Vodafone plans to modernise and move critical systems to dedicated Oracle cloud infrastructure to support the rollout of its latest communications services.

Oracle and Vodafone have announced a partnership to modernise the operator’s European IT infrastructure and accelerate its transition to the cloud.

Under the multi-year agreement, Vodafone will modernise and migrate a large number of its systems to OCI Dedicated Region, a fully managed cloud region that brings all of Oracle’s public cloud services into Vodafone’s own network and data centres. This will provide a dedicated cloud platform for Vodafone to modernise its thousands of Oracle databases as well as to support and scale its mission-critical OSS and BSS systems, including CRM and order management.

The implementation will also enable Vodafone to build cloud-based applications faster and, by taking advantage of its geographical scale, launch them in multiple markets at the same time.

Oracle will deploy OCI Dedicated Region in Vodafone’s main data centres that manage its European IT and network operations. The deployment of public cloud services directly inside Vodafone’s own network and data centres should enable the operator to modernise, manage and automate its critical systems flexibly using technologies such as autonomous services, and more easily meet the latency and performance requirements of these applications.

Vodafone will also have close access to compute resources that enable it to augment and scale services dynamically in multiple geographies according to changing business requirements, while reducing operational costs and meeting data residency regulations.

The partnership supports Vodafone’s multi-year initiative to consolidate and modernise the technology infrastructure that supports its mission-critical systems into a shared, on-premises, open-standard platform capable of supporting and scaling digital services. It will also help Vodafone further its Tech 2025 goals, reducing time-to-market of its services, providing better customer experiences through always-on services, and reducing operational costs through automation.

“As Vodafone focuses on growth, data are key to how we evolve our business, build new capabilities and innovate to meet the needs of our customers,” said Scott Petty, chief digital officer at Vodafone. “Our collaboration with Oracle supports our vision of becoming a technology communications company. The agreement enables Oracle to bring its entire portfolio of cloud services directly into Vodafone data centres. This includes the same architecture, software, services and control plane used in OCI public cloud. The flexibility offered by OCI enables us to build a robust, secure and extensible cloud platform in our own data centres, while also providing the operational agility and scalability required to support the growth and diversification of our business.”

Clay Magouyrk, executive vice president at Oracle, added: “Telecom companies are reimagining their business models to innovate and monetise new opportunities at speed and at scale. Vodafone is at the forefront of this thinking, and we are excited to bring the power of OCI to Vodafone’s data centres to support the company and its partners as they fast-track this vision and deliver the next generation of connected services.”

And Jonathan Tikochinsky, another Oracle executive vice president, said: “Now more than ever, telecom companies need to quickly adopt new technologies to deliver new innovative products at speed while continuing to meet evolving regulatory requirements. Our partnership with Vodafone is based on achieving this balance, providing a cloud platform that enables Vodafone to modernise and consolidate its existing infrastructure while also building a foundation for a digital future. We are looking forward to partnering with one of the telecom sector’s digital trailblazers as we help shape the next generation of communication services and business models.”