Oracle UK head Siobhan Wilson: 'Regulation is a big decision-making element in cloud'

Laws like the GDPR are driving the evolution of cloud computing

Like much of the global economy, the tech industry is going through a rough patch. Oracle’s UK country leader, Siobhan Wilson, says the main focus this year must be on helping customers.

Although she has been with Oracle for 20 years - plus four years before having her daughter, in the 90s - Siobhan only took over as the UK country leader recently; but she's already getting to grips with the obstacles customers are facing.

"It's a difficult time for many organisations," she says. "For Oracle, the focus is really being there for our customers and understanding their specific challenges, and it's about ensuring our customers have choice to utilise the cloud in a way that works for them."

Customers turn to local clouds

Thanks to the spread and diversity of cloud computing, customers have more of that choice than ever. Some opt for public cloud, others for private cloud in their own datacentres; still others go for hybrid or multi-cloud set-ups.

"The multi-cloud environment is starting to resonate a lot with our customers. They want to be able to select the best vendor for specific workloads that make the most sense to them, and that work seamlessly together...

"As more and more workloads move to the cloud, we as vendors need to make sure that customers have that choice to make sure it works for them."

Siobhan expects multi-cloud's popularity to continue growing as it matures and as regulation evolves. Oracle is heavily discussing digital sovereignty internally, for this reason.

"Customers tell us they want the benefits of the cloud, but we must meet regulation for where data and personnel operating the underlying infrastructure are located. That's becoming quite a big decision-making [element] for customers."

Oracle has more than 40 cloud regions worldwide. In the UK specifically it operates government and commercial regions, as well as its first Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Sovereign Cloud region for "highly regulated companies and governments around the globe."

The Sovereign Cloud is Oracle's answer to laws like the GDPR, ensuring that all data, internal operations and customer support responsibilities remain in a specific locale. The system has proven popular enough that the company opened a new region in the EU last month, split between datacentres in Frankfurt and Madrid.

You could touch Oracle a lot and not even realise it

Siobhan aims to bring together the infrastructure and customer conversations, utilising Oracle's ability to quickly open new locations.

"We will look at what we can do [to help customers this year], and that comes back to some of the datacentres we're opening. Because of the regulatory challenges that [customers] might have, we might decide, well, let's help with that: let's do a data centre there, and let's do that for there.

"It's really about listening, understanding and acting."

A challenge for the future, though, is making sure the company's efforts are seen.

Oracle owns and operates a huge amount of the world's internet infrastructure, but sometimes it can be too focused on the back end. One of Siobhan's main aims this year is to raise the company's profile in the UK.

"The main thing we're looking at is around how we create the right ecosystem, so people understand the impact Oracle has on the UK.

"In your day-to-day life you could touch Oracle quite a lot and not even realise it. One of the things that I would like to do is make sure that we're helping people understand that ecosystem, and what Oracle does within the ecosystem."

Oracle is not the only vendor focused on localised cloud infrastructure; its contemporaries like IBM offer European data storage and processing. The Sovereign Cloud goes a step further, using entirely separate legal entities incorporated in the EU, and a technological architecture distinct from Oracle's other infrastructure.

Clearly, regulations - with the EU at the forefront - are driving change in how customers and vendors interact with the cloud.