This blog features Cloud related news stories and announcements that you may have missed during your busy week.

- Oracle has chosen Johannesburg as it’s first cloud region in Africa, becoming Oracle’s 37th cloud region. Built on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), the Johannesburg region will enable customers to build cloud native applications and to migrate data platforms to the cloud.
- AWS have announced the general availability of Amazon EC2 Hpc6a and Amazon EC2 X2iezn instances, with X2idn and X2iedn instances ‘coming soon’.
- The US is examining Alibaba’s cloud unit with the Biden administration launching a formal review to determine whether there is a risk to national security.
- Microsoft is said to become the third largest gaming company (behind Tencent and Sony) as they announced plans to acquire Activision Blizzard Inc. The acquisition will help Microsoft accelerate growth in the gaming business and become a step closer to the Metaverse.
- Dell add new multi-cloud services to it’s APEX portfolio, including APEX Multi-Cloud Data Services and APEX Backup Services.
- The Australian Open (AO) has entered the Metaverse world. Explore Melbourne Park and the AO and all it offers, without leaving home. Maybe Novak can get involved after all?