Page 7 - Service Delivery Review_Volume 14_Number 3_2022

News in Brief

Oracle opens first cloud region in africa

New cloud region in Johannesburg delivers superior performance, built-in security, and high availability

owards the end of January 2022, Oracle announced the latest technologies that can support our digital road-
the availability of its first cloud region in Africa to map,” said Mthoko Mncwabe, CIO, Airports Company
Tmeet the rapidly growing demand for enterprise South Africa.
cloud services on the continent. The Oracle Cloud Johan- The Government Pensions Administrative Agency
nesburg Region will boost cloud adoption across Africa (GPAA) ensures the effective, transparent and account-
while also helping businesses achieve better perfor- able administration of pension funds on behalf of the
mance and drive continuous innovation. The opening Government Employees Pension Fund (GPEF) and the
marks Oracle’s 37th cloud region worldwide with plans National Treasury of South Africa.
to have at least 44 cloud regions by the end of 2022,
continuing one of the fastest expansions of any major “GPAA is in the process of replacing legacy applications
cloud provider. and refreshing its IT infrastructure. The timing of the Jo-
hannesburg region opening is perfect to enable us to lift
“The fourth industrial revolution, which is powered by and shift our existing and future Oracle deployments to
cloud-led technologies, has significantly accelerated in the cloud. This will enable us to cut down on on-premises
South Africa and the wider African continent. In recent infrastructure and assist with the management of Oracle
months, cloud technologies have played a vital role in services, cybersecurity and disaster recovery,” said Meir-
helping African public and private sector organisations ing Coetzee, CIO, Government Pensions Administrative
ensure business continuity, deliver essential services, and Agency. ■
meet evolving customer expectations. The Oracle Johan-
nesburg region offers a next-generation cloud to run any
application faster and more securely for less, helping Cloud computing simply defined
businesses build resilience, agility and achieve improved
ROI,” said Richard Smith, executive vice president, EMEA, When a company chooses to “move to the cloud,”
Oracle. it means that its IT infrastructure is stored offsite, at a
data center that is maintained by the cloud comput-
The Johannesburg region is built on Oracle Cloud In- ing provider. An industry-leading cloud provider has
frastructure (OCI), which enables customers to easily the responsibility for managing the customer’s IT infra-
migrate IT workloads and data platforms to the cloud or structure, integrating applications, and developing new
build new cloud native applications. In addition, Oracle capabilities and functionality to keep pace with market
offers a wide range of application modernisation and demands.
cloud strategies to help African organisations operate For customers, cloud computing offers more agility,
with global competitiveness. African organisations are scale, and flexibility. Instead of spending money and
resources on legacy IT systems, customers are able to
using Oracle to manage their mission-critical workloads focus on more strategic tasks. Without making a large
and take advantage of cloud economics. Customers will upfront investment, they can quickly access the com-
benefit from significant performance improvements and puting resources they need—and pay only for what they
reduced operational costs.
use.
Airports Company South Africa owns and manages a Source: www.oracle.com
network of nine airports in South Africa, including the
three main international gateways: O.R. Tambo Interna-
tional, Cape Town International and King Shaka Inter-
national, which together process more than 40 million
passengers annually. Airports Company South Africa is
mandated to advance South Africa’s national agenda of
economic growth and development while delivering a
sustainable and profitable business.

“Cloud-led digital transformation is vital for us to maintain
an agile and profitable business model. The Oracle Cloud
Johannesburg Region will offer us the flexibility to explore

Volume 14 No.3 of 2022 | SERVICE DELIVERY REVIEW 7