Oracle wants global cloud crown by year-end

Oracle expects to become the world's largest public cloud vendor by the end of this year, overhauling market leader Salesforce in the software-as-a-service (SaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) segments, Oracle's senior VP for cloud strategy Shawn Price said.

Price was in Brazil this week on the first leg of Oracle's Digital Transformation Day tour of Latin American cities.

Oracle is considered a "latecomer" to the cloud party, and while SaaS and PaaS still account for a single-digit share of the company's total revenues, growth has been 150% year-on-year based on bookings in recent fiscal quarters.

Total cloud revenues (IaaS, SaaS and PaaS) grew by 29% year-on-year in the first quarter of fiscal 2016, results for which were released September 16. Combined SaaS and PaaS revenues grew 34%. During the period, the firm added 612 new SaaS customers and 800 new PaaS customers.

DATA CENTER

In Brazil in June Oracle activated its first Latin American data center and 19^th worldwide as part of its cloud strategy. According to Price, Brazil is number one in cloud in Latin America and seventh worldwide.

"We decided to set up a data center here in Brazil for two reasons: because there is clear demand for platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and for application level - ERP - financing in cloud human capital management [HCM] and related areas," Price said.

The second reason, he said, is a "perfect storm" of local elements, comprising market demand, cloud readiness, mobile penetration, economic pressures on growth, cost takeout and regulatory issues.

"When you look at the bill of rights of Brazil on cloud computing and when you look at data privacy and data governance issues, together with consumer privacy and the high mobile penetration, it makes great sense for us to have a data center here," the executive said.

He added: "I mean, every other cloud, SaaS provider... I don't know how they do cloud in Brazil without having data centers here."

Oracle serves the entire Latin American region from its Brazilian data center. Price did not reveal the current occupation rate at the data center.

He also underlined that the firm currently has no plans for new data centers in the region. He said that would depend on demand, but pointed out that data is becoming increasingly 'de-territorialized', with most companies "not caring where a service is provided from."