GEC NEWS WIREOracle plans to open two Oracle Cloud Regions in Morocco to offer enterprise cloud services to local and regional organizations across Africa. The upcoming new regions will enable Oracle customers and partners to migrate mission-critical workloads from their data centers to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), while helping them comply with local regulations. As a result, customers and partners can access a wide range of cloud services to modernize their applications and innovate with AI, data, and analytics.
The planned public cloud regions in Casablanca and Settat underscore Oracle’s commitment to Africa and will help drive the digital transformation of enterprises, startups, universities, and investors in Morocco and across the region.
A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to establish the two Oracle Cloud Regions in Morocco was signed by Mr. Mohcine Jazouli, Minister Delegate to the Head of Government in charge of Investment, Convergence, and Evaluation of Public Policies; Ms. Ghita Mezzour, Minister Delegate to the Head of Government in charge of Digital Transition and Administrative Reform; Mr. Ali Seddiki, General Director of the Moroccan Agency for the Development of Investments and Exports (AMDIE); and Oracle leaders during GITEX Africa 2024.
“The opening of Oracle’s public cloud in Morocco will accelerate the digital transformation throughout the region,” said Ms. Ghita Mezzour, Minister Delegate to the Head of Government in charge of Digital Transition and Administrative Reform. “This strategic expansion, with a hyperscaler like Oracle, positions Morocco as a unique player in the region and allows an even more dynamic development of skills, and growth opportunities.”
“As one of the largest economies in Africa, and with strong business and cultural connections with West Africa, Maghreb, and Europe, Morocco offers unique growth opportunities for businesses that are aiming to accelerate their expansion by deploying the latest digital technologies,” said Richard Smith, executive vice president, Technology, EMEA, Oracle.
“We warmly welcome Oracle’s investment in Moroccan soil, emphasizing a strong confidence in the Moroccan youth’s expertise and talent. This initiative underscores our commitment to fostering technological advancement within our nation. Furthermore, it positions Morocco prominently on the international digital stage, showcasing our capabilities and readiness to lead in the global digital economy,” said Mr. Mohcine Jazouli, Minister Delegate to the Head of Government in charge of Investment, Convergence, and Evaluation of Public Policies.
OCI Provides Customers with Latest AI Infrastructure Offerings and a Resilient and Scalable Cloud Foundation
Oracle is the only hyperscaler capable of delivering AI and a full suite of 100+ cloud services across dedicated, public, and hybrid cloud environments, anywhere in the world. Part of Oracle’s distributed cloud strategy, the planned regions will offer OCI’s full suite of services. This includes Oracle Autonomous Database, MySQL HeatWave Database Service, Oracle Container Engine for Kubernetes, Oracle Cloud VMware Solution, OCI Generative AI service, and OCI AI Infrastructure. OCI’s unique cloud architecture enables Oracle to deploy dedicated cloud regions with hyperscale cloud services inside customer data centers and deploy more public cloud regions faster by starting with an optimal footprint and scaling as needed. This approach helps meet the needs of all countries and markets without compromising cloud capabilities, while also providing the consistent performance, SLAs, and global pricing for which OCI has become known.
With the planned regions in Morocco, customers and partners can gain low-latency access to cloud services to help them derive better value from their data. Customers can also leverage redundancy and disaster recovery capabilities to enhance business continuity and help address Morocco’s regulations and requirements for data residency. In addition, OCI’s sovereign AI capabilities provide customers with increased control over where they locate their data and computing infrastructure and how they manage it. As a result, customers can achieve AI sovereignty by gaining the assurance that their use of AI is aligned with digital sovereignty frameworks.
