Oracle unzips plan to wave cloud erections at Canadians, Germans

Oracle has announced plans to open a handful of new data centers to spur its cloud service in North America and Europe.

The tech goliath said that by the middle of next year it will bring four additional facilities online that will run a variety of Oracle application-as-a-service offerings. The data centers will be set up in Canada and Germany.

An Oracle spokesperson told El Reg that the server barns will run Oracle X4-2 hardware and host instances of the Oracle Fusion Applications, Recruiting and Learning Management software.

The company did not say, however, whether the facilities would be Oracle-only operations or just space rented out in a larger warehouse.

While Oracle has imagined itself as a champion of vertical integration offering complete stacks of hardware, software, and services, the firm's own operations use a mixture of in-house technologies and open platforms to tout cloud and infrastructure-as-a-service stuff.

As for the locations, customers may be able to drill into any performance and redundancy benefits of using nearby facilities. And storing data within a home country's borders may meet regulatory or end-user requirements.

"We are excited to announce this expansion as further commitment to our global customer base and their data residency requirements," boasted Oracle president Mark Hurd.

The company said the data center will be up and running by the end of the second quarter of 2014. ®