ByZEV STUB

Multinational software giant Oracle Corporation is deeply committed to Israel, its CEO Safra Catz told reporters Thursday in Tel Aviv.

Catz, who was born in Holon and was named CEO of the global company in 2014, said her visit to Israel was her first trip outside the United States since before the coronavirus pandemic.

Oracle employs some 135,000 workers worldwide, including some 400 in Israel. Catz was named the company’s co-CEO in 2014 when the company’s Jewish founder Larry Ellison, who is listed as the tenth-wealthiest person in the world, stepped down from his role. Since 2019, she has been the company’s sole CEO after her partner Mark Hurd passed away.

Earlier this year, Oracle llaunched a massive underground cloud data center in Jerusalem, in partnership with Bynet Data Communications, constituting an unprecedented investment in the country’s capital city. Extending over four floors at a depth of 50 meters below ground level, it is designed to be one of the most secure in the Middle East, providing advanced cloud services to companies in Israel’s defense industry, government, banks, insurance companies, infrastructure, technology, retail and more.

“Larry (Ellison) and I are deeply committed to Israel,” Catz said. “We built an amazing, highly secured data center for Oracle Cloud in Israel because we love Israel and we know the country needs it.”

Building the data center underground makes it impervious to any weapon, Catz noted. “Our new generation cloud technology makes this possible,” she said. “In Israel, you cannot store such critical things above ground, even with backup.”