Oracle is extending its cloud computing data centers to another five countries. The company said on that it  had added new cloud computing data centers in five countries and aims to have them in 36 locations by the end of 2020, as it races with its competitors Amazon.com and Microsoft Corp for market share.

Oracle, a longtime business software provider, is rolling out its second generation of cloud systems, in which it operates data centers and customers rent capacity from it. Amazon Web Services and Microsoft are the two top players with more than two-thirds of the global market in 2019, according to Forrester Research, but Oracle is trying to win customers by extending its geographical reach.

Clay Magouyrk, the executive vice president of engineering in Oracle’s cloud unit, said new data privacy regulations in the European Union and elsewhere mean many businesses must retain data in the country where it is generated, making it important to offer them cloud data centers in as many places as possible.

Oracle’s goal is to have at least two “regions,” in each country where it operates, so that customers can have one primary region and one as a backup in case of disaster, he said.  “Overall, the strategy is to put lots of regions around the world to give customers data sovereignty,” he said.

Each cloud vendor promotes its data center footprint with different terminology, but in most cases a “region” can have multiple data centers in physically separate locations called “availability” zones or domains. Microsoft has 56 regions. Amazon has 22 regions but has 69 availability zones. Oracle recently  added regions in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; Osaka, Japan; Melbourne, Australia; Montreal, Canada; and Amsterdam in the Netherlands. The company plans to add a second region in Saudi Arabia this year, as well as two in the United Arab Emirates.

Oracle plans to reap tremendously through its addition of cloud computing centers globally. Now industry experts feel that Amazon and Microsoft will have to face a tight competition from Oracle.