NATO’s Communications and Information Agency (NCIA) will move its mission-critical workloads to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).

Executive vice-president of technology and GM of Oracle EMEA Richard Smith said: “OCI will help the NCIA manage, analyse, and protect their data while also giving them more control and peace of mind where data is stored and where workloads run.”

The migration will see NCIA's on-premises workloads moving to OCI's sovereign cloud offering, enabling it to meet requirements for data residency, services at hyperscale, and operational controls.

The terms of the contract were not provided.

The process of integrating OCI into NATO’s existing system will be overseen by two divisions of Italian IT company Reply, namely Red Reply and Shield Reply, which focus on systems integration and cloud-based defence services, respectively.

As per NATO’s announcement in June of this year, French defense and cybersecurity company Thales will assist with integration, whilst Belgian telco Proximus will provide networking solutions.

“Together with Oracle, we are committed to helping NCIA provide secure, cloud-oriented, and interoperable communications and information systems and services to NATO,” said Alexandre Bottero, VP of network and infrastructure systems, Thales. “With OCI, NCIA will be able to take advantage of the latest cloud and AI innovations to modernize its technology infrastructure without compromising the security of its mission-critical data.”

NCIA operates five campuses and 30 direct support locations throughout Europe and North America. The primary locations are in Brussels, Braine-l'Alleud, Mons, Oeiras, and The Hague, while the direct support locations include CIS Support Units (CSUs), logistics centers, and satellite ground stations, which enable NATO networks, service operations, exercises, and IT infrastructure. The organization does not reveal specific details about its data center footprint.

This month so far has been busy for Oracle.

On September 11, the Wall Street Journal revealed that OpenAI had reportedly inked a five-year-deal with Oracle valued at $300bn, though this had not yet been confirmed by either party. This comes after OpenAI announced in July that it would source 4.5GW of data center capacity from Oracle at a cost of $30bn a year starting in 2028.

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison was briefly the world’s richest man after the company’s stock soared 43 percent following its earnings call on Wednesday.