The move should allow customers to store their data within the EU, complying with the GDPR rules.
Oracle is launching two new sovereign regions for its cloud infrastructure. The server farms will be located in Germany and Spain and will be supported and managed by EU citizens. In this way, Oracle wants to give its customers the option to store sensitive or regulated data within the EU. The regions would be available in 2023, Scott Twaddle, Oracle’s VP of cloud infrastructure, wrote in a blog post.
The sovereign regions have the express purpose of complying with EU law. In recent years, the EU has tightened the rules on storing sensitive data. For example, the personal data of EU citizens are, in principle, not allowed to leave the territory.
Oracle says it already operates multiple public regions in Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Paris, Marseille, Milan, and Stockholm, so customer data already remains in the EU. However, the new sovereign parts exist entirely separate from that cloud and go one step further in their security. EU citizens also run them.
With this, Oracle also wants to meet governments or organizations that wish to store sensitive data in the cloud. Oracle already has similar government sovereign regions in the United Kingdom and the United States. Prices for the new sovereign areas will remain the same as for the other cloud infrastructure.
The existing customers of Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications within the current EU Restricted Access package will be moved to the new regions.
