The new public cloud region will offer over 100 OCI services and applications, including Oracle Autonomous Database, MySQL Heatwave, OCI Data Science, Oracle Container Engine for Kubernetes, and Oracle Analytics. Credit: IDG As part of its ongoing strategy to expand its roster of public cloud regions and catch up with larger cloud service providers such as AWS, Microsoft and Google, Oracle has launched a new cloud region in Chicago to cater to enterprises operating out of the US Midwest. The Chicago region, which will be Oracle’s fourth public cloud region in the US and 41st globally, will primarily cater to manufacturing and financial services firms among other industries operating in that part of the country, said Leo Leung, vice president of products and strategy at Oracle. The Midwest region, according to Oracle, is home to more than 60% of all US manufacturing firms and houses the world’s largest financial derivatives exchange. “This is just going to give them (enterprise customers in the region) the capability of running their workloads closer to their headquarters versus other parts of the country,” Leung said, adding that the demand in the region is fueling the company’s growing bookings for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). CEO Safra Catz, during an earnings call for its quarter ended November, had said that the company had triple-digit bookings growth across its infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) services for the past two quarters and basis this growth, the company planned to invest $2.4 billion approximately every quarter for the next few quarters. The new region in Chicago will offer over 100 OCI services and applications, including Oracle Autonomous Database, MySQL Heatwave, OCI Data Science, Oracle Container Engine for Kubernetes, and Oracle Analytics, the company said. Oracle has three other regions in the US, situated in Ashburn, Virginia; San Jose, California; and Phoenix, Arizona. Globally, the company has a total of 55 cloud regions including national security regions. Nine new regions are currently being built, Catz had said during the earnings call, according to a transcript from Motley Fool. For the quarter ended November, the company’s total revenue grew 25% in constant currency, buoyed by revenue growth from its infrastructure and applications cloud businesses, which grew 59% and 45% respectively, in constant currency. Related content feature IT leaders’ AI talent needs hinge on reskilling Most organizations see the need to revamp their training programs to address AI skills shortages — an approach that delivers intangibles hiring can’t provide. By Grant Gross May 31, 2024 7 mins Hiring Generative AI IT Skills feature Skills the Irish Government CIO uses to advance digital transformation In his eight-year tenure as CIO at Ireland’s Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, Barry Lowry always had a vision of what digital government could look like. Here, he details how an approach built on transparency and innovation is conti By Ian Campbell May 31, 2024 8 mins CIO Government IT Cloud Management brandpost Sponsored by Cisco 3 reasons you should adopt cloud monitoring Cloud network management offers increased security, operational efficiencies, and more. By D Matthew Landry May 30, 2024 4 mins Machine Learning opinion Faultless with serverless: Cloud best practices for optimized returns What does a well-defined serverless approach look like? Let's learn some of the best modern approaches to handling Enterprises and SMEs growing serverless computing needs. By Yash Mehta May 30, 2024 5 mins Serverless Computing PODCASTS VIDEOS RESOURCES EVENTS SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe