STOCKHOLM/MILAN (Reuters) - Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) said on Wednesday it has opened its first cloud region in the Nordics in Stockholm, along with one in Milan, Italy, as the pandemic increased demand for cloud computing tools from private- and public-sector organizations.
Cloud regions refer to the geographical location of data centers, allowing customers near that region to get faster access to their data.
Cloud computing companies such as Oracle, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) have been setting up new data centers across Europe to cater to clients shifting from in-house digital storage and computing to leased cloud servers.
Oracle already has cloud regions in Germany, the Netherlands, France, the UK and Switzerland in Europe. Including the two new regions, it will have facilities in 36 regions worldwide, with plans to add eight more by the end of next year.
The company has already signed contracts with potential customers in Europe and is planning to open a second region in France and one in Spain.
"European organizations want to store their data in Europe or in their local country where possible," said Carla Arend, senior program director at research firm IDC.
Best known for its database software, Oracle lags its bigger rivals in the race for cornering the cloud computing market, but its total cloud revenue still rose 22% to $2.7 billion in the latest second quarter.
Earlier this year, Oracle said it will migrate the most complicated computer programs of companies to its cloud for free, in a bid to catch a new wave of potential cloud-computing clients.