Oracle addresses European data privacy and sovereignty requirements with its EU Sovereign Cloud
Oracle’s new EU Sovereign Cloud is now open, and it will help private and public sector organizations across the European Union gain more control over data privacy and sovereignty requirements. One of the first cloud offerings designed to address the EU’s emerging regulatory landscape, Oracle EU Sovereign Cloud gives customers the services and capabilities of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure’s (OCI) public cloud regions with the same prices, support, and service level agreements (SLAs) to run all workloads. Oracle EU Sovereign Cloud is located entirely within the EU, supported by EU-based personnel, and operated by separate legal entities incorporated within the EU. Part of OCI’s distributed cloud strategy, EU Sovereign Cloud provides a new option to help meet regulatory requirements, complementing hybrid and dedicated cloud strategies.
Oracle EU Sovereign Cloud is well-suited to host digital businesses operating in heavily regulated industries. Customers with data and applications that are sensitive, regulated, or of strategic regional importance, as well as workloads that fall under EU guidelines and requirements for sovereignty and data privacy, such as the general data protection regulation (GDPR), can now move to the cloud. EU Sovereign Cloud will help digital transformation efforts across critical industries such as healthcare, financial services (including banking and insurance), telecommunications, and the public sector, as customers’ hosted data remains within the EU member states and the cloud regions are operated solely by EU-based personnel.
“The European Union technology landscape has changed dramatically due to the growing importance of data protection and localization, leading to increased demand for sovereign cloud solutions that can securely host sensitive customer data and comply with regulations such as GDPR,” said Richard Smith, executive vice president, Technology, EMEA, Oracle. “Our goal is to meet customers wherever they are in their cloud journey and with Oracle EU Sovereign Cloud, customers in highly regulated industries, as well as those subject to certain country-specific legislation, can now accelerate their cloud strategies.”
Delivers the Same Services as Oracle’s Public Cloud at the Same Price
Available for customers in all 27 member states of the EU and globally, Oracle EU Sovereign Cloud offers 100+ cloud services available in Oracle’s public cloud with no premium fees for the sovereignty capabilities, and with the same SLAs on performance, management, and availability. Oracle customers can also gain access to other customer programs such as Oracle Support Rewards. In addition, Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications Suite, which is currently available in the EU Restricted Access (EURA) offering, is planned to be available in the Oracle EU Sovereign Cloud soon.
Oracle EU Sovereign Cloud also helps organizations in regulated industries and governments embrace new artificial intelligence (AI) techniques such as generative AI. Organizations have faced major challenges that prevented the use of existing generative AI offerings, including data residency and regulatory requirements preventing them from leveraging AI infrastructure in the public cloud to develop the models required for generative AI. By offering the services and capabilities of Oracle’s public cloud, Oracle EU Sovereign Cloud enables public sector organizations to use AI infrastructure in a cloud that aligns with EU data residency and sovereignty requirements.
Designed and Operated for EU Data Privacy and Sovereignty
The new sovereign cloud region operates under a comprehensive set of policies and governance that further enhance OCI’s existing internal capabilities for data residency, security, privacy, and compliance. These policies include a framework for data and operational sovereignty, including how OCI stores and manages access to data, and how data access from entities outside the EU are handled. The Oracle EU Sovereign Cloud data centers are located in the EU (Frankfurt, Germany and Madrid, Spain), and they are owned and operated by separate Oracle-owned EU legal entities incorporated within the EU, with operations and customer support restricted to EU-based personnel. Oracle EU Sovereign Cloud builds on Oracle Cloud’s existing compliance programs that enable customers to demonstrate adherence to regional and industry regulations. It also aligns with EU monitoring regulations, and guidance that limits data transfers out of the EU (such as Court of Justice for EU Schrems II Ruling and European Data Protection Board).
In addition, OCI’s extensive network of more than 85 global and regional OCI FastConnect partners offers organizations dedicated connectivity to Oracle Cloud Regions and OCI services. Digital Realty is the host partner for the EU Sovereign Cloud region location in Madrid, and Equinix is the host partner for the region location in Frankfurt. FastConnect partners available at launch include Arelion, DE-CIX, Digital Realty, Equinix, and InterCloud.
Separated Architecture Helps Enforce Data Security and Strengthens Sovereignty
Oracle EU Sovereign Cloud is designed for data residency and security with an architecture that shares no infrastructure with Oracle’s commercial regions in the EU and that has no backbone network connection to Oracle’s other cloud regions. Customer access to Oracle EU Sovereign Cloud is managed separately from access to Oracle Cloud’s commercial regions.
Oracle EU Sovereign Cloud is designed for high availability within each cloud region and consists of two cloud regions to support disaster recovery architectures within the boundaries of the EU. Each region comprises three fault domains to help avoid grouping workloads on the same physical hardware. Consequently, any hardware failure or compute hardware maintenance in only one fault domain will not impact instances located in other fault domains.
