Oracle Corporation has announced plans to invest over $6.5 billion to establish its first public cloud region in Malaysia. This significant investment marks a milestone for the Southeast Asian nation’s burgeoning digital infrastructure landscape.
The American multinational technology company made the announcement on Wednesday, joining a host of global tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and China’s ByteDance, which have recently unveiled substantial investments in Malaysia. These investments, primarily in cloud services and data centers, are propelling an infrastructure boom fueled by the rising demand for artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced data processing capabilities.
The new cloud region will enable organizations in Malaysia to modernize their applications, migrate workloads to the cloud, and harness the power of data analytics and AI. Oracle’s Executive Vice President for Japan and Asia Pacific, Garret Ilg, emphasized the importance of local cloud services for Malaysian customers, including government agencies, financial institutions, and companies in the airline and hospitality sectors.
“These customers look to Oracle to support their innovation,” Ilg told Reuters. “To move into standardized processes to be faster, to be more controlled, and be more cost-effective.”
Oracle’s venture is poised to be one of the largest single tech investments in Malaysia to date, surpassing the $6.2 billion planned spending by Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced last year. The cloud region in Malaysia will be Oracle’s third in Southeast Asia, following two existing facilities in Singapore, expanding its global footprint to 50 public cloud regions across 24 countries.
Chris Chelliah, Oracle’s Senior Vice President for Technology and Customer Strategy in Japan and Asia Pacific, noted that Malaysia offers significant growth potential and market opportunities as part of a broader AI and data center development push in Southeast Asia. “Malaysia provides further growth potential and market opportunities for Oracle,” Chelliah said.
The investment aligns with a trend of major tech firms expanding their cloud services and data center presence in the region. In the past year, Microsoft has announced cloud services investments worth $1.7 billion in Indonesia, while Amazon has plans to invest $9 billion in Singapore and $5 billion in Thailand. Just this week, Google broke ground on a $2 billion data center in Malaysia, projecting contributions of over $3 billion to the country’s economy by 2030.
Oracle’s commitment to Malaysia underscores the country’s strategic importance in the global digital economy. With plans to continue expansion across Asia, including projects from Japan to New Zealand and India, Oracle is positioning itself to meet the growing demand for cloud services and AI technologies in the region.
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Oracle to invest $6.5 billion to set up cloud facilities in Malaysia
cgtn.com
