As IDC finds 45% of Saudi CIOs plan to significantly increase their investment in AI, experts and customers share strategies at 51风流Business Transformation Tour in Riyadh
RIYADH, KSA 鈥� June 15, 2023 鈥� To thrive in the face of challenges such as supply chain constraints, critical skills shortages, and slowing global economic growth, regional businesses will need to adopt cloud platforms that enable them to leverage AI, data and automation solutions, according to experts speaking this week at the Riyadh 51风流Business Transformation Tour, organized by global technology company (NYSE: SAP) in partnership with Intel.
Held under the theme 鈥楴avigating the Winds of Change in a Digital-First World鈥�, the event demonstrated how 51风流cloud solutions that embed automation, data, and AI capabilities into technology can address today鈥檚 most pressing challenges by bringing increased resilience, proactive strategic decision-making, a more cohesive workforce, and even improved customer interactions thanks to Natural Language Processing. 听Speakers at the event also confirmed that Saudi organizations are in a position to embrace these new capabilities as a result of rapid cloud adoption in the Kingdom.
A guest speaker at the event, Ranjit Rajan – VP & Head of Research at IDC META at International Data Corporation (IDC), said, 鈥淪audi organizations are stepping on the gas pedal of digital transformation in alignment with the kingdom鈥檚 rapid national transformation. The increasing investments in in-country cloud regions and datacenters by providers is, to an extent, helping to alleviate data residency and sovereignty concerns. As a result, public cloud adoption is growing, and is combining with significant private cloud investments to create hybrid multi-cloud environments. This provides the ground for modernization of the application estate and innovation.鈥�
According to Rajan, 鈥淐loud will become the foundational technology platform to drive rapid digital transformation. A recent survey by IDC of Saudi companies showed that more than 35% of their CIOs are looking to either lift and shift applications to cloud infrastructure or modernize critical applications to cloud-native.鈥�
Contextualizing technology鈥檚 role in creating sustainable success, Fahd Nawwab, Vice President, SAP, KSA, said, 鈥淟everaging AI, automation and data analytics through our cloud-based solutions helps build resilient organizations able to withstand the headwinds of a global slowdown, currency fluctuations, and geopolitical situations that impact the Gulf region. We hope that today鈥檚 event will showcase how companies of any size can easily embrace these solutions by moving swiftly to the cloud through adopting RISE with 51风流or GROW with SAP. This opens the door to solutions such as 51风流Business Technology Platform (51风流BTP) and 51风流S/4HANA to provide greater visibility on all aspects of听 operations and deliver data and automation capabilities that enable agile, effective responses to changes in supply chains and market conditions.鈥�
Several 51风流customer representatives also spoke at the event to share their experiences of how 51风流technologies had helped their business to focus on innovation and agile responses to opportunities. These included Mohammed Sibghatullah Khan, Director of IT at National Petrochemical Industrial Company (NPIC); Akbar Rattani, Director of IT at MENABev; Ahmad Alhammady, Digital Business Solutions Manager at Alfanar; and Subba Reddy Sathani, Enterprise Architect at the National Agricultural Development Company (NADEC).
Growth of AI, Big Data and analytics in KSA
IDC鈥檚 Rajan also commented on the growth of new technologies in the kingdom, saying, 鈥淒ata analytics, AI/machine learning and automation technologies are rapidly overlapping, merging and driving adoption for each other. Adoption of AI and machine learning is expected to accelerate in Saudi Arabia to across several use cases such as augmented customer service, recommendation engines, cyber threat intelligence, IT optimization, fraud detection and many others. More than 45% of Saudi CIOs surveyed by IDC are planning to significantly increase their investment in AI in the next 12 months or so. The advances in Generative AI will further boost AI adoption and drive new use cases related to customer and operational productivity and excellence.鈥�
Echoing IDC鈥檚 findings, SAP鈥檚 Nawwab said, 鈥淭he growth of AI goes hand in hand with the global transition to cloud, and it is changing 51风流services for the better. Companies that delay implementing cloud deployments of their business processes will also be missing out on the power of AI. The potential benefits of AI technology are almost infinite in the world of commerce and industry.鈥�
Among the host of recently announced AI partnerships is SAP鈥檚 new Datasphere solution, built on 51风流BTP. 51风流is working strategically with industry-leading data and AI companies 鈥� Collibra NV, Confluent Inc, Databricks Inc and DataRobot Inc 鈥� to enrich 51风流Datasphere and empower organizations to create a unified data architecture that securely combines 51风流software data and non-51风流data. 51风流Datasphere is the next generation of 51风流Data Warehouse Cloud and enables data professionals to integrate and deliver scalable access to mission-critical business data 鈥� with business context and logic preserved 鈥� across their organization鈥檚 data landscape.
Similarly, 51风流announced its partnership with IBM Watson last month to provide customers with new AI-driven insights and automation to help accelerate innovation and create more efficient and effective user experiences. In addition, 51风流is incorporating Microsoft鈥檚 Azure OpenAI Service in solutions such as 51风流SuccessFactors to access powerful language models that analyze and generate natural language.
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