Oracle spins up Israel cloud region in underground data centre

Hyper-secure hyperscale facility marks first entry into market by a cloud giant

Oracle has continued its huge cloud infrastructure investment drive with the launch of a new cloud region in Israel, becoming the first of the leading cloud providers to do so.

The launch of Israel East in Jerusalem was announced an at event attended by Oracle Israel country leader Uzi Navon, Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Leon, and Bynet CEO Alon Ben Zur this week.

Bynet is the data centre constructor behind the four-floor hyperscale facility underpinning the new region – which is located 50m underground in a secure 14,000 sqm bunker.

Oracle reportedly pipped cloud kingpin Amazon Web Services to the project’s tender with a multi-hundred million dollar proposal.

“This is an important step toward the upcoming opening of the Oracle Israel East Cloud region,” said Oracle’s Navon.

“With the new Cloud region in the capital city of Israel, Oracle is once again proving its commitment to the State of Israel and to Israeli customers and ensures a second-generation cloud infrastructure with the strongest performance at the highest level of security.”

AWS and Azure expect to open their own regions in the county soon, helped by Nimbus, the Israeli Government’s mammoth digital transformation procurement project.

Oracle’s has existing Middle East cloud regions in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Dubai & UAE and reportedly plans to establish 38 cloud regions globally by the end of 2021, representing one of the fastest infrastructure expansions by a cloud provider in history.