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Oracle Opens A New Cloud Region In Abu Dhabi

Oracle aims to operate a network of at least 44 cloud regions globally by the end of 2022.

Published

5 years ago

November 13, 2021

David Morelo

oracle opens a new cloud region in abu dhabi

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The demand for cloud computing has surged massively in the Middle East since the outbreak of the pandemic, and companies like Oracle are happy to meet it.

Earlier this week, the Texas-based company announced the opening of its second cloud region in the United Arab Emirates, providing local businesses with global, secure, and high-performance environments that they can use to support their workloads.

The new cloud region is located in Abu Dhabi, and, together with the older Dubai region, it supports the UAE’s Fourth Industrial Revolution Strategy.

“With the Dubai and Abu Dhabi Regions, we have the required cloud infrastructure for organizations across public and private sectors, including SMBs, to accelerate their digital transformation,” said Oracle’s executive vice president of Technology for the EMEA region, Richard Smith.

According to Oracle, the main benefits of the Abu Dhabi Region for local businesses include easier data compliance, reduced costs, enhanced performance, superior resiliency, higher availability, improved customer experiences, and more. Because the region is built on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), new customers should be able to migrate existing workloads with ease.

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Oracle is a major player in the Middle East, and its clients include everyone from Abu Dhabi Customs to Emaar Properties to Mashreq Bank. Jae Sook Evans, Oracle’s chief information officer, said that the Middle East is a priority region for the company.

Oracle aims to operate a network of at least 44 cloud regions globally by the end of 2022. Currently, it has 34 cloud regions globally, with new regions also set to open in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Its largest competitors in the Middle East include IBM, Amazon Web Services, SAP, and Alibaba Cloud.

The cloud market in the Middle East is forecasted to reach over $8.79 Billion by 2022, up from $2.17 Billion in 2016.

News

At I/O 2026, Sundar Pichai Concedes AI Must Deliver Real Value

Gemini 3.5, a personal agent called Spark, agentic shopping, and Android XR eyewear are all aimed at making AI feel useful, not just impressive.

Published

2 weeks ago

May 20, 2026

Nour Nasir

at io 2026 sundar pichai concedes ai must deliver real value

Google

Google’s annual I/O developer conference (I/O 2026) has recently become a status update on the same question: can the company turn its AI spending into products people use every day? This year, chief executive Sundar Pichai described Google as being in a phase of hyper progress, while conceding this is the part of the cycle where people want to see real value in the products they use on a day-to-day basis.

The strategy on display was to push agents — AI systems that act on a user’s behalf — into nearly every Google product at once. Search now has an “intelligent search box” that returns generated explainer videos alongside links. Gmail, Docs, YouTube and Maps are gaining their own agent layers, including a Docs Live feature that turns spoken instructions into drafted text with citations.

Two new models, Gemini 3.5 and a cheaper Gemini 3.5 Flash, arrived the same day. Google says 900 million people now use Gemini, and that more than 50 billion images have been generated with it. The pricing tier names are likely to confuse buyers: a new AI Ultra plan launches at $100 a month, while the older Gemini AI Ultra drops from $250 to $200.

The flashier announcements were Gemini Omni, a video generator pitched as a more realistic answer to OpenAI’s discontinued Sora 2, and Gemini Spark, a personal agent that handles recurring tasks across a user’s Google account. A new universal shopping cart lets agents complete purchases across multiple retailers from inside Google itself, placing the company between the merchant and the buyer, and also owning the checkout.

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Google also confirmed its Android XR eyewear, built with Samsung and frames from Warby Parker and Gentle Monster. Audio-only glasses ship this autumn; a display-equipped version, which would superimpose live translations into the wearer’s field of view, is still in development. Both sets translate, however only the display version shows you the result.

What Pichai did not resolve is the bargain underneath all this. An agent is only useful to the degree it knows your calendar, your inbox, your shopping history and your physical surroundings. Google has now confirmed that, in time, the same context may carry advertising.