Middle Eastern telecoms operator Du launched a sovereign cloud offering built on the Oracle Alloy cloud infrastructure platform.

The National Hypercloud supports private and public sector organizations in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) region, focusing on customers in Dubai and the Northern Emirates.

The platform boasts more than 200 Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Services covering infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS), and software-as-a-service (SaaS). Oracle’s distributed cloud, OCI Generative AI service, and OCI AI infrastructure are highlighted for customers wishing to enable AI from the Du platform.

Du also highlighted work with Nvidia, including its accelerated computing platform and software for deploying Oracle’s AI capabilities for public sector customers.

Du was somewhat more humble in only touting more than 100 OCI services compared to Oracle itself touting more than 200 services.

Either way, the announcement shows the transformation of a telecom operator into a hyperscaler.

Du will run the National Hypercloud from its own data center in the UAE. By standing up a full OCI region through Oracle Alloy inside said data center, Du becomes a sovereign hyperscaler rather than a cloud tenant. Main competitor E& is an example of the latter, with its Abu Dhabi-centric use of OCI Dedicated Region run by Oracle out of the telecom operator's data centers.

With the domestic backbone provided by Du, customers in the region can expect reduced latency while meeting local data-residency rules. Du, meanwhile, can expect to earn more by providing cloud services on top of its network links, much like Deutsche Telekom’s recent cloud bundle consolidation, and Beem; Swisscom’s combined networking and cybersecurity solution as unveiled last month.

“The deployment of Oracle Alloy is a major step in our evolution into a cloud services market, complementing our wide portfolio of managed services with comprehensive public cloud capabilities that enable us to respond nimbly to the transformation demands of our customers," Du CEO Fahad Al Hassawi explained in a statement.

“The ability to deploy AI services in a dedicated cloud region within our local data center in the UAE is particularly valuable in helping our government customers accelerate their transformation initiatives from a facility within the UAE.”