Oracle, one of the world’s largest tech companies, plans to increase its headcount in Dubai by more than 40 per cent, as Mena companies increasingly switch to the cloud.
The company currently has 280 employees and wants a total of 400 workers, mostly technical and salespeople, by the end of its financial year in June.
The Mena region has been lagging the globe in its take-up of cloud technology, but Oracle said that it registered the highest global growth in the region with revenues jumping nearly 100 per cent compared with 2015.
“We are signing up 250 new customers every quarter in the Mena region,” said Giovanna Sangiorgi, the regional vice president at Oracle Digital.
She said the company is targeting mid-market corporates in the region with revenues up to US$350 million per year.
“We are looking to hire digital natives, millennials, that are comfortable working in the digital space. Finding people with digital skills is not difficult, but finding people with cloud skills is a lot harder,” Ms Sangiorgi said.
Oracle also expects to open a data centre in Abu Dhabi in the third quarter to support the region’s switch to cloud computing and cloud-based applications.
It expects the region’s governments, public bodies and large corporate entities to make the switch to cloud computing in 2017 having already signed up Dubai Airports, the Landmark Group and Apparel Group.
The UAE’s cloud computing sector is becoming an increasingly competitive field as Amazon Web Services, a subsidiary of online retail giant Amazon, recently announced it will be opening offices in Dubai and Bahrain this year to accelerate the adoption of cloud computing in the region.
ascott@thenational.ae
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