Oracle has announced that it will be opening a new UK data centre that will be dedicated to offering services to the government's G-Cloud framework.
The news shortly follows a similar announcement from online CRM provider Salesforce.com, which said last week that it will be building an entirely new data centre in the UK.
Oracle's new data centre, which will be co-located in Equinix's Thames Valley facility, will be compliant with the government's IL3 standard for information security and availability
"Oracle is committed to working with public administrations around the world as they seek to provide quality and affordable services to their citizens," said Oracle president Mark Hurd.
"We applaud the G-Cloud programme and believe it represents a significant step change in the provision of public sector IT services," he said. "We are delighted to bring our technology, applications and experience to the initiative and to make significant investments in the new data centre and infrastructure that will be dedicated to the UK Government 's G-Cloud initiative."
Suppliers to the G-Cloud framework are not obliged to have a data centre based in the UK. Indeed, by Salesforce.com and Oracle already offer their cloud services through the framework.
However, according to the latest set of sales figures from the Cloudstore, neither company has made a sale through the framework.
Their decisions to open up local data centre facilities therefore implies that public sector organisations are reluctant to see their data leave the country.
