Oracle first to open a cloud region in Serbia

Public cloud services provider Oracle on Monday said it will launch a new cloud region in Serbia, which will make it the first among rivals including Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google and IBM, to offer a hyperscale data center in the Eastern European country.

The new cloud region, which will serve Southeast Europe, will be located at the Jovanovac village region in the proximity of Serbia’s fourth largest city, Kragujevac, Oracle said in a statement.

The Serbian government has plans to develop Kragujevac into an innovation hub, earmarking nearly 56,000 square meters and €120 million (US$130 million) for the entire effort, which is to be carried out in three phases.

The new region will also support the increasing cloud computing demands of private and public sector organizations throughout Serbia, Oracle said.

Oracle will offer over 100 Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) services and applications, including Oracle Autonomous Database, MySQL HeatWave Database Service, and Oracle Container Engine for Kubernetes via the upcoming region.

Other Oracle cloud regions in Europe are located in cities including Paris, Marseille, Frankfurt, Milan, Amsterdam, Madrid, Stockholm, Zurich, London, and Newport. Also, the company runs two government cloud regions in the UK.

Most rival hyperscalers have presence in cities such as London, Frankfurt, Paris, Milan, Zurich, Stockholm and Madrid.

Microsoft is planning to open new regions in Vienna, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Athens, Milan, Warsaw,  and Madrid, the company’s website shows.

Oracle continues to invest in cloud regions

Oracle has continued to invest in expanding its cloud region footprint in an effort to compete with rival hyperscalers including AWS, Microsoft and Google Cloud.

In addition to its existing regions in Europe, Oracle has announced intentions to launch two sovereign cloud regions in the region, located in  Germany and Spain.

Last month, the company announced its intent to open a second region in Singapore to meet demand.

Oracle also has plans to invest about $2.4 billion every quarter for the next few quarters on cloud infrastructure, CEO Safra Catz said during an earnings call for the quarter that ended in November.

In December last year, the company launched a public cloud region in Chicago, its fourth in the US after Virginia, California, and Arizona.