Oracle opens next generation Oracle Cloud Infrastructure data centre in Toronto

With a focus on security and performance, Oracle today announced the opening of a 700,000 square-foot data centre in Toronto to support customer demand in the region.

Oracle has “leapfrogged” the competition when it comes the next-generation of cloud infrastructure, and its making good on the company’s promise to automate the tedious processes behind cloud transitions and upgrades, said Rich Geraffo, executive vice-president of the North America Technology division for Oracle. The newly announced Toronto data centre is Oracle’s first next generation Oracle Cloud Infrastructure data centre in Canada, and offers customers Oracle Autonomous Database, a managed cloud database service.

“Today, most customers have to manually performing patches, monitor the database and manage the infrastructure, but our autonomous infrastructure is using next generation technology like machine learning and AI to shift those responsibilities to us,” Geraffo told CDN.

Oracle Cloud is an enterprise-grade Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platform with built-in core-to-edge security, and is able to run both traditional and next-gen workloads on a cloud system. Oracle didn’t disclose how much money it dropped on the new data centre, but it’s clear the expansion won’t stop here. In a press release, the company said it wants to open additional regions in Australia, Europe, Japan, South Korea, India, Brazil, the Middle East and in multiple states across the U.S.

A large chunk of Oracle customers are large enterprises and institutions, making the database and cloud services provider a unique competitor against the likes of AWS, which owns the biggest slice of the cloud-services pie and sells to a much wider range of businesses. But Geraffo said the Canadian channel partner community will greatly benefit from the new data centre, especially those who’ve had reservations about adopting cloud technologies because of security concerns. Companies of any size will be able to run the most demanding workloads securely and save a lot of money while doing it, he explained.

Geraffo cited an IDC Software Tracker report that says Canada’s public cloud software market will grow six times faster than on-premises deployments, reaching $4.1 billion by 2019. He said the numbers are a clear reflection of the need for more cloud infrastructure in Canada. A separate IDC report says spending on public cloud computing in Canada will hit $5.5 billion by 2020, and will generate more than 50,000 new jobs across the country. Oracle says all of the top 10 and 76 of the top 100 Canadian companies by revenue use Oracle products and services. Additionally, 43 of the top 100 Canadian companies already use Oracle Cloud, including Software-as-a-Service, Platform-as-a-Service and IaaS deployments.

“Canada is a very strategic marketplace for Oracle and we are excited to continue to invest in the country,” said Geraffo.

When asked about Oracle’s former product chief Thomas Kurian and what imprint he may have had on the new data centre in Toronto, Geraffo indicated he wasn’t able to comment, but pointed to comments made by Oracle chief technology officer and chairman, Larry Ellison, who for months has been hinting at the company’s push into autonomous infrastructure.

“If you listen to what Larry’s been saying, we made a big shift to an autonomous strategy and the autonomous database,” he said. “We think this is a big benefit to customers want to get the most value out of their IP and information.”