Oracle expands cloud footprint with a second region in Chile

Oracle on Wednesday said it is opening a second cloud region in Chile as part of ongoing efforts to expand its global cloud footprint to compete with the larger rivals including AWS, Microsoft, and Google.

The second region will be based in the Valparaíso Region alongside the existing region in Santiago, the company said, adding that the new region will bolster its efforts to address business continuity while complying with data residency and sovereignty regulations.

The new region at Valparaíso will offer almost all Oracle services, Oracle Autonomous Database, MySQL HeatWave Database Service, Oracle Container Engine for Kubernetes, Oracle Cloud VMware Solution, and AI infrastructure.

The commencement of operations at the second region takes Oracle’s data center count to 48 globally and in South America to five regions, including Sao Paulo and Vinhedo in Brazil, Bogota in Colombia, and the two regions in Chile.

In contrast, Google has two cloud regions in South America — Santiago, Chile, and Sao Paulo, Brazil.

AWS has a cloud region in Sao Paulo, which has three availability zones. The cloud services provider also has 11 edge locations across South America.

Availability zones are the building blocks of an AWS region that place infrastructure independent of each other in separate and distinct geographic locations. On the other hand, AWS edge locations are data centers, which are strategically placed to decrease latency and provide a smaller subset of AWS services.  

AWS, too, is planning a region in Chile.

Microsoft is yet to open a cloud region in Chile but according to its website, it is in the works. It has a cloud region in Sao Paulo, Brazil. IBM, too, has a cloud region in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Earlier in September, Oracle had announced the launch of a second region in Mexico, before launching a second cloud region in Singapore in April and a new region in Serbia in March.