American firm Oracle, specialized in enterprise software products, announces many technological investments in South Africa by the end of the year. First, the company plans to open Future Ready Labs, its first laboratory in Africa, in Johannesburg in November.
The infrastructure will serve as an exhibition framework to help local industry players realize the potential of cloud technology. If the experiment is successful, Oracle also plans to open another such laboratory in Cape Town and then in other countries such as Mauritius, Botswana, and Namibia.
“We're trying to re-energize local firms because their users are continuously evolving and their competitors are also adapting to this change. We take them through a structured approach aimed to help them adapt to technologies that will significantly contribute to increased revenues, customer satisfaction and improve productivity,” said Sarah George (pictured), Product Strategy Manager ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) at Oracle South Africa.
In addition to laboratories, Oracle also plans to invest in local data centers. This strategy will ramp up competition with Microsoft, which opened two regional data centers in South Africa in March 2019. One is located in Cape Town while the other is in Johannesburg. These facilities have made Microsoft the world's leading provider of cloud computing services on the continent.
Oracle, which in turn wants to invest in the cloud in South Africa to take advantage of this growing segment, will also have to deal with competition with Amazon Web Services which also unveiled its ambitions to open data centers in the country next year.