Oracle is continuing its cloud expansion, opening its first cloud regions in Italy and Sweden.

Oracle has been making major headway in the cloud market, chipping away at its bigger rivals, AWS, Microsoft, and Google Cloud. Ever the salesmen, co-founder Larry Ellison has recently taken a jab at AWS over its outages, highlighting Oracle’s reputation for rock-solid stability.

Beyond stability, however, a company’s geographic coverage is an important factor in being able to effectively compete. The closer a company’s servers are to its customers, the better the performance it can offer.

To that end, the company has opened cloud regions in Italy, as well as Sweden.

“It is important that we offer organizations access to cloud infrastructure that is located in Italy to manage their most critical data and applications. We currently see significant growth in our cloud business that reflects our customers’ desire to rapidly digitize their operations so they can better serve their customers,” said Alessandro Ippolito, vice president and country general manager, Oracle Italy. “The Milan region also supports the Italian government’s ‘Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza’ (National Plan of Recovery and Resilience) initiative, which aims to promote the economic recovery of the country through digital modernization. Having a cloud region on Italian soil will help facilitate the adoption of Oracle Cloud services by government entities and Italy’s highly regulated industries.”

“It is important that we offer Nordic organizations access to cloud infrastructure locally to help manage their most critical data and applications,” said Pelle Ewald, country manager, Oracle Sweden. “We currently see significant growth in our cloud business that reflects our customers’ desire to rapidly scale their digital operations in an effort to continue to best serve their consumers now and in the future.”