The company states that it will continue to build data centres in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, and the reason for this is simple: demand.
A lot of computing power is required by AI, and that power has to be housed somewhere. This week Oracle stated that this somewhere will involve more of the Gulf.
At the Oracle AI World event in Las Vegas, Cormac Watters, Oracle’s executive vice president for applications in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, said that the Oracle data centers in the UAE and their counterparts in Saudi Arabia are expanding in order to meet the demand from AI adoption. Although the announcement is brief, it reveals a great deal about the direction the region is taking.
What Oracle Actually Announced
Oracle has already set up cloud regions in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, as well as in Jeddah and Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, and a new region in Neom has also been announced.
Watters stated that the company has added ‘a couple of new ones’ in the last six months and will add some more in the next six. However, the details regarding the Oracle UAE data centers are scarce. The exact number of new sites, their capacity, and the amount of Oracle’s investment have not been disclosed.
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“The Demand Is Huge”
Watters described the reason for the demand as being “very great, which is what is causing it.” He added that organizations in the Middle East and in the UAE are “likely to be quicker in adopting [AI] than any other group.”
The reason given for this is that a great many companies in the area are willing to make changes, whereas companies in other places remain attached to older systems. For Oracle’s data centers in the UAE, that willingness is the business case.
Why Oracle Is Keeping Locations Quiet
Oracle is not revealing the locations of the new sites. Watters stated that the geopolitical situation has caused the company to be cautious, saying, “We don’t want any bad actors to somehow work out where they are.” This serves as a reminder that data centers are now regarded as critical infrastructure, and the rollout of Oracle’s UAE data centers is equally concerned with security as it is with speed.
Sovereignty and “Digital Embassies”
A second issue is control. According to Watters, data sovereignty has become the first subject in a great many customer discussions. Companies are interested in finding out where their data is stored and who is in control of it, or, as he stated, who holds “the big kill switch.”
He also talked about “digital embassies,” which would allow a sovereign cloud to be relocated to a different country while still maintaining its legal and operational independence. He mentioned that regulated organizations such as banks would need to obtain approval first; this is precisely where Oracle’s data centers in the UAE come into play. Having a local presence is part of the solution.
The Bigger Picture
As Watters pointed out, the Middle East is Oracle’s fastest-growing market within the EMEA region, with Qatar and Kuwait also regarded as potential opportunities.
The article also mentions the IMF, which states that the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar announced last year AI investment plans amounting to more than 5% of GDP, or a total of $120 billion. In light of this, Oracle’s data centers in the UAE serve as another indication that the major technology companies view the Gulf as a long-term base for AI.
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