Oracle focuses on Italy to extend its own global cloud region network, which by the end of 2022 will be 44. And it chooses Milano to open today the Italian one (the 36th in the world), with the aim of helping companies and PAs to move data and applications on the cloud. A process that has undergone a strong acceleration in recent years, and that the country is also promoting with the national recovery and resilience plan: one of the missions foreseen in the program, in fact, reaffirms the importance of the digitization of the public administration, providing for an action to support this technological transformation. “The Peninsula is an important market and Oracle has decided to invest in the Lombard capital for two reasons”, he explains. Alessandro Ippolito, Vice President, Technology and Country Leader of Oracle Italia. “On the one hand, the geographical proximity to other European cloud regions; on the other, the objective of serving not only large companies but also small and medium-sized enterprises, which represent an important basin for our services”.
A cloud region is a logical unit that can include multiple datacenters and can be easily extended to meet specific customer requests. It is also connected with other cloud regions through a secure and dedicated connection. After the openings of Frankfurt, Marseille e Stockholm, Oracle raises the curtain on the Italian one based, like the others already operating in Europe, on the latest generation infrastructure cloud (Oracle Cloud Infrastructure) and powered by energy from 100% renewable sources.
The expansion of the Oracle cloud
It is not the first cloud region to be inaugurated in our country. Indeed in the spring of last year Amazon Web Services had opened the Regione AWS Europe of Milan, the sixth on the continent after those of Dublin, Frankfurt, London, Paris and Stockholm. AND Google announced the creation of two Cloud Regions in Milan and Turin, scheduled for 2022. The presence of many players, however, does not worry Oracle: “We do not experience this situation as a competition, even if these companies are competitors. By now organizations are adopting more and more a multi-cloud approach, that is to say that customers do not use a single service provider “, clarifies the manager, adding that” Oracle has long ago entered into agreements with other important providers to enable this logic of multi-cloud. “An example of this type of collaboration is the strategic partnership with Microsoft Azure, which enables customers to run interconnected workloads across the two clouds in eight regions (Ashburn, Toronto, London, Amsterdam, Tokyo, San Jose, Vinhedo, and Frankfurt). “The decision to open now in Italy – continues Alessandro Ippolito – is linked to some considerations. We think this is the best time not only for the boost to digital transformation given by the recovery plan after the pandemic. But also because we believe that companies and PA are ready to move critical applications to the cloud “.
Italy is therefore an important part of the Oracle’s expansion plan, which fits perfectly within the framework of the peninsula’s digitization objectives envisaged by the NRP, points out the manager. There Italy cloud strategyin fact, it provides for the migration of the PA to the various qualified cloud services and possibly within the National strategic pole. Migration plans will be defined according to the classification of data and services public administration: the criterion used to distinguish the various classes is based on the damage that any compromise of data and services would cause to the country. Thus the public cloud will be able to manage a whole series of ordinary defined data, such as data and services related to institutional portals of administrations: “The cloud region will meet this need, allowing the migration of applications that deal with this type of data to the cloud”, explains the Oracle executive. He adds: “The fact that customer data is kept in Italy will facilitate the adoption of Oracle’s public cloud by the Public Administration and by other customers operating in highly regulated sectors”.
Not only. There are also data of a different nature: i critical data, such as health care of citizens, and strategic data, relating to essential functions of the State. These are data whose compromise can have a strong negative impact on national security and the economic and social well-being of the country. In these cases, in addition to the national strategic pole, encrypted public cloud, private and hybrid cloud solutions can be considered. And for this type of data Oracle has decided to add to its offer, in addition to the Public region, a dedicated region, that is to say an autonomous cloud area dedicated solely and exclusively to the needs of a specific customer. “Our strategy has never aimed only at a logic of public cloud made available to private and public entities. For some time we have been providing cloud solutions to the customer’s home, also to public administrations”, explains Alessandro Ippolito.
Security and dual-region cloud
Although a second opening in Italy is not planned for the moment, in some countries the company intends to have more than one office for the cloud region. “This is what will happen in France, for example, with the opening in the future of the Paris office after the one in Marseille”, explained the manager. L’approach dual-region cloud enables customers to deploy resilient applications across multiple geographically separate locations, without sensitive data leaving the country. A way to ensure greater security and control, which takes advantage of the characteristics of Oracle’s technology. “The cloud infrastructure is indeed ‘secure by design‘”, secure by design, explains the manager. That is, it follows a Core-to-Edge security approach with different levels, from perimeter defense to data security, passing through network security and access management. In addition, the company noted, the customer’s environment is isolated from that of other customers and also from the so-called Control Plane, which is used by Oracle for management. There is therefore no possibility that unauthorized persons have access to the data, which are encrypted automatically and by default. Finally, Ippolito remembers that only “the customer has the keys to access the cloud” and emphasizes that the company “uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to prevent and combat any attacks computer scientists “.
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