Oracle Corporation announced an investment exceeding $6.5 billion to establish a public cloud region in Malaysia, aimed at addressing the surging demand for its artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud services.
The forthcoming cloud region will expand Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI)'s presence in the Asia Pacific to 12 public cloud regions. This development promises to enhance the country's digital economy and accelerate AI-driven innovation through more than 150 infrastructure and SaaS services. The increasing demand for AI services necessitates additional data centers capable of handling substantial amounts of data and computational power for training and deploying AI models.
Oracle emphasized that organizations in the region can foster AI innovation by leveraging OCI's high performance, robust security, powerful data management, and distributed cloud capabilities.
The proposed public cloud region in Malaysia is expected to assist organizations in updating their applications, migrating various workloads to the cloud, and advancing their data, analytics, and AI efforts. Customers in the region will gain access to OCI Generative AI Agents with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) capabilities, advanced computing services, generative AI services to ensure sovereign AI models remain within national borders, and OCI Supercluster, the largest AI supercomputer available in the cloud.
Additionally, Oracle announced that several NVIDIA AI infrastructure services, including NVIDIA AI Enterprise, NVIDIA Omniverse, and NVIDIA DGX Cloud, will be accessible to customers.
Garrett Ilg, Executive Vice President and General Manager for Japan & Asia Pacific at Oracle, stated, "Malaysia presents unique growth opportunities for organizations aiming to accelerate their expansion using the latest digital technologies. Our multi-billion dollar commitment underscores our dedication to establishing Malaysia as a regional gateway for cloud infrastructure and a comprehensive suite of SaaS applications deployed locally."
According to IDC FutureScape's 'The Infrastructure and Cloud Impact 2024 Predictions,' Malaysia's public cloud services market is anticipated to grow at a 27.2 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2022 through 2027. IDC believes that Oracle's upcoming cloud region in Malaysia signifies the country's potential to become a hub for technological innovation and growth in Southeast Asia.
YB Senator Tengku Datuk Seri Utama Zafrul Tengku Abdul Aziz, Malaysia's Minister of Investment, Trade, and Industry, commented, "This investment will equip Malaysian enterprises, particularly small and medium-sized businesses, with innovative and cutting-edge AI and cloud technologies to improve their global competitiveness. It is a crucial step towards achieving the New Industrial Master Plan's goal of establishing 3,000 smart factories by 2030."
