ORACLE plans to invest more than US$6.5 bil (RM27 bil) to open a public cloud region in Malaysia to meet the rapidly growing demand for its artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud services here.
In a statement, Oracle said that the upcoming cloud region will enable its customers and partners in Malaysia to leverage AI infrastructure and services and migrate mission-critical workloads to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).
“We warmly welcome Oracle’s US$6.5 bil investment in Malaysia, which represents yet another expansion of their 36-year footprint in Malaysia,” said Investment, Trade and Industry Minister Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Abdul Aziz in a statement on Tuesday (Oct 2).
“This investment will empower Malaysian entities, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, with innovative and cutting-edge AI and cloud technologies to enhance their global competitiveness.”
Tengku Zafrul said the investment is also a significant step towards realising the country’s New Industrial Master Plan’s ambitious vision of creating 3,000 smart factories by 2030.
“Oracle’s decision to establish a public cloud region in Malaysia underscores Malaysia’s infrastructure readiness and its growing position as a premier Southeast Asian destination for digital investments,” he added.
Meanwhile, Oracle executive vice president and general manager for Japan and Asia Pacific Garrett Ilg said Malaysia offers unique growth opportunities for organisations looking to accelerate their expansion with the latest digital technologies.
“Our multi-billion-dollar investment affirms our commitment to Malaysia as a regional gateway for cloud infrastructure as well as a comprehensive suite of software as a service (SaaS) applications deployed within Malaysia,” he said.
Oracle’s vice-president of cloud, data centre and future digital infrastructure, Asia Pacific, Franco Chiam, said the upcoming Oracle cloud region in Malaysia is a sign of the country’s potential to become a hub for technological innovation and growth in Southeast Asia.
Oracle said the planned public cloud region will help organisations in Malaysia modernise their applications, migrate all types of workloads to the cloud, and innovate with data, analytics and AI.
It said customers could have access to, among others, Oracle’s OCI Generative AI Agents with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) capabilities as well as accelerated computing and generative AI services to help keep sovereign AI models within country borders.
“Additionally, over 150 services, including Oracle Autonomous Database and Oracle Cloud VMware Solution, will also be available, offering customers infrastructure, platform, or software as a service (SaaS) services,” Oracle added. – Oct 2, 2024
Main image: ETCIO Southeast Asia
