The first two Oracle sovereign cloud regions for the EU will be located in Germany and Spain, with operations and support restricted to EU residents and specific EU legal entities. Credit: Natali Mis / Getty Images In a bid to help enterprises and institutions in the European Union navigate data privacy, residency, and other regulatory guidelines, Oracle plans to launch two sovereign cloud regions for the European Union this year. Unlike a generic cloud region, a sovereign cloud region is designed to offer secure data access to both private and public entities while meeting the stringent regulatory guidelines of a particular region. Oracle’s sovereign cloud, which is a subset of its Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) portfolio, will not move customer content from the regions the customers select for their workloads and will restrict operations and customer support responsibilities to EU residents, said Scott Twaddle, vice-president of OCI product at Oracle. “These sovereign cloud regions are also designed to further enable customers to demonstrate alignment with relevant EU regulations and guidance,” Twaddle wrote in a blog post. The sovereign cloud regions will be logically and physically separate from the existing public OCI Regions in the EU, Oracle said. OCI currently operates six public OCI Regions located in the EU in Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Paris, Marseille, Milan, and Stockholm. The company is planning to migrate customers using Oracle Fusion Cloud applications within the existing EU Restricted Access cloud service to the new OCI sovereign cloud regions. Oracle, which has said that it will continue investing in its cloud business, has planned the first two sovereign regions in Germany and Spain for the EU with both being operational by the end of this year. The company has other sovereign regions in the UK, US, and Australia along with separate cloud regions for the UK and US defense departments. Oracle, which also runs a classified US national security cloud region, competes with the likes of AWS, Azure, IBM, and VMware in the sovereign cloud space. Last month, the company announced that it was reducing the price of its OCI dedicated region in a bid to expand its customer base. Related content feature Shine a Spotlight on Your Team’s IT Excellence with CIO Awards Canada By Allice Shandler May 16, 2024 4 mins Events IT Leadership news Camunda simplifies process automation with new AI-powered natural language features Vendors are adding AI features to process orchestration and automation platforms — but is the technology a revolution or an evolution? By John Dunn May 16, 2024 5 mins Generative AI Business Process Management Process Improvement feature What’s holding CTOs back? Internal politics, organizational culture, and funding issues top the list of issues derailing CTOs’ change agenda — so too does demonstrating the value of innovation. By Esther Shein May 16, 2024 8 mins CTO IT Leadership feature Baldor’s first-ever CIO sets the transformation agenda Ex-UPS IT leader Satyan Parameswaran aims to help the 33-year-old specialty foods distributor expand its business opportunities as it first CDIO, starting with the ‘art’ of analytics and AI. By Paula Rooney May 16, 2024 6 mins Transportation and Logistics Industry Digital Transformation IT Leadership PODCASTS VIDEOS RESOURCES EVENTS SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe