Oracle’s Cloud Platform to Support Sunrise Data Centres

Sunrise, the largest telecommunications provider in Switzerland, is embarking on a significant cloud migration project with Oracle.

In collaboration with the leading technology company, Sunrise will migrate 1,000 of its databases to Oracle’s Exadata Cloud@Customer platform. The transformation represents a significant shift in the telco's infrastructure strategy, as it seeks to offer enhanced cloud for its on-premises data.

The telecommunications provider has opted for a hybrid approach, implementing Oracle's combined hardware and software platform within its own data centres. This strategic decision allows Sunrise to maintain data sovereignty whilst leveraging cloud-like benefits for its database operations.

"We didn't want to move completely to the cloud for a number of reasons," explains Stephen Dowling, Director of IT Technologies & Assurance at Sunrise, who is spearheading the project.

"We have around 18 months to upgrade all the databases and consolidate them in our two data centres."

Advancing cloud capabilities

Sunrise’s migration process is already well underway, with approximately 20% of the databases successfully transferred to the new platform. There are roughly 1,000 databases involved in the migration, with Sunrise prioritising development and test environments in the initial phase.

The company states it plans to migrate production environments throughout 2025, with the entire project scheduled for completion by the first quarter of 2026.

Oracle's Exadata Cloud@Customer platform enables Sunrise to gain some of the advantages of the cloud. These include enhanced flexibility and reduces administrative overhead through automated patching and advanced monitoring capabilities.

See this exclusive interview Christopher Marsh-Bourdon, VP of Global Financial Markets at Oracle to learn more about Oracle’s cloud strategy:

Additionally, Oracle will assist Sunrise in meeting data protection guidelines in accordance with both regulatory frameworks and specific customer requirements. It aims to do this, whilst delivering cloud-native capabilities within their existing data centre infrastructure.

This partnership comes at a pivotal time for the wider data centre industry, which is currently discussing how cloud services will continue to create impact moving forward. Particularly, as business needs continue to change, there is a greater demand for reliable and scalable infrastructure - with cloud services having been highlighted as a powerful solution to support greater technological innovation. 

The decision aligns with a broader industry trend, as telecommunications companies significantly increase their investment in cloud and data centre infrastructure. 

Supporting Sunrise as a telco

Sunrise is the largest private telecommunications provider in Switzerland and provides leading mobile, landline, internet and TV services to residential customers. 

This cloud-based endeavour with Oracle comes at a significant time for the telco, which currently services around six million subscribers across Switzerland. As it operates state-of-the-art data centre facilities, Sunrise’s infrastructure currently supports an extensive network, with its fixed network infrastructure comprising a mix of fibre, HFC and copper technologies. 

The telco also offers a range of cloud-based services to meet the needs of Swiss small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). These services are designed to simplify and support their customers as they transition to the cloud.

For Sunrise, the choice of Oracle's Exadata Cloud@Customer platform represents an opportunity for greater digital transformation. The solution allows the company to maintain its data within its own data centre environment to enhance operational efficiency. 

This approach is particularly relevant for telecommunications providers who must balance the need for infrastructure modernisation with strict regulatory compliance and data sovereignty requirements.

Anna Maria Blengino, CIO of Sunrise, emphasises the strategic importance of the project with Oracle.

“We need to simplify our technological infrastructure in order to be able to respond more agilely to the evolving needs of our customers,” she says.

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