Summary

  • Reserved Regions sit inside an existing Alloy realm, are hidden from other customers and remain operated by the Alloy partner
  • They can be placed in the end customer's own data centre while remaining part of the partner-operated Alloy environment

The fact

Oracle said on 31 August that Alloy Reserved Regions are available to order. Each region sits inside an existing Oracle Alloy realm and is reserved for one specified end customer. Other customers in the realm cannot see or subscribe to it, while the Alloy partner continues to provide and operate the service.

A Reserved Region can also be installed in the end customer's own data centre, bringing Oracle Cloud services closer to workloads with particular requirements around location, separation or continuity. Oracle also positions the model for dedicated capacity and disaster recovery. The company has not named a customer, announced a live deployment or disclosed how long a Reserved Region takes to bring into service.

The assessment

Reserved Regions give Alloy partners a way to serve customers that want or need Oracle cloud infrastructure in a specific location without handing them responsibility for operating the cloud platform. A region can be dedicated to one organisation and, where required, installed inside that customer's own data centre.

An on-site deployment also brings part of the delivery work into the customer's facility. The site has to accommodate the infrastructure and be connected before workloads can move, while the Alloy partner continues to run the cloud service. Oracle has not disclosed how long that process takes or which services will be available in each Reserved Region.

For BTW readers, a customer can now keep an Oracle region on its own premises while the Alloy partner continues to operate it. The first deployments will show how much work is required between ordering the region and putting customer workloads on it.

What to watch

Watch for the first named customer and the time between ordering and service. The most useful details will be where the region is installed, what the customer site must provide and which Oracle services are available at launch. Those disclosures will show how much work sits between ordering a Reserved Region and putting it into operation.