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In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, AI platforms are playing a pivotal role in reshaping industries and driving business transformation. As businesses across the UAE embark on their digital journeys, AI has emerged as a key enabler, streamlining operations, enhancing decision-making, and fostering innovation. In a recent fireside chat featuring leading industry experts from the tech sector, attendees gained valuable insights into how AI platforms can be leveraged to create new growth opportunities and build a sustainable future in the era of digital transformation. One of the key themes discussed during the session was the growing importance of GenAI as a transformative tool in business operations. Alexander Knigge, Chief Digital & Technology Officer at Modon, a key speaker at the event, emphasized that “Generative AI is our priority,” highlighting the shift towards AI-powered platforms that can enhance everything from customer engagement to operational efficiency. As businesses continue to explore the potential of AI, the integration of generative technologies is seen as essential to remaining competitive in a rapidly evolving market. AI’s ability to generate content, automate complex tasks, and facilitate personalized interactions is reshaping how companies operate and deliver value to their customers. Andrew Murphy, CIO at Abu Dhabi Airports, another expert at the fireside chat, underscored the importance of AI in his company’s long-term strategy. “Generative AI is very important in our journey,” he explained. “In the last few years, we opened more international offices, and as part of our five-year strategy, AI is one of our five key focus areas, with a very strong profile and significant investment.” source

IT service management (ITSM) tools and practices transformed the tech side of the enterprise by automating service and support operations, along with adding employee self-service options. The combination was so effective that organizations are applying the principles to the entire organization in the form of enterprise service management (ESM), allowing departments such as human resources (HR), finance, and facilities to transform their own processes. The approach can, for example: Help HR departments to standardize and automate employee onboarding Allow finance teams to reduce manual work while increasing quality and accuracy Enable legal teams to track and accelerate document submissions and reviews ESM is now rapidly becoming more transformative with the incorporation of generative artificial intelligence (genAI) and agentic AI. Thanks to the November 2022 release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, many people are familiar with genAI’s ability to perform specific tasks on request. Users can prompt a genAI model, for example, to write an email, summarize a lengthy document, or create an image, and a genAI tool responds based on the user’s prompt. Agentic AI is more autonomous, capable of initiating and performing tasks on its own, such as analyzing data, making recommendations, and carrying out automated processes with minimal oversight. How AI enhances ESM Both genAI and agentic AI add powerful capabilities across IT and business processes throughout the enterprise, making it easier for employees to find and access the resources they need. Consider when an employee needs to initiate a change of address or request a leave of absence with HR. Traditionally, the individual would search for the right document from a knowledge base or HR portal to find the information they need. That might require opening, reading, and searching several different documents to find the right answers. An ESM solution with genAI enables a simple query – such as “What is the process for requesting a leave of absence?” – to launch a chatbot that will not only summarize the process, but also present the correct form to the employee and even pre-populate some of the entries. By simplifying the process and summarizing from up-to-date documents, genAI saves time and effort, delivering fast responses to employees. Agentic AI takes simplicity and automation a step further. An HR manager, for example, could instruct an agentic AI model within their ESM system to ensure the knowledge base for specific policy documents remains current, updating documents as new information and policies arise, and notifying approvers as needed. The technology can also act as a curator, flagging or even replacing old, duplicate, or expired articles to keep the knowledge base fresh. Another example: An employee notices a spill of an unknown fluid on the floor. The individual could send a picture to an AI agent, which analyzes the location, potential sources of the leak, and any identifying characteristics of the fluid. If the contents are potentially hazardous, the AI agent could then automatically alert relevant facilities teams, initiating the cleanup process and mitigating safety concerns. Agentic AI can also optimize automated processes by analyzing service and request fulfillment performance data to recommend areas of process improvement across departments, further optimizing service delivery across the organization. Elevate your ESM experience With the latest enhancements of genAI and agentic AI in the BMC Helix ESM solution, BMC delivers more robust ESM outcomes, elevating service quality and speed across departments. Enhanced self-service, conversational interfaces, and AI-powered automation are now core to the modern ESM experience, helping organizations drive efficiency, responsiveness, and better employee experiences across every department. Delve deeper into the ways that AI is upleveling ESM. Visit here for more information or contact BMC. source

