Oracle says it new EU Sovereign Cloud is now open, designed to will help private and public sector organisations across the European Union gain more control over data privacy and sovereignty requirements.
“The European Union technology landscape has changed dramatically due to the growing importance of data protection and localisation, leading to increased demand for sovereign cloud solutions that can securely host sensitive customer data and comply with regulations such as GDPR,” said Richard Smith, executive vice president, Technology, EMEA, Oracle. “Our goal is to meet customers wherever they are in their cloud journey and with Oracle EU Sovereign Cloud, customers in highly regulated industries, as well as those subject to certain country-specific legislation, can now accelerate their cloud strategies.”
Same Services as Oracle’s Public Cloud
Available for users in all 27 member states of the EU and globally, Oracle EU Sovereign Cloud offers 100+ cloud services available in Oracle’s public cloud with no premium fees for the sovereignty capabilities, and with the same SLAs on performance, management, and availability.
Oracle EU Sovereign Cloud also helps organisations in regulated industries and governments embrace new artificial intelligence (AI) techniques such as generative AI.
Organisations have faced major challenges that prevented the use of existing generative AI offerings, including data residency and regulatory requirements preventing them from leveraging AI infrastructure in the public cloud to develop the models required for generative AI.
By offering the services and capabilities of Oracle’s public cloud, Oracle EU Sovereign Cloud enables public sector organisations to use AI infrastructure in a cloud that aligns with EU data residency and sovereignty requirements.
EU Data Privacy and Sovereignty
The new sovereign cloud region operates under a comprehensive set of policies and governance that further enhance OCI’s existing internal capabilities for data residency, security, privacy, and compliance.
These policies include a framework for data and operational sovereignty, including how OCI stores and manages access to data, and how data access from entities outside the EU are handled.
The Oracle EU Sovereign Cloud data centers are located in the EU (Frankfurt, Germany and Madrid, Spain), and they are owned and operated by separate Oracle-owned EU legal entities incorporated within the EU, with operations and customer support restricted to EU-based personnel.
Oracle EU Sovereign Cloud builds on Oracle Cloud’s existing compliance programs that enable customers to demonstrate adherence to regional and industry regulations.
It also aligns with EU monitoring regulations, and guidance that limits data transfers out of the EU (such as Court of Justice for EU Schrems II Ruling and European Data Protection Board).
In addition, OCI’s extensive network of more than 85 global and regional OCI FastConnect partners offers organisations dedicated connectivity to Oracle Cloud Regions and OCI services.
Digital Realty is the host partner for the EU Sovereign Cloud region location in Madrid, and Equinix is the host partner for the region location in Frankfurt. FastConnect partners available at launch include Arelion, DE-CIX, Digital Realty, Equinix, and InterCloud.
Data Security and Sovereignty
Oracle EU Sovereign Cloud is designed for data residency and security with an architecture that shares no infrastructure with Oracle’s commercial regions in the EU and that has no backbone network connection to Oracle’s other cloud regions.
Oracle EU Sovereign Cloud is designed for high availability within each cloud region and consists of two cloud regions to support disaster recovery architectures within the boundaries of the EU.
Each region comprises three fault domains to help avoid grouping workloads on the same physical hardware. Consequently, any hardware failure or compute hardware maintenance in only one fault domain will not impact instances located in other fault domains.
Additional Layer of Data Protection
OCI is introducing two new key management services available across all Oracle Cloud Regions, including EU Sovereign Cloud: OCI Dedicated Key Management Service and OCI External Key Management Service.
OCI External Key Management is built in partnership with the Thales Group and lets users encrypt their data using encryption keys that are created and managed by the user outside of OCI.
These encryption keys always stay within custody of the user and are never imported into OCI, enabling users to move regulated workloads to OCI that require control over the physical storage of keys outside the cloud.
OCI Dedicated Key Management gives users control over their encryption keys by using a dedicated, single-tenant Hardware Security Module (HSM) provisioned within OCI.
Oracle EU Sovereign Cloud
“Having cloud services with data centers that are located in the EU and operated, updated, and supported by EU residents, while maintaining isolation from non-EU cloud regions, is an important part of our cloud adoption,” said Jarkko Levasma, government CIO, director general, Ministry of Finance of Finland. “This will open up possibilities to adopt infrastructure, platform, and software as a service in Finland for the government.”
“Oracle is one of Telefónica Tech’s strategic partners and we are collaborating on numerous cloud projects, supporting the digitalisation of the economy,” said María Jesús Almazor, CEO, cyber security and cloud, Telefónica Tech. “Oracle’s commitment to Spain, launching a region in our geography, and its sovereign cloud strategy across Europe is very good news for our customers throughout the EU, as sovereignty is key to the digitalisation of regulated industries.”
“At DXC we want to congratulate Oracle for the upcoming launch of the EU Sovereign Cloud. This initiative removes barriers to the adoption of cloud services by customers that until now have not been able to embrace cloud, as they were subject to strict compliance restrictions on data processing,” said Jorge Pastana, alliances & cloud business development director, DXC Technology. “With this new offering, Oracle further facilitates access to high-quality and secure solutions, allowing both private and public organisations to take full advantage of the benefits of the cloud without compromising the integrity and confidentiality of information. It is a remarkable achievement that will fuel technological advancement and strengthen confidence in the digital age.”
“This is a major announcement that has great significance for the Oracle / Kyndryl alliance and will help us leverage Oracle’s cloud technology. It will remove some of the barriers to public cloud adoption through the concept of sovereign cloud and will comply with regulations and data governance,” said David Soto, president, Spain and Portugal, Kyndryl. “At Kyndryl, we believe that this announcement and our strong partnership will enable us to help our customers and reinforce our position as a market leader in mission-critical systems management and transformation services.”
“IDC continues to see significant growth in the use of public cloud for mission-critical workloads across major industries. At the same time, data protection laws as well as other regulations that mandate compliance also continue to evolve,” said Rahiel Nasir, associate research director, European cloud practice, IDC. “All this requires organisations to have greater visibility and control over strategic data assets across their operations. Sovereign cloud services, such as Oracle’s EU Sovereign Cloud, are designed to give enterprises greater control and protection of their critical data assets. They also aim to help customer organisations comply with data residency rules and regulatory requirements while continuing to take full advantage of the benefits of cloud and digital transformation.”
“Omdia’s data shows that organisations are increasingly adopting a strategic cloud strategy, such as multicloud infrastructure. This approach is helping businesses across Europe digitalise their operations and drive innovation. But the rise of multicloud does present new challenges for enterprises – especially industries impacted by increasing regulation or jurisdictional control of data,” said Roy Illsey, chief analyst, Omdia. “Oracle EU Sovereign Cloud addresses European data privacy and sovereignty requirements in all 27 EU member states and is designed to support businesses in heavily regulated industries looking after sensitive data and applications as well as workloads that fall under EU privacy requirements.”