With operations, support, and policies that are distinct from Oracle’s commercial cloud, Oracle EU Sovereign Cloud helps streamline and simplify customer compliance with EU data privacy and sovereignty guidelines and requirements. In addition, by ensuring that customer data is contained within the EU without requiring additional customer configuration via complex policy tools, Oracle EU Sovereign Cloud helps accelerate customer deployments while lowering risk.
New OCI Key Management Services Provide Additional Layer of Data Protection and Help Customers Meet Compliance Requirements
To help customers further secure their data and address data sovereignty requirements, OCI is introducing two new key management services available across all Oracle Cloud Regions, including EU Sovereign Cloud: OCI Dedicated Key Management Service and OCI External Key Management Service.
OCI External Key Management is built in partnership with the Thales Group and lets customers encrypt their data using encryption keys that are created and managed by the customer outside of OCI. These encryption keys always stay within custody of the customer and are never imported into OCI, enabling customers to move regulated workloads to OCI that require control over the physical storage of keys outside the cloud. OCI Dedicated Key Management gives customers control over their encryption keys by using a dedicated, single-tenant Hardware Security Module (HSM) provisioned within OCI.
Customers, Partners, and Analysts Welcome Oracle EU Sovereign Cloud
“Having cloud services with data centers that are located in the EU and operated, updated, and supported by EU residents, while maintaining isolation from non-EU cloud regions, is an important part of our cloud adoption,” said Jarkko Levasma, government CIO, director general, Ministry of Finance of Finland. “This will open up possibilities to adopt infrastructure, platform, and software as a service in Finland for the government.”
“Oracle is one of Telefónica Tech’s strategic partners and we are collaborating on numerous cloud projects, supporting the digitalization of the economy,” said María Jesús Almazor, CEO, cyber security and cloud, Telefónica Tech. “Oracle’s commitment to Spain, launching a region in our geography, and its sovereign cloud strategy across Europe is very good news for our customers throughout the EU, as sovereignty is key to the digitalization of regulated industries.”
“At DXC we want to congratulate Oracle for the upcoming launch of the EU Sovereign Cloud. This initiative removes barriers to the adoption of cloud services by customers that until now have not been able to embrace cloud, as they were subject to strict compliance restrictions on data processing,” said Jorge Pastana, alliances & cloud business development director, DXC Technology. “With this new offering, Oracle further facilitates access to high-quality and secure solutions, allowing both private and public organizations to take full advantage of the benefits of the cloud without compromising the integrity and confidentiality of information. It is a remarkable achievement that will fuel technological advancement and strengthen confidence in the digital age.”
“This is a major announcement that has great significance for the Oracle / Kyndryl alliance and will help us leverage Oracle’s cloud technology. It will remove some of the barriers to public cloud adoption through the concept of sovereign cloud and will comply with regulations and data governance,” said David Soto, president, Spain and Portugal, Kyndryl. “At Kyndryl, we believe that this announcement and our strong partnership will enable us to help our customers and reinforce our position as a market leader in mission-critical systems management and transformation services.”
“IDC continues to see significant growth in the use of public cloud for mission-critical workloads across major industries. At the same time, data protection laws as well as other regulations that mandate compliance also continue to evolve,” said Rahiel Nasir, associate research director, European cloud practice, IDC. “All this requires organizations to have greater visibility and control over strategic data assets across their operations. Sovereign cloud services, such as Oracle’s EU Sovereign Cloud, are designed to give enterprises greater control and protection of their critical data assets. They also aim to help customer organizations comply with data residency rules and regulatory requirements while continuing to take full advantage of the benefits of cloud and digital transformation.”
“Omdia’s data shows that organizations are increasingly adopting a strategic cloud strategy, such as multicloud infrastructure. This approach is helping businesses across Europe digitalize their operations and drive innovation. But the rise of multicloud does present new challenges for enterprises – especially industries impacted by increasing regulation or jurisdictional control of data,” said Roy Illsey, chief analyst, Omdia. “Oracle EU Sovereign Cloud addresses European data privacy and sovereignty requirements in all 27 EU member states and is designed to support businesses in heavily regulated industries looking after sensitive data and applications as well as workloads that fall under EU privacy requirements.”
Oracle Cloud’s Rapidly Growing Global Footprint
The new EU Sovereign Cloud is part of OCI’s distributed cloud strategy. OCI can address customer requirements by deploying cloud services to specific locations with flexible performance, security, compliance, and operational models. Oracle provides a broad and consistent set of cloud infrastructure services across 44 commercial and government cloud regions in 23 countries to serve its growing global customer base. OCI currently operates 37 commercial regions and seven government regions, in addition to multiple dedicated and national security regions.