Raising antitrust concerns Then there’s the pure antitrust question — such a lock-in could bring scrutiny from regulators, who are already eyeing potential monopolies in the AI space. In fact, Amazon’s previous $4 billion investment did prompt an investigation by the UK’s Competitions and Markets Authority (CMA), but that was dropped within one month. Similarly, Nvidia is under investigation by the US Department of Justice (DOJ). However, at least in the US, antitrust could be less of a concern in the very near future, with transition to the Trump regime in January. Ultimately, said Ramsinghaney, the positive or negative impact of such an expanded Amazon-Anthropic partnership will depend on how the companies choose to structure their arrangement and how much they prioritize (or don’t) open standards, cross-platform support, and customer choice. source

In a landmark event for the Middle East’s technology sector, Foundry and IDC have officially launched the inaugural CIO100 Middle East Awards in Dubai, spotlighting the region’s most influential and visionary CIOs and tech leaders. The new awards program builds on the success of Foundry’s global recognition platform, expanding the prestigious CIO50 initiative to celebrate the transformational leadership that is driving technology innovation across the region. The CIO100 Middle East Awards are part of Foundry’s broader global recognition program, which includes regional editions in Australia, New Zealand, ASEAN, India, as well as the long-established CIO100 Awards in the US and UK. The Middle East version of the awards program is designed to honor outstanding technology executives who have demonstrated exceptional leadership, ingenuity, and a clear focus on future-proofing their organizations in an era of rapid digital transformation. The CIO100 Middle East Awards aim to highlight CIOs who have been instrumental in shaping the digital future of their organizations. As businesses across the region navigate new economic and technological landscapes, the awardees represent the best in leadership, with a clear focus on innovation, sustainability, and the ability to drive significant business growth through technology. source

The data and AI industries are constantly evolving, and it’s been several years full of innovation. Even less experienced technical professionals can now access pre-built technologies that accelerate the time from ideation to production. As a result, employers no longer have to invest large sums to develop their own foundational models. They can instead leverage the expertise of others across the globe in pursuit of their own goals. However, the road to AI victory can be bumpy. Such a large-scale reliance on third-party AI solutions creates risk for modern enterprises. It’s hard for any one person or a small team to thoroughly evaluate every tool or model. Yet, today’s data scientists and AI engineers are expected to move quickly and create value. The problem is that it’s not always clear how to strike a balance between speed and caution when it comes to adopting cutting-edge AI. As a result, many companies are now more exposed to security vulnerabilities, legal risks, and potential downstream costs. Explainability is also still a serious issue in AI, and companies are overwhelmed by the volume and variety of data they must manage. Data scientists and AI engineers have so many variables to consider across the machine learning (ML) lifecycle to prevent models from degrading over time. It takes a highly sophisticated ML operation to build and maintain effective AI applications internally. The alternative is to take advantage of more end-to-end, purpose-built ML solutions from trusted enterprise AI brands. Introducing Cloudera AMPs To help data scientists and AI engineers, Cloudera has released several new Accelerators for LL Projects (AMPs). Cloudera’s AMPs are pre-built ML prototypes that users can deploy with a single click within Cloudera The new AMPs address common pain points across the ML lifecycle and enable data scientists and AI engineers to launch production-ready ML use cases quickly that follow industry best practices. Rather than pursue enterprise AI initiatives with a combination of black box ML tools, Cloudera AMPs enable companies to centralize ML operations around a trusted AI leader. They reduce development time, increase cost-effectiveness for AI projects, and accelerate time to value without incurring the risks typically associated with third-party AI solutions. Each Cloudera AMP is a self-contained prototype that users can deploy within their own environments and are open-source projects, demonstrating the company’s commitment to serving the broader open-source ML community. Let’s dive into Cloudera’s latest AMPs: The PromptBrew AMP is an AI assistant designed to help AI engineers create better prompts for LLMs. Many developers struggle to communicate effectively with their underlying LLMs, so the PromptBrew AMP bridges this skill gap by giving users suggestions on how to write and optimize prompts for their company’s use cases.  RAG with Knowledge Graph on CML The RAG with Knowledge Graph AMP showcases how using knowledge graphs in conjunction with Retrieval-augmented generation can enhance LLM outputs even further. RAG is an increasingly popular approach for improving LLM inferences, and the RAG with Knowledge Graph AMP takes this further by empowering users to maximize RAG system performance.  Chat with Your Documents The Chat with Your Documents AMP allows AI engineers to feed internal documents to instruction-following LLMs that can then surface relevant information to users through a chat-like interface. It guides users through training and deploying an informed chatbot, which can often take a lot of time and effort. Lastly, the Fine-tuning Studio AMP simplifies the process of developing specialized LLMs for certain use cases. It allows data scientists to focus pre-existing models around specific tasks within a single ecosystem to manage, refine, and evaluate LLM performance. A clearer path to ML success With Cloudera AMPs, data scientists and AI engineers don’t have to take a leap of faith when adopting new ML tools and models. They can lean on AMPs to mitigate MLOps risks and guide them to long-term AI success. AMPs are catalysts to fast-track AI projects from concept to reality with pre-built solutions and working examples, ensuring that use cases are dependable and cost effective while reducing development time. Businesses no longer need to pour time and money into building everything in-house, companies can move fast in today’s hyper-competitive business landscape. For more on Cloudera’s AMPs, click here. source

