“Essential to the digital transformation of businesses, cloud[1] technologies are accelerating growth across all sectors. Companies seek to draw on their full potential while ensuring a secure environment. This balance, which is as essential as it is demanding, cannot be achieved through the implementation of a single response, but must be based on a combination of different types of clouds, whether public – shared among several companies – or private – dedicated to a single company. This architecture can be adapted as a multi-cloud or a hybrid cloud. The former involves deploying several clouds of the same type independently. A hybrid cloud involves the deployment of different types of interconnected clouds. Choosing the optimum solution for each specific need, companies can make the most of the cloud in terms of flexibility and continuous innovation, while complying with strict data security and confidentiality requirements.
[1] The cloud is the practice of using remote computer servers, hosted in data centres connected to the internet to store, manage and process data, rather than a local server or personal computer.
Combining operational performance with data security
At Oracle, we are highly committed to the issue of data sovereignty. We always place innovation in the framework of regulations. This rigorous approach is inherited from our group’s history and unique culture. We are not a newcomer to tech. Still led by its founder, Larry Ellison, who is the Chairman and also the Chief Technology Officer, Oracle will be celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2027.
Our relationship with BNP Paribas is also a long-term one, since it has lasted for over 20 years. Together, at this very moment, we are writing a new chapter in the history of our partnership: the migration of BNP Paribas’ critical databases, which were previously spread over a dozen different technologies, in order to centralise them on a single platform through Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer. This innovative solution provides our clients with the capabilities of our Exadata platform, optimised for relational databases, in the form of a cloud infrastructure installed in their own data centres.
With this hybrid solution, they benefit from the advantages of a cloud infrastructure in terms of operation ‘as a service’ – automation, performance, simplified management, flexibility and security ‘by design’ – while keeping their data on site in a controlled environment, which ensures full control and compliance with local and industry regulations. Exadata Cloud@Customer also provides economic benefits, by cutting maintenance costs and automating time-consuming tasks, and ecological benefits, by reducing the demand on servers and therefore the environmental impact.
A cloud solution serving a global innovation strategy
Through this collaboration, BNP Paribas is improving the experience of its clients via smoother data management and more personal services, while hosting its critical data in its data centres and ensuring that it is fully encrypted using keys held in-house. Robust and flexible, this solution provides security for BNP Paribas clients and resilience for European regulators at a time when the regulation on digital operational resilience in the financial sector, the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), is coming into force. Since January 2025, DORA has established a common framework for the management of risks related to information and communication technologies. Notably, it has defined cybersecurity rules that apply to most financial institutions. BNP Paribas thus has a unified and modern environment for these critical databases, and is able to meet its performance, security and data sovereignty requirements. These are also our requirements.
This centralisation of databases has an additional advantage, and not an inconsiderable one: it supports BNP Paribas in the growing adoption of artificial intelligence (AI). Generative AI involves an explosion of data volumes, which increases the need to manage large relational databases. By offering the best of the cloud, our solution contributes to the success of generative AI implementations.”
Interview conducted on 17 March 2025.
Oracle
Founded in 1977 by Larry Ellison, Bob Miner and Ed Oates, Oracle was one of the first software developers for relational database management systems. Over the years, Oracle has become one of the largest enterprise software providers in the world, offering integrated application suites as well as a secure and autonomous infrastructure in its cloud services.
