Private sector companies that serve the public sector face substantial challenges as they modernize their technology and meet government compliance and security requirements around the world. Whether they serve federal agencies, defense customers, or state governments, companies can make the process far simpler by using a single compliant cloud provider wherever they operate. Oracle is the only cloud provider with dedicated government community cloud regions in the US, UK, and Australia that help companies meet compliance standards and serve the needs of these governments.
Let’s discuss five ways that Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) helps companies that serve public sector customers in global markets.
With regions located in 23 countries globally, Oracle offers services from 46 public cloud regions as part of its distributed cloud. OCI is designed for high availability, providing dual regions in many countries to support disaster recovery within national or regional boundaries.
Oracle launched government cloud regions in the US, UK, and Australia: Oracle US Government Cloud, Oracle US Defense Cloud, Oracle UK Government and Defence Cloud, and Oracle Australian Government and Defence Cloud. Companies can use these regions to directly support the mission of these governments. Oracle is the only cloud provider with dedicated government community cloud regions in all three of these countries.
Customers can utilize Oracle’s global cloud region availability and cloud native tools, such as Terraform, Resource Manager, and Oracle Container Engine for Kubernetes (OKE), to build repeatable architectures and isolate their data and solutions in different countries with less effort. This configuration minimizes the engineering effort and cost to offer services in multiple countries. At Oracle CloudWorld 2023, global cybersecurity provider Qualys presented on how they have taken this approach to host solutions across multiple OCI environments.
Oracle’s government cloud regions meet the highest security and compliance standards. Oracle US Government Cloud is accredited at the FedRAMP High impact level and Department of Defense (DoD) Impact Level 4 (IL4) to protect some of the most sensitive unclassified data. Oracle US Defense Cloud goes a step further with accreditation at DoD IL5 and connections to Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) Boundary Cloud Access Points (BCAP) and the Defense Research and Engineering Network (DREN). Companies that serve US Defense customers can also use Oracle US Government Cloud to meet Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) 2.0 compliance, a framework to assess the maturity level of contractors in protecting controlled unclassified information (CUI) and other sensitive data. To shorten the time to market, US defense contractors can also pair the Oracle US Defense Cloud with the Oracle Cloud Native Secure Cloud Computing Architecture (SCCA) landing zone to help meet the DoD requirements.
Oracle built the first and only sovereign, dedicated dual-region cloud for UK Government and Defence customers. Designed in collaboration with UK Government and Defence entities for OFFICIAL-SENSITIVE data, the dual-region cloud is Cyber Essentials Plus certified which demonstrates that it meets the higher level of cybersecurity standards required for some UK government contracts.
Companies that serve the Australian public sector can use the Oracle Australian Government and Defence Cloud. This cloud provides over 100 services and is isolated from other Oracle Cloud regions. Oracle Australia Government and Defence Cloud has been certified for Information Security Registered Assessors Program (IRAP) at the PROTECTED level, providing assurance to Australian public sector organizations that it adheres to appropriate security controls.
When a customer operates within multiple cloud environments, they need each environment to have the same compute, network, storage, and other capabilities to avoid having to reengineer their architecture in each environment. If an Apache Kafka-compatible event streaming platform isn’t available in each cloud region you are using, you’ll need to use less optimal solutions. Oracle is proud of our “Everything Everywhere” commitment to offer all available infrastructure-, platform-, and software-as-a-service (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS) services and features for use in all our cloud regions, including the dedicated government cloud regions in the US, UK, and Australia. With this level of parity, companies can confidently develop and deploy solutions for their customers knowing that they will have the same experience in each Oracle Cloud region.
Oracle offers the same globally consistent cloud consumption pricing across all regions, with no price increase for the higher level of compliance and security available in our dedicated government regions. Whether you’re running a workload in Oracle’s London public cloud region or in the Oracle UK Government and Defence Cloud, the price of services is the same. Oracle uses simple, transparent pricing to help eliminate needless overpayment and billing surprises. Oracle customers can also take advantage of committed use discounts, software license portability, and support rewards for cloud consumption.
OCI offers industry-leading price performance with services that are significantly less expensive than our competitors. Oracle’s simple rate structures and flexible Compute shapes help you avoid overpaying for unneeded capacity. If you’re interested in estimating the price to run your application in OCI, we provide a cost estimator for you to configure the services that best fit your goals.
OCI customers send a significant amount of data across the globe to their customers, partners, and disaster recovery sites. Customers want to move their data where it's needed but fear enormous egress fees will hold their data hostage. OCI offers low networking prices that enable customers to move data less expensively. Inbound data transfer is free and the first 10 TB per month of outbound data transfer is free as well. For a sample workload with 50 TB of monthly data egress, OCI costs 90% less than our competitors. The advantage of Oracle’s network pricing is so extreme that it can make the difference between being able to take a high traffic application to the cloud and leaving it on premises.
Oracle’s nonblocking cloud network is also reliable. OCI is backed with performance guarantees because mission-critical work requires consistent performance and the ability to manage, monitor, and modify resources running in the cloud at any time. Oracle is the only cloud provider that offers end-to-end service level agreements (SLAs) that cover performance, availability, and manageability of services.
Oracle is committed to the success of our public sector customers and the private sector companies that serve them. Oracle government cloud regions offer an excellent option for any organization seeking higher performance and lower costs for their mission-critical workloads. Oracle designed government cloud regions to be available where they are needed with essential compliance and capabilities—all at the same globally consistent price as our public cloud.
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I have spent the last 25 years innovating in the IT industry, with a focus on Public Sector customers and cloud deployments.
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