PH not in Oracle's data center expansion, still bullish on domestic outlook

The Philippines has not been chosen among the 9 new data centers that Oracle will set up this year bringing a massive 38 centers globally, but the world’s leading Cloud service provider said there are other options that would support its bullish outlook for the domestic market.

Oracle Philippines Country Managing Director Mina Lim said at the virtual media interview “Road to Recovery” the global technology giant is targeting a total of 38 of data centers by end this year from 29 in 2020.  

“There will be 38 data centers targeted by end of 2021, the Philippines is not in that number but am not so worried because Oracle has many deployment options,” Lim said.

According to Lim, Oracle can bring all the capabilities right into their customers’ premises. For instance, she said, Oracle can bring in their cloud services into their bank customer as one deployment option.

“Yes, it is good to be part of the 38, but we are not so worried because there are other options,” Lim said.

Based on its Q2 report, the entire Oracle organization posted robust growth during the pandemic. Along with the global performance, Oracle Philippines is also experiencing growth, said Lim. Total Oracle revenue was $9.8 billion, up 2 percent year on year, while recurring revenue was 73 percent of total sales. Database subscription revenue was also up 5 percent and autonomous database consumption rose 64 percent.

In addition, Oracle Cloud infrastructure consumption revenue was up 139 percent, while ERP Cloud revenue rose 33 percent in Q2. Cloud services and license support revenue increased 4 percent to $71 billion. “We are growing our cloud business,” quipped Lim.

Domestically, its top growth drivers are the banks, telcos and government. She said that Oracle is supporting ten of the ten largest banks in the country. Lim said they are working with all the telcos, which played as enabler infrastructure in the new ways of doing things be it in education, business and others. They are also working  with national government agencies and in many other industries to help them accelerate in their innovation.  

Oracle is also offering its services for the COVID-19 vaccine supply chain in the Philippines. “Technology-wise we are ready on that part of the vaccine management system,” she said adding that the Inter Agency Task Force has an initiative for vaccine information management system.

 “We have the technology, we surely can support the government in this one but, I believe this will go through the normal procurement process. Probably will be tendered and we we are ready anytime for the vaccine,” she added.

Oracle had an experience in Africa for the vaccination program in some of those countries using modern electronic health system to help fight against the Yellow Fever. This gives them the blueprint to support vaccination rollout in those countries.

 Aside from the government’s vaccine project, Lim said  Oracle is also helping smaller projects of local government units as they reopen their economies. One of such is an LGU project to reopen its domestic tourism ensuring their application was up in the Cloud in just a few days and the LGU, which she did not identify, is now reaping the benefits of the cloud technology as it slowly reopened its economy.

Lim was also excited about Oracle’s latest announcement of a “hybrid” cloud that would enable the deployment to cloud even for those not even connected to the internet but with all the benefits of the cloud, especially for those in remote areas.  Lim vowed to give more details of this brilliant move of Oracle once available.

In addition, Oracle has also launched APEX (Application Express), an easy way to develop an application for a non-techie, that will be made available to independent software developers, the academe and enterprises.

She stressed that Oracle was prepared for the Cloud for a minimum of 15 years ago by design. “It was just unfortunate that it was put to test by the pandemic, although the pandemic has accelerated it. I would have loved to present this in another time, not in a pandemic time,” she added.