Tag Archives: Datacenter Dynamics

Delphi in a name

Yup, we are talking about Oracle, not Borland. And whenever I hear Oracle I tend to add the ‘of Delphi’ automatically. It is a Pavlovian thing. This is nothing negative about Oracle, I wanted to join their ranks in the 90’s, and beyond the millennium a few times too. My origin settings was a database programmer (I earned my stripes with Clipper, the Nantucket version). I think it is the very first program where I shelled out $650 (Dfl. 1,200) for a program and I learned a lot through Clipper. I also got the Clipper notes (Norton Notes) and these two kept my in my apartment (on a desk chair) for weeks and weeks at a time. I relish these happy days. Then of course I got into technical support and customer care through a precursor of IBM and my life at that point was pretty complete. I miss those days and I still think fondly of them. Not so much the upper ranks of that company with their political games, but them I was never a political player. 

So when I saw ‘Oracle commits to invest $14bn in Saudi Arabia over next 10 years’ (at https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/oracle-commits-to-invest-14bn-in-saudi-arabia-over-next-10-years/) my mind starting swirling and twirling (sorry JK Rowling) and my creative logging started to set new parameters. 

You see, we are given “Oracle has committed to investing $14 billion in Saudi Arabia over the next 10 years to expand its cloud and AI offerings in the region. The plans were announced by the company on May 13, and in the wake of President Donald Trump’s visit to the Kingdom” this implies Technical Support, Customer Care and Trainings. Things I can do (all three) and I have had well over a decade of experience in these sections. As such I keep my eyes open for positions needed in either Riyadh, Mississauga or Abu Dhabi. I reckon that the investments are not just for Saudi Arabia, they are all spend in Saudi Arabia, but there will be essentially needed persons in Abu Dhabi because no one walks away from ADNOC and with ARAMCO in Saudi Arabia, a secondary call center would be needed in Abu Dhabi. And they too will have all three settings in that centre, beyond that I reckon that it will a location will be cheaper in the heart of ADNOC than in Dubai, so there.

When we see “Our expanded partnership with the Kingdom will create new opportunities for its economy, deliver better health outcomes for its people, and fortify its alliance with the United States, which will create a ripple effect of peace and prosperity across the Middle East and around the world.” The words “a ripple effect of peace and prosperity across the Middle East” merely implies (not confirms) the setting I see. You see, it makes sense to do this, but it requires knowledge of Oracle policies (and I don’t know those).

So when we see “Oracle has two existing cloud regions in Saudi Arabia – Saudi Arabia West, located in Jeddah, and Saudi Arabia Central in Riyadh. The former was launched in 2020, the latter launched in 2024, and is hosted in a Center3 data center. The company has been planning a third in the upcoming Neom City since October 2021, which remains listed on Oracle’s website as “coming soon.”” Someone would think that another cloud the UAE cloud should be there as well. Merely not mentioned in this stage, but ADNOC is too big to walk away from and Microsoft has dropped the ball too many times. There is a setting that implies that IBM and or AWS are already there, but that gives the larger setting that ADNOC becomes dependent on one supplier and they are as smart as they come. So I am betting that Oracle has that region (as well as Dubai) in mind when we consider DAMAC (valued at US$ 595 million) with the total revenue recorded by DAMAC Properties was AED 7.5 billion (2017), and they are not all. There is also Emaar Properties, which is said to be the biggest of them all and that are the kind of clients Oracle really likes to keep happy, as such I saw the stage evolve, even though they are already there and in January 2025 we were given ‘Oracle to increase Abu Dhabi investment five-fold’, as such I think that there might be a new need to seek employment with Oracle. Now add to that the quote “Earlier this month, the Abu Dhabi government put out a call for the development of a single multi-cloud system that will serve more than 40 government entities” and you’ll see that there might be space for me too, either in Abu Dhabi or in Mississauga and the two cover a little over 20 hours a day coverage in a 24:7 setting. The nice part is that it takes time to get people up to speed, so I might have an advantage (merely a slight one). 

So as I am about to dream the day away on this rainy Sunday. I see the cogs of industry revolve around the settings of the world and I keep having happy thoughts.

So have a great day everyone, preferably less rainy than it is here.

