The Oracle logo is displayed on an office building in Irvine, California, USA June 28, 2018. REUTERS / Mike Blake / File Photo

STOCKHOLM / MILAN, December 15 (Reuters) – Oracle (ORCL.N) said on Wednesday that it has opened its first cloud region in the Nordics in Stockholm, together with one in Milan, Italy, as the pandemic increased the demand for cloud computing tools from private and public organizations .

Cloud regions refer to the geographical location of the data center, which allows customers near that region to access their data more quickly.

Cloud computing companies such as Oracle, Microsoft (MSFT.O), Amazon (AMZN.O) and Google (GOOGL.O) have set up new data centers across Europe to cater to customers transitioning from internal digital storage and computer use to leased cloud servers.

Oracle already has cloud regions in Germany, the Netherlands, France, the UK and Switzerland in Europe. Including the two new regions, it will have facilities in 36 regions worldwide, with plans to add eight more by the end of next year.

The company has already signed contracts with potential customers in Europe and plans to open a second region in France and one in Spain.

“European organizations want to store their data in Europe or in their local country where possible,” says Carla Arend, senior program director at research firm IDC.

Oracle is best known for its database software, lagging behind its major rivals in the race to enter the cloud computing market, but its total cloud revenue still rose 22% to $ 2.7 billion in the last second quarter.

Earlier this year, Oracle said it will migrate the most complex computing software from enterprise to its cloud for free, in an effort to capture a new wave of potential cloud services.

Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Stockholm and Elvira Pollina in Milan; Editing Devika Syamnath

Our standards: Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.