ in the kingdom and the UAE later this year.

According to Andrew Reichman, director of product management, 87 percent of top companies in the Middle East region already use Oracle and 54 percent use Oracle Cloud.

On the expansion into the region, he said: “These represent Oracle’s first forays into the Gulf with Generation 2 Cloud regions, a part of the world that’s been underserved by other cloud vendors. Oracle is the first public cloud vendor with a region in Saudi Arabia.

The centre in Jeddah is one of five new cloud regions announced by Oracle as part of the company’s regional expansion plan, which also includes Melbourne (Australia), Osaka (Japan), Montreal (Canada) and Amsterdam (The Netherlands).

Oracle has opened 10 cloud regions in the last six months, and with the addition of the five new regions now has Oracle’s Generation 2 Cloud available in 21 fully independent areas.

An additional centre in Saudi and two in the UAE is part of a plan to have 36 cloud regions available by the end of 2020.

“Oracle plans to put a minimum of two regions in almost every country where we operate, and these new regions mark a big step toward this goal,” said Reichman.