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Stirring the soup

Things are afoot in the Kay es Ah (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia), but to see this we need to reflect on a few items. The first one is (at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-10/twitter-former-employee-convicted-of-spying-for-saudi-arabia/101318490) and gives us ‘Former Twitter employee convicted of spying for Saudi Arabia’, the simple setting is that this happens, If Jack Dorsey had played a few items over to the NSA, no one would hear if it, but when a non-American agency gets the key to the Twitter Data Kingdom, it becomes news. So when we see “Ahmad Abouammo, a US citizen and former media partnership manager for Twitter’s Middle East region, was charged in 2019 with acting as an agent of Saudi Arabia without registering with the US government.” And then someone slips, the text becomes “used their positions to access confidential Twitter data about users.” It is ‘their positions’ which is plural, so how many were caught? We get it with “This included their email addresses, phone numbers and IP addresses, the latter of which he used to identify a user’s location. A third man named in the complaint, Saudi citizen Ahmed Al-Mutairi, was alleged to have worked with the Saudi royal family as an intermediary.” So was the second man? We see that in the end when we get “The FBI still lists Ali Alzabarah and Ahmed Al-Mutairi as wanted.” Well, this is 3 years ago, so the other two are optionally celebrating their success in Riyadh. Espionage happens, it can happen where ever we see this much user data. The fact that this had gone on, and we do not see HOW LONG this had been going on should also be reflected on all this, it should see us accept the larger Elon Musk discount for data copied into other places. Transgressed data loses values and as stated “This included their email addresses, phone numbers and IP addresses, the latter of which he used to identify a user’s location.” And nowhere do we see for how long this was going on before the alleged culprit was arrested. I state alleged, because we do not know (or we are not told) what spy one did and what spy two did. The court-case might shed light on this, but he was acquitted of several points, so there.

Then it is time to add vegetables to the soup in the form of a story (at https://www.silkroadbriefing.com/news/2022/08/10/china-saudi-arabia-announce-massive-strategic-partnership-energy-agreement/) there we see ‘China, Saudi Arabia Announce Massive Strategic Partnership Energy Agreement’, it was what I said months ago, they might drill more but that does not mean it goes to the place we hope/expect/wish it will go and now we see this, a larger gain for China and the agreement between Aramco and Sinopec, which showed a fear I expected to come for almost two years, with “The two companies will join hands in renewing the vitality and scoring new progress of the Belt and Road Initiative and Saudi Vision 2030” we see a larger gain for Chinese construction and a loss for western ones. This was the setting I feared, because it means that there is no relief for western construction. The little tidbits thrown at them like scraps are the only ones they are likely to have. In a place that I about to invest well over $1,000,000,000,000 for new buildings in Neom, as well as the line, there is now a decent chance that the small hidden engineering texts will be Arabic/Chinese and not Arabic/English. A station that was always likely to happen, but now it seems it is becoming the passing of a fact. 

The third ingredient in any soup is the stock and water. That is given to us through an article (at https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/saudi-egyptian-investment-co-invests-13-bln-four-egyptian-firms-2022-08-10/) by Reuters. There we see ‘Saudi Arabia invests $1.3 bln in four Egyptian firms’. It is not the amount, when you invest 0.1% in companies after you set in motion  building bill, we see the appearance of dwarfism. It seems like a speck, but you would be wrong. This event will give larger rise to the final ingredient and here we see “The companies are Abu Qir Fertizilers and Chemical Industries (ABUK.CA), Misr Fertilizers Production Company (MFPC.CA), Alexandria Container and Cargo Handling (ALCN.CA), and payments firm E-Finance for Financial and Digital Investments (EFIH.CA).” And we see nothing weird here, not when you consider the larger building needs, this makes absolute sense and “Saudi Arabia has already provided billions in support since Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi came to power in 2014. The United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait this year all promised to increase their investments in Egypt” does not change that. But the water and stock are mere building blocks for the vegetables to connect to, it is the beef, the beef completes the picture. This is seen (at https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/mobily-signs-mou-with-telecom-egypt-to-build-submarine-cable-from-saudi-arabia-to-egypt/) and you might think that it does not make sense. How does ‘Mobily signs MoU with Telecom Egypt to build submarine cable from Saudi Arabia to Egypt’ imply beef? Well this started for me at least a little over three years ago, 3 years ago, before the Covid started hitting us that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia had, with Neom an uncanny option to become the large (optionally largest) 5G powerhouse of the Middle East, stretching into Egypt and becoming the 5G powerhouse in the Mediterranean with larger options towards stretching into Europe. Now, I do not fear it, telecom powerhouses are often awesome, but this states that the larger players (like Vodafail) are seemingly asleep at the wheel and the KSA has nothing opposing Huawei, it is the foundation of Saudi 5G, so now the 100,000,000 Egyptians will fuel the 35,000,000 5G users all over the KSA and as Neom becomes a 5G hub for Europe, the Middle East and Asia, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia becomes the one powerhouse no one saw coming, and those who did were awfully quiet about it. 

A stage that I saw coming 3 years ago is now gaining momentum and optionally they will get a lot more over the next 2-3 years. And Europe with their promises will go nowhere, as someone ones said, a promise and an empty sack are worth the empty sack and with the beef giving fragrance and texture to the soup. 

I will offer you the position of the fifth element in an image, it is the soul of tastebuds and it matters, because the place and ownership of the fifth element are not a given, not even how they will become part of the equation, but they are there, not in the tall grass, but out in the open. Someone has a double role to play and I honestly do not know who, where or what they represents, but when you make soup, you can add your own ideal mix, or rely on people to grab the fifth element, and that is what I did. I added little of the spices, so the consumer of soup will add it themselves opening the field for player number five.

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