Oracle announces a new government cloud in Australia

Oracle has announced the new Oracle Cloud for Australian Government and Defence in Canberra to meet rapidly growing global demand from public sector organisations. 

Offering over 100 services, the new region is a complete and highly secure hyperscale cloud platform that allows customers to build and run applications. It is physically isolated from Oracle's other public and government cloud regions and shares no backbone connections with them, including the existing Sydney and Melbourne public regions available to all Oracle Cloud customers. 

The completed IRAP assessment at "Protected Level" assures Australian public sector organisations that Oracle Cloud for the Australian Government and Defence adheres to appropriate security controls. 

"The ACT Government welcomes Oracle's investment in this new capability here in Canberra," says Andrew Barr, chief minister and treasurer, ACT Government. "The cloud region will be an important addition to our city's digital infrastructure and adds to the depth and breadth of the capabilities that our cybersecurity sector can offer."

"The Australian federal government has budgeted more than US$1.3 billion for digital and ICT in its 2023-24 budget, and we're committed to helping strengthen Australia's digital economy. Australia's private and public sectors have trusted Oracle to help accelerate innovation for more than two decades," says Stephen Bovis, regional managing director for Australia and New Zealand at Oracle. 

"The addition of the new government cloud reinforces our commitment to delivering a secure, scalable, and high-performing cloud platform and business applications that are built to meet the stringent security standards necessary to protect Australia's most important data. With the new region, public sector organisations can now bring their most important workloads and applications to the cloud, helping drive organisational growth while delivering improved services to Australian citizens."

Government cloud customers will have access to over 100 Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) services and applications, including Oracle Autonomous Database, MySQL HeatWave Database Service, Oracle Container Engine for Kubernetes, Oracle Cloud VMware Solution, as well as integrated security capabilities such as zero-trust architecture and Oracle Cloud Guard. 

"Oracle provides this consistent set of cloud services across all 45 cloud regions, giving public sector organisations a government cloud with the same capabilities and pricing as Oracle's commercial cloud regions. These applications and services will help the public sector harness data to uncover new value and optimise workloads, typically without requiring costly re-architecture. In addition, since 2020, Oracle has maintained a whole-of-government (WofG) agreement with the Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) to make it easier for Australian government agencies to purchase Oracle products and services," says the company.

"Oracle has decades of experience securing data and applications and with its security-first approach, customers have access to capabilities across a broad array of services that make highly secure implementations easy, cost-effective, and fully integrated. Oracle Cloud for Australian Government and Defence enables customers to deploy applications that adhere to Australian data sovereignty and residency regulations for locally hosted sensitive data," adds Bovis.

"Data is not transferred from Australia throughout its lifecycle without the express permission or action of the customer and/or on their behalf (e.g., providing technical support). Data such as content stored in databases on OCI (but excluding telemetry) is subject to governance measures designed to ensure that access to such data is restricted and is not transferred outside the Oracle Cloud for Australian Government and Defence region without explicit permission from the customer," he informs. 

"Digital sovereignty has been a growing issue, with governments increased needs for control over their data, infrastructure, resources, and software. Increasingly, governments are engaging and partnering with trusted cloud partners to stay abreast of their challenges in this journey," adds Daphne Chung, research director of cloud services and software, IDC Asia/Pacific. 

"Despite economic uncertainties, IDC forecasts Australia public cloud services to grow at a five-year CAGR of 19.2% to become a US$19.2 billion market in 2026."

For additional protection, Oracle Cloud for Australian Government and Defence is restricted to public sector organisations and their partners. Oracle is currently the only hyperscale cloud provider to operate physically separate cloud regions for governments outside the U.S., with eight government regions across the U.S., U.K., and Australia, in addition to multiple air-gapped isolated regions for the U.S. government.

"Building on our experience with sovereign government regions in the U.S. and the U.K., Oracle is providing the Australian government with cloud infrastructure that has the same services and consistent global pricing as our public cloud regions. Why should governments have to pay more and get less?" notes Rand Waldron, vice president, global government sector, Oracle. "This region, restricted to the government community, will make it easier for Australia to bring its most important systems to the cloud and take advantage of the unique efficiency, support, and capability that Oracle offers to drive their mission success."

OCI supports private and public sector organisations globally by offering a wide range of distributed cloud deployment options beyond public cloud regions, including Dedicated Region and Exadata Cloud@Customer, which can assist with applications where data proximity and low latency in specific locations are critical.

"This is a major announcement that has great significance in supporting cloud adoption within the public sector and helping clients further leverage Oracle's cloud technology," says Robert Loughnane, ANZ Partner, Deloitte. "We believe that this announcement and our strong alliance with Oracle will further support our customers' digital needs and reinforce our position as a market leader in mission-critical systems management and transformation services." 

"We welcome the addition of Oracle Cloud for Australian Government and Defence, as the initiative removes barriers to the adoption of cloud services by public sector agencies," says Dean Langenbach, chief executive officer of Nomura Research Institute (NRI) Australia and New Zealand. "With this new offering, government agencies will have more access to high-quality and secure solutions, allowing public sector organisations to take full advantage of the benefits of the cloud without compromising the integrity and confidentiality of information."

"This is a huge announcement for government customers and will help support public sector cloud adoption," says Michael Reid, chief executive officer of Megaport. "We're excited to enable connectivity to the new Oracle Cloud for Australian Government and Defence, helping our customers get more out of the cloud and underscoring our position as a cloud interconnection leader."