Oracle expands Spanish cloud offerings with $1 billion investment

Oracle has announced plans to open its third cloud region in Spain as part of a $1 billion investment scheme. 

The new public cloud region is targeted at all industries in Spain, but in particular its prominent financial services sector.

Customers will be able to migrate mission-critical workloads from their data centers to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) while conforming to regulations such as the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) and the European Outsourcing Guidelines - EBA, EIOPA and ESMA.

Telefonica España will be the host partner, Oracle confirmed.

"It is great news that major technology multinationals such as Oracle are announcing this level of investment in the Region of Madrid,” said Miguel López-Valverde, councilor for digitalization, Government of the Region of Madrid.

"Over the next three years, the region of Madrid is expected to receive investments of more than six billion Euros from the cloud industry, which is critical to helping us build a digital economy capable of creating high-quality jobs, attracting investment, and retaining talent."

Oracle already operates a separate EU Sovereign Cloud with a region in Madrid, to help public and private sector customers with data and applications that are sensitive, regulated, or of strategic regional importance, move to the cloud.

This is  operated by EU-based personnel and supports workloads that fall under EU guidelines and requirements for sovereignty and data privacy.

"Spanish enterprises and public sector organizations are rapidly embracing the cloud to gain access to the latest digital technologies such as AI, and the upcoming public cloud in Madrid will help them address data residency requirements as well as regulations in key sectors such as financial services," said Albert Triola, country leader, Oracle Spain.

"With our plans to invest an additional $1 billion in Spain over the next ten years, we are reaffirming our commitment to helping Spanish organizations of all sizes and industries – including those across Spain’s small and medium-sized enterprises and the financial services industry – accelerate their adoption of cloud technologies to boost business performance and resilience."

The new Madrid region will offer additional low-latency access to cloud services, along with high availability and disaster recovery capabilities, the firm said

And, targeting the financial services industry, Oracle said it can help customers to evaluate OCI in the context of their regulatory outsourcing guidance.

"We rely on Oracle to migrate our critical workloads to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure while complying with local regulatory requirements. OCI provides us with a robust and secure cloud infrastructure," said Enríque Rodríguez, director of technology services at Banco Sabadell.

"The arrival of the third Oracle Cloud Region in Spain will open significant opportunities for us in terms of utilizing new technologies such as AI across different areas of our business."

Oracle is the latest firm to bet big on Spain

The announcement from Oracle follows a raft of similar moves by other major cloud providers in Spain in recent months. 

Microsoft recently confirmed plans to invest $2.1 billion in AI and cloud infrastructure in the country by the end of next year, with one region located in Madrid.

Similarly, AWS revealed plans to invest €15.7 billion in Spain to beef up cloud and AI infrastructure.

A common recurring theme in these investment plans has been access to renewable energy sources. AWS' expansion in the country also included investment in 12 renewable energy projects. 

In February 2024, Cisco confirmed it had signed a 15-year commitment with Spanish renewable energy provider, IGNIS, to construct a new solar energy plant in the Aragon province to support its European operations and meet sustainability targets.