Oracle today announced that e&, one of the world’s leading technology and investment groups is scaling its cloud footprint to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Dedicated Region to support its business expansion and modernize the business applications. Under an agreement signed at the Oracle CloudWorld Tour in Abu Dhabi, the technology group will also explore migrating its global HR functions to Oracle Fusion Cloud Human Capital Management (HCM).

With a 47 year legacy e& is a multinational technology and investment group serving 163 million customers in 16 countries across the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. OCI Dedicated Region brings the opportunity to use OCI’s public cloud benefits, services, and applications in e&’s data center that manages its core IT and network systems. This provides e& with a dedicated cloud platform to modernize, manage and automate critical OSS and BSS applications as part of a multi-year cloud transformation program. In addition, Oracle Cloud HCM will help e& to simplify HR processes, improve the employee experience, and deliver enhanced workforce insights.

“e& is transforming its business to support our customers in a new world defined by digitalization and hyper-connectivity. As we we continue to grow, we need to consolidate and simplify our technology infrastructure to make us more agile and adaptable, and this is where our collaboration with Oracle comes in,” said Khalid Murshed,Chief Technology & Information Officer, etisalat by e&. “OCI Dedicated Region enables us to bring Oracle’s entire portfolio of public cloud services into our own data centers while keeping full control of our data governance, giving us the operational agility and scalability we require to support the rapid growth and diversification of our business.”

With OCI Dedicated Region, e& will have access to Oracle’s 100 plus cloud services on-premise to accelerate innovation across ArtificaI Intelligence (AI) and to support and scale its existing services. In addition, e& will be able to retain full control of its data and applications to help it address the UAE’s security, regulatory and data residency requirements while reducing operational costs. The collaboration is part of a long-term initiative by e& to consolidate the technology infrastructure that underpins its business and operational systems into a shared, open-standard platform designed to support its growing digital services portfolio, including new services around Internet of Things (IoT) and 5G.

“OCI Dedicated Region provides OCI services in a self-contained, independent cloud region in a physical location of the customer's choosing. e& can scale applications and services quickly while retaining control of their data to help meet data residency requirements,” said Nick Redshaw, senior vice president, Technology, Middle East and Africa, Oracle. “Oracle installs, operates and supports OCI Dedicated Regions in the same way we support OCI public cloud regions worldwide. This unique capability enables e& to lift and shift legacy workloads to the cloud at their own pace, increase the pace of innovation and lower costs.

“With Oracle Cloud HCM, e& will be able to connect human resource processes —and people —across the organisation and create a truly connected community where people feel valued and heard”, said Leopoldo Boado Lama, senior vice president – Business Applications , ECEMEA, Oracle. “The implementation will also help e& align business strategy with the human resource function, reduce compliance risk, and deploy the workforce with greater control through a fully integrated solution that links time, labor, and leave management with payroll, financial, and personnel data.”

Oracle Cloud HCM will provide e& with an HCM system that connects processes across the employee lifecycle, including recruiting, workforce management, and payroll services, helping to improve decision-making and reduce operational costs. With infused AI, digital assistants, and hundreds of new capabilities added each quarter, Oracle Cloud HCM will also help e& to keep up with the latest technology advancements and HR best practices.

Oracle Advanced Customer Services (ACS) will manage the Oracle OCI Dedicated Region implementation.