European Commission loves Oracle enough to sign six-year cloud deal

Oracle has signed a deal with the European Commission to provide Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and its platform services across EU administrations.

The Commission selected OCI following a competitive procurement procedure, although Big Red has not disclosed the winning bid, The Reg understands is valued at €15.75 million ($16.73 million).

The six-year agreement is set to make OCI available to "dozens" of institutions run on behalf of the world's largest trading bloc. The contract would offer institutions access to more than 100 OCI services, the database giant said in a statement.

Oracle said the deal is intended to allow EU institutions and bodies to meet compliance, data governance, and regulatory mandates with "less risk and cost."

It is not alone in providing the European Commission with cloud services. The EU body operates a multi-cloud strategy and continues to work on a swift adoption of the European Cybersecurity Certification Scheme for Cloud Services (EUCS).

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"The lack of trust in cloud technologies remains a barrier to a well-functioning data economy. EUCS will introduce a harmonized set of security requirements and conformity assessment methodologies so that cloud consumers can make informed decisions. Having a harmonized set of cybersecurity requirements across Europe will promote trust in cloud services, thus fostering the uptake of cloud technologies," Oracle said in a statement.

In 2020, AWS signed a deal with the European Commission for €54 million. Acquisition of cloud services in the field of multi-tenant Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a Service (PaaS), was set to last four years, according to an earlier tender notice. The total value of the Cloud II framework, from which AWS was selected, was set to be €417.7 million. The EC also uses tech services from OVHcloud.

Oracle claimed that more than 1,000 public sector organizations in the UK, Netherlands, Austria, and US use Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. ®