The opening of Oracle’s new cloud region in Stockholm region in December 2021 came at a good time for Conny Björling, the head of enterprise architecture for Skanska Group.
Stockholm-based Skanska runs complex building construction and infrastructure projects throughout Europe and North America and relies on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) for data-intensive processes such as financial reporting and compliance. Having local data centers in the regions where the firm works “makes it easier to keep information and data related to specific projects in the local country where required,” Björling says.
And the benefits of a local cloud region for Skanska’s needs—which involves integrating, scaling, applying machine learning and other analytics processes to data from a wide variety of sources—go beyond data sovereignty and includes ultra-fast, low latency connections and data resilience options “that opens up new possibilities for us,” he says.
At the same time as the Stockholm expansion, Oracle has opened a new cloud region in Milan, Italy, and this week another new cloud region in Johannesburg, South Africa. That gives Oracle 37 cloud regions worldwide, with plans to have at least 44 cloud regions by the end of 2022, continuing one of the fastest expansions of any major cloud provider.
In each region, local access to OCI will help firms move their complex, critical workloads and data platforms to the cloud and build new cloud native applications. The cloud region offers access to the entire set of Oracle Cloud services—the full suite of Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications, as well as Oracle Autonomous Database, Oracle Container Engine for Kubernetes, and Oracle Cloud VMware solution, giving them the choice to create the architecture that best suits their business needs.
For example, the new Stockholm region is timely for Gränges Finspång AB, which runs on Oracle E-Business Suite. From its production facility in Sweden, Gränges Group supplies rolled aluminum products and thermal management systems to the global automotive industry. The firm recently migrated its Oracle E-Business Suite database to Oracle Enterprise Database Service and moved server and backup data to OCI. The move to OCI gave Gränges access to the same workloads as the previous on-premises system but with more features, faster speed, and lower cost, says IT Manager Ingvar Pettersson. “We needed an IT business platform that could be flexible, stable, and cost-efficient. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure fits our needs perfectly,” he says. The Oracle Stockholm region opens the door to moving more of the firm’s IT workloads to OCI, Pettersson says.
Nordic companies are leaders in digital business, and have strong ties with Oracle. In addition to Skanska and Gränges Finspång, OCI customers Volvo Group, the Finish State Treasury, and ICA, the leading grocery retailer in Sweden, show the connections Oracle has in the Nordic region, which consistently ranks among the most digitally advanced in the world. Most recently, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland topped the European Union’s 2021 Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI), which tracks EU Member States’ digital competitiveness in human capital, broadband connectivity, the integration of digital technologies by businesses, and digital public services.
“It is important that we offer Nordic organizations access to cloud infrastructure locally to help ensure data sovereignty and to manage their most critical data and applications,” says Pelle Ewald, Oracle Sweden country manager. “We currently see significant growth in our cloud business that reflects our customers’ desire to rapidly scale their digital operations in an effort to continue to best serve their consumers now and in the future.”
In their own way, both Milan and Johannesburg continue this story. In Johannesburg, businesses such as Telkom, Africa’s largest telecommunications company, along with many others across the continent are looking to cloud technologies to quickly scale their digital operations. Meanwhile, the Milan region is strategically located in the heart of Italy’s business and industrial hub, supporting some of Italy’s largest public sector organizations and its most important industries including banking, fashion, food and tourism—as well as one of Europe’s largest start-up communities. Oracle expects to continue tapping into these kind of strategic business hubs with its 2022 global expansion plans.