Oracle is considering new data centers in India, in order to keep up with the growth of the regional cloud services market. The company maintains several development centers in the country, but currently owns no cloud facilities there.
Thomas Kurian, president of product development at Oracle, said new data centers would allow the company to go after lucrative government contracts, which require additional security.
“We are in discussions with a lot of local players on it though we don’t want to give any timeline or any definite plan. But certainly, the growth that we are seeing in cloud drives demand for that,” said Kurian, as reported by the Times of India.
Developing economies
India hosts the largest contingent of Oracle employees after the US, around 30,000 people. But despite having this sizeable presence, the company – which is in the middle of a platforms and services push –has been slow in bringing its cloud-based products to the country.
Kurian said Orcale has been opening between six and seven data centers per year for the past three years and would continue to do so based on the demand. This continued expansion is likely to include cloud facilities in India, which would fit into the government’s Digital India plan.
“A lot of projects which are being discussed and a lot of projects are being identified as a part of the Digital India plan. I think it is just a matter of a few months or a year, we could see them getting executed,” added Shailender Kumar, managing director of Oracle India.
Last month, Oracle announced plans to open a data center in Brazil to support its software-as-a-service offerings. The facility, expected to open in August, will become company’s 19th cloud data center. The timing of the announcements suggests Oracle sees increasing business opportunities in the developing economies.