One of the UK government’s top technology chiefs has welcomed news that Oracle is to increase cloud services hosted at its Slough datacentre to its public sector customers.
The expansion comes as the firm looks to begin providing new Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) technologies to public and private sector organisations and businesses.
Iain Patterson, chief executive of common technology services at the Government Digital Service, applauded Oracle’s investment in expanded datacentre facilities in the UK and added the site already supports a number of government departments and local authorities.
“The expansion provides greater capabilities and further choice and meets additional important public sector requirements,” said Patterson. “Government is committed to a cloud first policy and significant supplier investments, such as this, support our strategic ambition and will ultimately provide better value and better services to the taxpayer.”
Among the public sector organisations already using the Slough datacentre are the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) and HM Land Registry. It also supports services procured via G-Cloud.
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The datacentre has been operational for two years and the new development should allow public sector customers to develop, test, and launch applications at low cost, the company said. In addition, it will offer Hadoop delivered as a secure, automated service that can be fully integrated with existing enterprise data in Oracle Database along with access to a rapidly provisioned virtual compute environment to run applications at scale on the Oracle Cloud.
“CIOs are facing increased pressure to balance operational responsibilities with rising expectations all under greater scrutiny from the boardroom,” said Thomas Kurian, president at Oracle.
“Much of their future success is dependent on quickly exploiting new digital innovations and that is where cloud plays a huge part. We have introduced PaaS capabilities into the UK data centre to ensure Oracle continues to help customers maximise existing technologies and new innovations and allow CIOs to set the agenda for the future of their organisations.”
