As per the Oracle's chief regional executive, the business aims to create more cloud regions in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, with the UAE and Saudi Arabia strong contenders due to their high adoption rates of the technology. According to Richard Smith, executive vice president of technology for Oracle's Emea region, the Arab world's two largest economies stand out because their governments have championed innovation.
"We have priorities across Emea. But [the UAE and Saudi Arabia] are certainly very high growth regions," he said on the sidelines of the Oracle CloudWorld conference in Las Vegas. "One of the things that is very powerful in the region is that government agendas for digitisation are strong drivers for cloud adoption. "And if you look at Saudi Arabia or the UAE, everyone talks about social and citizen services, which is driving the rapid adoption of the cloud and its deployment."
Texas-based Oracle continues to make "very, very big" investments to build its data centre capacity, while ensuring they are in line with social, government and security strategies in the markets they enter, said Mr Smith.
"One of the biggest challenges is not the opportunity itself, but making sure that the partnerships we are creating are synergistic with the national agendas that many of those countries have."
In the wider Middle East, the adoption of cloud technology is growing amid the rise of technology-focused young consumers and the evolving digital landscape, as per thenationalnews.
This has provided global cloud providers an incentive to capitalize on the region's potential, particularly in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. As part of their economic diversification objectives, the two countries are putting a strong emphasis on technology and innovation.