Oracle To Invest More Than $6.5 Bln In Malaysia For AI And Cloud Services

(RTTNews) - Oracle Corp. announced plans to invest more than $6.5 billion to open a public cloud region in Malaysia, with a view to meeting rapidly growing demand for its artificial intelligence or AI and cloud services in the country.

The upcoming cloud region would extend Oracle Cloud Infrastructure or OCI's footprint in Asia Pacific to 12 public cloud regions.

The AI and cloud services, including 150+ infrastructure and SaaS services, would help boost the country's digital economy and drive AI-fueled innovation. With rapidly growing demand for AI services, more data centers that store large amounts of data and computational power are required to train and deploy AI models.

The tech major noted that organizations across the region can accelerate AI innovation with OCI's high performance and built-in security, powerful data, and distributed cloud capabilities.

According to Oracle, the planned public cloud region would help organizations in Malaysia modernize their applications, migrate all types of workloads to the cloud, and innovate with data, analytics, and AI.

In the region, customers can have access to OCI Generative AI Agents with retrieval-augmented generation or RAG capabilities; accelerated computing and generative AI services to help keep sovereign AI models within country borders; and OCI Supercluster, the largest AI supercomputer in the cloud.

The company added that several NVIDIA AI infrastructure services will be available to customers, including NVIDIA AI Enterprise, NVIDIA Omniverse, and NVIDIA DGX Cloud.

Garrett Ilg, executive vice president and general manager, Japan & Asia Pacific, Oracle, said, "Malaysia offers unique growth opportunities for organizations looking to accelerate their expansion with the latest digital technologies. Our multi-billion dollar investment affirms our commitment to Malaysia as a regional gateway for cloud infrastructure as well as a comprehensive suite of SaaS applications deployed within Malaysia."

According to IDC FutureScape 'The Infrastructure and Cloud Impact 2024 Predictions', Malaysia's public cloud services market is expected to grow by 27.2 percent CAGR from 2022 to 2027. The upcoming Oracle cloud region in Malaysia signals the country's potential to become a hub for technological innovation and growth in Southeast Asia, IDC noted.

YB Senator Tengku Datuk Seri Utama Zafrul Tengku Abdul Aziz, minister of investment, trade and industry or MITI, Malaysia, added, "This investment will empower Malaysian entities, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, with innovative and cutting-edge AI and cloud technologies to enhance their global competitiveness. It is also a significant step towards realising the country's New Industrial Master Plan's ambitious vision of creating 3,000 smart factories by 2030."