While European telecommunications provider Vodafone already lists cloud technologies leader Google among its strategic partners, it is now getting ready to improve its IT infrastructure in the continent through a new multi-year partnership with Oracle.
The Oracle agreement is the latest development concerning the modernization and overall consolidation of Vodafone’s infrastructure and is seen as a significant step towards improving its operations throughout Europe.
According to Vodafone chief digital and IT officer Scott Perry, this new collaboration with the infrastructure as a service (IaaS) provider is a big step towards making the company’s vision of becoming a key player in the technology communications sector a reality. As he puts it, Vodafone’s focus at this point is growth, for which data is the answer regarding how it will eventually evolve as a business, create new capabilities, and provide innovative solutions for its customers.
What Does the Agreement Entail?
The key aspect of the Vodafone-Oracle agreement involves migrating the former’s mission-critical apps and workloads to a revamped infrastructure powered on the premises by the latter’s technology.
These include several thousand Oracle databases and numerous systems that will eventually be hosted in a dedicated and fully-managed Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) region. In doing so, Vodafone will gain access to Oracle databases through its own data centers.
Per the agreement stipulations, OCI dedicated regions will be deployed into the primary data centers of Vodafone’s infrastructure throughout the greater European region. In doing so, the telco will be able to create and deliver its own cloud-native apps in a more timely fashion.
In the press statement released by Vodafone management last June 21st, it is expected that the agreement will result in a dedicated cloud platform that will enable Vodafone to modernize several thousand Oracle databases. In addition, this platform will likewise provide technical support to its operations and scale its mission-critical operations support systems. It will also enhance business support systems like customer relationships and order management.
Deploying public cloud services directly within Vodafone’s proprietary network and data centers enables the telco to automate, manage, and modernize several critical systems. These are accomplished through innovative technologies to meet their latency and performance requirements faster and more efficiently.
Likewise, this setup gives Vodafone immediate access to any resources it may require for scaling up services in various parts of the world to keep up with evolving business requirements.
