Oracle: OCI Cloud away from the public Internet

Oracle is launching the new cloud offering Oracle Compute Cloud@Customer Isolated. The product is set to become available over the course of the year. The provider is thus following a path that it has already taken with its Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) specifically for the public sector, as the new Cloud@Customer Isolated is intended to be particularly sovereign. Specifically, this means that the computing cloud should be able to be operated separately from the public internet.

Since 2023, Oracle has been focusing on the requirements that organizations outside the USA in particular place on cloud compliance. The EU Sovereign Cloud is designed to enable data storage in accordance with the various EU data protection regulations, while the Government Cloud is designed to meet – even more secure – government and KRITIS requirements.

AWS and Microsoft also offer both in a similar form: Data centers set up in the EU serve as the vehicle for the offering, which, according to the operator, are also legally under EU laws and not under the American CLOUD Act, with which customers have to fear handing over their data to the US government. To ensure trust, Oracle relies on on-premises offerings.

Now the Compute Cloud is joining the ranks of offerings advertised as particularly secure. The service is designed to optimize the data silo for computing processes, and Oracle is now also offering it as a @Custumer Isolated version. The capabilities are the same as for Compute-Cloud@Customer. It can be set up as a single rack in your data center – Oracle offers direct fast-start support, which should enable deployment within six to eight weeks – and then expanded to an Isolated Region, i.e., an entire on-premises OCI. However, this does not make organizations completely independent – They are still dependent on technical updates and support from Oracle.

Targeted for the military

The offer may be of interest to companies with particularly sensitive workloads, but Oracle's customer group is more focused on government players. In particular, the defense sector. Accordingly, one of its first customers is Singapore's Defense Science and Technology Agency (DSTA), which procures an Isolated Region for the Ministry of Defence and the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF).

Isolated cloud infrastructure is particularly interesting for the military because it can be set up on a mission-specific basis. This reduces the complexity of the network in which edge data, for example, is collected and analyzed. Reducing the complexity of one's own infrastructure is such a high priority from a military perspective because, on the one hand, it means there are fewer points of attack and, on the other, it provides a better view of tactically relevant information.

(kki)