Oracle has announced the opening of an Oracle Interconnect for Microsoft Azure location in Johannesburg, providing direct connectivity between the Oracle Cloud Johannesburg region and the Microsoft Azure South Africa North region.
In a statement, Oracle says with the latest Oracle Interconnect for Microsoft Azure, organisations across Africa can now use the Oracle Database Service for Microsoft Azure.
This Oracle service builds upon the core capabilities of Oracle Interconnect for Microsoft Azure and enables customers to easily integrate workloads on Azure with Oracle Database services on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).
The company adds that organisations can easily provision, access and monitor enterprise-grade Oracle Database services in OCI.
The announcement comes after Oracle in January officially opened its Johannesburg-based data centre − its first cloud region on the African continent.
The cloud region allows organisations looking to build high-performing, secure applications, meet data sovereignty requirements, and devise disaster recovery plans, to meet the demand for enterprise cloud services across the continent.
In March 2019, US-based computing giant Microsoft opened two data centre regions in SA, becoming the first global provider to deliver cloud services from data centres on the African continent.
Rival Amazon Web Services has also opened local data centres, as demand for cloud services in South Africa continues to grow.
Since 2019, Oracle and Microsoft have partnered to deliver 12 Oracle Interconnect for Microsoft Azure locations around the world, including San Jose, Phoenix, Ashburn, Toronto, Vinhedo, Amsterdam, London, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore and Johannesburg.
According to Oracle, these locations offer customers multi-cloud capabilities to run their business-critical applications.
For example, it says, organisations using Oracle Autonomous Database on OCI can connect to Azure analytics tools and artificial intelligence (AI) workloads without copying data.
Oracle explains that businesses can also run applications like Oracle E-Business Suite on Azure or OCI and integrate as part of a single solution.
“Our longstanding collaboration with Microsoft Azure gives our joint customers the flexibility and choice to innovate using the best of both our clouds,” says Nick Redshaw, Oracle senior vice-president of technology cloud, Middle East and Africa.
“With growing customer demand for multicloud capabilities across Africa, we look forward to helping Microsoft Azure customers migrate their workloads to the cloud without the need for complicated re-platforming, while giving them seamless access to Oracle Database services on OCI.”
“Microsoft and Oracle share a longstanding history of delivering excellence on behalf of our mutual customers and supporting their evolving needs,” says Colin Erasmus, COO of Microsoft South Africa.
“Expanding the Oracle Interconnect for Microsoft Azure to Johannesburg ensures our valued customers in this region can benefit from the choice to deploy multicloud solutions.”
With Oracle Interconnect for Microsoft Azure, organisations in Africa can now migrate and run mission-critical enterprise workloads across their Azure and OCI environments with a private, dedicated low-latency connection and identity federation, says Oracle.
Customers also receive a collaborative, comprehensive service support model. Pricing is port-based with no additional charges for bandwidth consumed, it notes.
“Cloud has become the foundational technology for organisations to modernise their critical IT infrastructure and leverage the benefits of emerging technologies, such as AI/ML [machine learning], analytics, IOT [internet of things], security and automation,” says Mark Walker, associate vice-president, Sub-Saharan Africa, IDC.
“The continuous investment in cloud data centre space in South Africa by the global cloud providers has accelerated the adoption of public cloud services across industries, including some highly-regulated sectors, such as government, healthcare and banking.”
According to Walker, the total spending on public cloud services in South Africa is forecast to grow at a five-year CAGR of 24.6% from 2021 to 2026.
“The Oracle Interconnect for Microsoft Azure in South Africa will boost options available to local and global enterprises in the country. Given the availability of multiple in-country cloud providers, customers will be adopting a multicloud strategy based on price, functionalities, SLA, QoS, interoperability and innovation that, in turn, benefits the overall market,” Walker concludes.
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