Telefónica Tech and Oracle strike global cloud deal

The stars of telecoms and public cloud continue to align, as Spanish telecoms group Telefónica took its partnership with Oracle to the next level.

Under the agreement, Telefónica Tech – the operator’s digital transformation division – and Oracle will jointly offer platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and applications to enterprises and public sector organisations. The global partnership enables Telefónica to offer B2B customers an on-ramp to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), supporting them with its own portfolio of managed and professional services.

“One of the key drivers for success in the cloud market is to help our customers in their digital transformation by offering a complete and differential portfolio with the support of reference partners,” said María Jesús Almazor, CEO of cybersecurity and cloud at Telefónica Tech, in a statement. “This agreement with Oracle will allow us to expand our cloud services and strengthen our strategic positioning in PaaS, as well as reinforce our value proposition of databases and middleware applications with one of the market leaders.”

It’s a win-win, because by taking on the role of an on-ramp, Telefónica gets to be part of that public cloud value chain without having to build out its own infrastructure. Meanwhile Oracle will benefit from increased take-up of its portfolio.

In addition, Telefónica will also become the host partner for the Oracle Cloud Madrid Region. It is Oracle’s first cloud region in Spain, and will offer enterprises and public sector bodies there a secure and reliable connection to its range of services. It will also help businesses address their in-country data residency and compliance requirements, Oracle said.

“With Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, we are complementing Telefónica’s robust cloud services offering with a cloud platform that has seen strong growth over the last year as customers all over the world use it to run their most mission-critical workloads,” said Albert Triola, country leader, Oracle Spain.

Thursday’s agreement comes months after Telefónica Spain reached a multi-year deal to migrate its mission-critical commercial and operational systems to OCI, which it hopes will accelerate the development of new comms services for consumers and businesses.

As Telecoms.com reported earlier this week, deals between hyperscalers and telcos are becoming more commonplace, as operators look for the most efficient way to offer compelling cloud services to enterprises, in addition to virtualising more of their own infrastructure. In fact, public cloud is proving so popular that Gartner reckons that by 2025, it will account for more than half of global enterprise IT spending, nearly a trillion dollars.