As generative AI begins takes hold in business, who does what work and how organizations will be structured will inevitably change, particularly at the leadership and management levels, according to a new survey from Capgemini in which 1,500 managers from 500 organizations and 15 countries participated. The majority (51%) of respondents believe that decision-making positions will become more niche as a result of the use of generative AI. This will mean that leaders will also need to be experts in various areas such as data analysis, AI strategy, ethical assessment, and risk management. As a result, 53% of managers surveyed believe generative AI will shift organization structures to become more diamond-shaped, with fewer junior positions and a larger midlevel management layer. Junior roles are expected to decrease from 44% of the organization today to 32% in three years, while middle managers will increase from 44% to 53%.  source

Changing consumer behavior and expectations, competition from major e-retailers, evolving cybersecurity challenges, inflationary pressures, sustainability and environmental concerns, and the pressure to take advantage of AI are all very real concerns for retailers today. Those that aggressively pursue effective solutions while reducing overall complexity and embracing AI will thrive despite the challenges. Let’s discuss the challenges as well as ways retailers are addressing them. Challenge: Consumers want to shop on their own terms Recent research shows that 77% of consumers today buy through a mix of digital and physical shopping, while just 17% buy only online or only in physical stores (IDC Retail Insights: Consumer Sentiment Survey, 2024 — Findings and Implications, July 2024). They also check a variety of sources before making a final purchasing decision, from search engines and retail websites to product ratings and reviews, price comparison websites, and social media. Finally, consumers today want personalized retail experiences, easy checkout and fulfillment, free shipping, and, most of all, channel-agnostic shopping experiences. Meeting consumers where and when they want requires retailers to truly understand their data and ensure consistency across channels in terms of pricing, product descriptions, and availability. Challenge: Fighting against mega-retailers’ supply chain strength There are many valid reasons why retail behemoths Amazon, Wayfair, and Walmart are putting smaller retailers out of business; the way they have managed supply chain issues around cost, customer demand, refunds and returns, skills shortages, and unpredictability and unreliability of suppliers is among the biggest. According to a May 2024 IDC supply chain survey (Supply Chain Survey, 2024: Retail Findings and Implications), nearly 40% of retailers have been impacted by supplier cost increases during the past year, while about 30% have been disrupted by, respectively, unpredictability and unreliability of suppliers, transportation costs, and transportation delays. Competing on a level playing field with the biggest e-retail successes requires agility, with visibility into automated, digitized supply chains. Retailers plan to focus on improving supply chain planning, warehouse/inventory management, and integration between supply chain planning and execution during the coming year to meet these challenges. Challenge: Employee hiring and retention Today’s employees have increasingly high expectations around corporate values, culture, flexibility, and available technology. Retailers are working hard to attract and retain these employees via several methods, including: Enabling employees to use wearables or even their own mobile devices to perform scanning, mobile point of sale, clienteling, access to product information and location, and inventory and fulfillment information. Automating routine tasks for frontline employees by using technology like computer vision to identify items more accurately and verify information, electronic shelf labels, RFID to track inventory, and customer-facing robotic associates. IDC’s Global Retail Survey (July 2023) found that 36% plan to invest in robotics for guest and store services in the next 36 