The investment spread across a period of 10 years will see the public cloud service provider expand its cloud infrastructure footprint in the country to meet the growing demand for AI-based workloads. Credit: Shutterstock / Avigator Fortuner Oracle is planning to invest $8 billion in Japan over the next 10 years in order to expand its cloud infrastructure footprint, which in turn will help the company meet the growing demand for AI-based workloads, the company announced on Wednesday. As part of the investment, the company said it will increase local customer support of its public cloud regions in Tokyo and Osaka. Additionally, the public cloud service provider will also expand its local operations teams for Oracle Alloy and its OCI Dedicated Region offerings. The increase in employee strength will enable governments and businesses across Japan to continue to move their mission-critical workloads to the Oracle Cloud and embrace sovereign AI solutions, the company said in a statement. Oracle has been on a cloud footprint expansion spree over the last year as part of its strategy to compete with larger rivals, such as AWS, Microsoft, and Google. Last year in December, the company opened its second Chile region. In September, Oracle launched a second Mexico region. In June, the company launched two new EU Sovereign Cloud regions — Madrid and Frankfurt — to help EU enterprises comply with data regulations. Prior to that in May, Oracle became the first hyperscaler to open a cloud region in Serbia. In 2022, during an earnings call, CEO Safra Catz said the company would invest $2.4 billion quarterly in cloud infrastructure. Rival cloud service providers, such as AWS, Microsoft, and Google, also have a sizeable presence in Japan with each of these providers having cloud regions in Tokyo and Osaka. AWS’ cloud region in Tokyo has four Availability Zones and the Osaka region has three Availability Zones. AWS regions are composed of Availability Zones that place infrastructure in separate and distinct geographic locations. Related content brandpost Sponsored by DataStax 3 ways to break out of AI ‘pilot purgatory’ Organizations are getting stuck in "use case limbo" with generative AI. It's very similar to the challenges they faced with digital transformation. By Bryan Kirschner May 15, 2024 5 mins Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence feature 10 things to watch out for with open source gen AI Open source generative AI models can be downloaded for free, used at scale without racking up API call costs, and run securely behind corporate firewalls. But don’t let your guard down. Risks still exist and some aren’t only magnified, bu By Maria Korolov May 15, 2024 12 mins CIO Generative AI IT Skills interview How BayCare Health System excels in raising data literacy With 16 hospitals, hundreds of facilities, and 33,000 employees, the Florida-based healthcare system has a significant need for all kinds of data to improve operations, patient experience, and population health. Here, CIO William Walders sits with Ma By Martha Heller May 15, 2024 7 mins CIO Healthcare Industry Data Architecture news analysis EU moves toward regulating data center energy and water use Upcoming regulation on energy efficiency reporting for EU data centers may herald further sustainability mandates — and necessary CIO actions — to come. By Grant Gross May 15, 2024 6 mins Regulation Green IT Data Center 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