months. Challenge: Maintaining security is a moving target The highly distributed nature of retail and complex supply chains, along with increasingly sophisticated ransomware and fraud tactics and the growth of organized retail crime schemes, are driving up the risk of retail cyber events. These issues are prompting retailers to attack cybersecurity on several fronts, including: Breaking down physical and digital security silos by developing cross-functional collaboration and bringing together multiple fraud and threat data streams Improving shrink mitigation by enriching RFID and video surveillance data with additional data streams like POS transactions, product files, pricing lists, fraud data, store attribute information, license plate recognition data, and ecommerce data (Mission Critical: Securing Omni-Channel Retail from Supply Chain to Cyberspace and Everything in Between, IDC, July 2024). Reducing security complexity by adopting more comprehensive solutions like secure access service edge (SASE). Many retailers are adopting SASE solutions as part of a broader companywide zero trust strategy, with benefits that include reducing false positives; improving network reliability and quality of service; and blocking, quarantining, or otherwise preventing threats (What Are the Key Factors Driving Retailers to Adopt Secure Access Service Edge Solutions? IDC, June 2024). Challenge: Meeting sustainability objectives Nearly 80% of retailers consider sustainability and circularity very important or critical (Retailers’ Top Challenges to Building a Circular Business, IDC, December 2023). And they are making progress. According to IDC research, about retailers are embedding sustainable practices into product post-purchase activities and reverse logistics, transportation, and logistics (cited by 37.5% of survey respondents); supplier selection and management (34%); inventory and order management (35.9%); and design and pre-production (35.7%). In addition, about 41% are manufacturing products based on sustainable practices within manufacturing facilities (How Retailers Are Operationalizing Sustainability in Supply Chains, 2024, IDC, September 2024). Getting further along the sustainability path, though, can be hampered by supply chain partners that haven’t adapted to meet new requirements (less than 22% of retailers can report on Scope 3 requirements for their supply chains). Other impediments include older IT systems and lack of visibility into sales and the supply chain. Retailers have a lot of work to do, but their goals are achievable. It requires retail enterprises to be connected, mobile, IoT- and AI-enabled, secure, transparent, and trustworthy. Data-driven, operational innovation will improve both efficiency and customer experience (CX). AI, voice, AR/VR, and robotics will improve search, personalization, content creation, data accuracy, and customer service management. AI will be a major factor in achieving progress in all of these areas. A recent IDC FutureScape report predicts that through 2027, 95% of retailers will test/invest in GenAI to enhance product data, customer support, and customer experience initiatives (IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Retail 2024 Predictions, IDC, October 2023). They will also use it for everything from creating efficiencies across departments to improving personalization to optimizing sourcing, fulfillment, hiring practices, and threat detection. Learn more about IDC’s research for technology leaders OR subscribe today to receive industry-leading research directly to your inbox. International Data Corporation (IDC) is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the technology markets. IDC is a wholly owned subsidiary of International Data Group (IDG Inc.), the world’s leading tech media, data, and marketing services company. Recently voted Analyst Firm of the Year for

In an exclusive interview, Alex Xu, President of Huawei’s Carrier Business for the Middle East and Central Asia discusses the growing role of fiber broadband in driving digital transformation across the Middle East and Central Asia, highlighting government policies, operator strategies, and future growth opportunities. source