
Qlik Expands with New AWS Cloud Region in Middle East
With AI adoption growing across the region, storing and processing data locally is now essential. The new cloud region allows businesses in finance, healthcare, energy, and public sectors to meet regulatory requirements and reduce latency.
According to Qlik, this launch helps enterprises gain faster insights and improve performance while ensuring data stays within national borders.
'AI is only as powerful as the data it uses,' said Tejas Mehta, SVP & GM, MEA, Qlik. 'This AWS cloud region helps our customers adopt AI confidently while meeting compliance needs.'
The region enables faster model training, smoother data integration, and better decision-making. Qlik offers services like Qlik Analytics, Qlik Talend Cloud®, and Qlik AutoML® to support this.
Nearly 70% of companies in the Middle East plan to move most operations to the cloud in the next two years, according to PwC. The shift is expected to create $733 billion in economic value by 2033, says Telecom Advisory Services.
With local infrastructure, Qlik aims to provide the tools needed for secure, AI-driven growth in the region.
For more details, visit Qlik.com.

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


TECHx
4 hours ago
- TECHx
Artificial Intelligence Isn't the Magic We Think It Is
Home » Editor's pick » Artificial Intelligence Isn't the Magic We Think It Is It began with a simple click. An employee opened an email. It looked normal. A trusted supplier's invoice. But this message was crafted by artificial intelligence. Not by a human. Minutes later, the company's systems were compromised. This is the reality of artificial intelligence in 2025. It powers innovation and creativity. Yet, it also challenges our security and trust. Across industries, artificial intelligence is transforming how work gets done. According to a 2024 survey, 78 percent of organizations now regularly use AI to boost productivity and decision-making. That's nearly double compared to just a year earlier. Spending on artificial intelligence is skyrocketing too. IDC forecasts that global AI investments will exceed hundreds of billions by the end of 2025. In the Middle East and Africa, AI-related spending is expected to nearly triple from 4.5 billion dollars in 2024 to over 14 billion dollars by 2028. This surge reflects the growing belief that artificial intelligence drives business growth and competitive advantage. PwC estimates AI could add 15.7 trillion dollars to the global economy by 2030. The Middle East alone stands to gain about 320 billion dollars from this shift. However, growth brings challenges. Rapid AI adoption raises questions about ethics, transparency, and human impact. For instance, Stanford's AI Index warns about the environmental footprint and bias risks in large AI models. As a result, organizations are adopting smarter AI governance. They focus on clear policies, responsible deployment, and continuous oversight. In fact, IDC highlights that most AI spending in 2025 will be embedded in existing products and platforms, not standalone systems. This makes governance even more critical. Talent dynamics are changing as well. PwC's 2025 AI Jobs Barometer reveals a surge in demand for AI-fluent roles and hybrid skill sets. Artificial intelligence is reshaping labor markets, creating new opportunities while redefining job roles. So, how do leaders succeed in this fast-evolving landscape? First, measure AI's impact on people, not just technology. Track improvements in work quality, decision-making, and employee wellbeing alongside technical metrics. Second, build AI frameworks that empower users and ensure transparency. Use plain language policies, robust escalation paths, and tools to detect unintended AI use. Third, align AI strategies with local priorities. In the Middle East, this means tapping into national AI initiatives, talent programs, and infrastructure investments. We spoke with Peter Oganesean, Managing Director of Middle East and East Africa at HP, about this pivotal moment. He said: 'In 2025, AI is no longer a futuristic concept, it's a tangible driver of transformation across the region and beyond. At HP, we see AI not as a replacement for human potential, but as a powerful catalyst for it, enabling personalized work experiences, fostering deeper collaboration, and empowering businesses to innovate responsibly. The real story of AI today lies in its ability to balance high-performance technology with sustainable, human-centric impact.' His insight reminds us that artificial intelligence is not just about automation or speed. It is about human-centered innovation and responsible growth. The email at the start was a failure of process, not just technology. The future belongs to organizations that design AI for trust, security, and positive impact. Artificial intelligence is cool, but it's not magic. It's only as good as the people building and using it. If we go all in on speed and power without thinking about the impact, we'll miss the point. The real win is finding that sweet spot where AI makes life easier, businesses smarter, and society better, without losing sight of the humans at the center of it all.


Tahawul Tech
8 hours ago
- Tahawul Tech
Future is 'Agentic' and already unfolding
Let me take you on a journey, not into some far-off sci-fi future, but into a tomorrow that's just around the corner. Imagine walking into your workplace and finding that some of your 'colleagues' are no longer human. They're not robots in the traditional sense, but autonomous software agents trained on vast datasets, equipped with decision-making power, and capable of performing economic, civic, and operational tasks at scale. These agents write policies, monitor supply chains, process health records, generate news, and even govern our digital interactions. This isn't a scene from a movie. A tectonic shift is heading our way, one that will transform how we work, how governments function, and even how communities operate. In this world, digital public infrastructure (DPI) will not be a convenience. It will be a lifeline. This shift is already progressing in the heart of the Middle East. Ambitious projects like NEOM in Saudi Arabia are exploring how agentic AI can be woven into the fabric of urban life. They aim to build an ecosystem of autonomous agents that redefines how cities are developed and managed. Sovereignty in the Age of Agents We like to say, 'Everyone has data.' But the real question is: Where is it? Who controls it? Who governs access to it? In a world run by agents, these are not purely technical questions but ones of power, accountability, and autonomy. A sovereign nation that cannot locate, trust, or manage its data risks losing control.. A government that cannot verify what its own agents have learned, or with whom they are communicating with, is no longer governing. To survive and thrive in this new ecosystem, DPI must evolve into Digital Shoring: a foundation for sovereign, trusted, and open environments built on four pillars: Open Data – depends on trust. It requires clear data lineage, verified provenance, and accountable governance. Knowing where your data came from and where it's going is essential for any system that relies on it.. Open Source Software – because critical infrastructure built on black boxes is neither secure nor sovereign. Open Standards – because without shared protocols, agents can't cooperate, institutions can't interoperate, and governments can't govern. Open Skills – because the capacity to read a balance sheet, or audit a neural net, shouldn't belong to a privileged few. This is the backbone of an agentic society that is fair, sovereign, and resilient. Agentic Intelligence: More Than Just Fancy Tools Let's talk about what agents actually are – and what they aren't. Imagine I hand a company's financial statement to two readers: a junior analyst and a seasoned economist. Both might understand the numbers, but only one can extract strategic insight. Similarly, agents can read, analyze, and reason. But the quality of their actions depends entirely on the skills they are equipped with. These skills can be trained, acquired, or, most importantly, shared. In public sector contexts, this presents an extraordinary opportunity. Why should every institution reinvent the same agent? Why can't the skills of a fraud detection agent used in one department be transferred, securely and ethically, to another? Just like people share their expertise, we need infrastructure for sharing agentic capabilities across digital institutions. This is where organizations like the UN can help, by setting the standards and helping everyone through the lens of the Global Digital Compact initiative. From 'Sovereign Cloud' to 'Sovereign AI Platforms' Right now, a lot of talk is around keeping data inside national borders. But in the world of agents, that is just not enough. What really matters is where and how models are trained, how they are managed, and how we keep them in check. We need Sovereign AI Platforms – akin to the way HR departments manage employees: verifying credentials, ensuring alignment, monitoring performance, and enabling collaboration. Companies such as Cloudera, are developing the scaffolding for such platforms: secure hybrid AI environments, open-source data pipelines, governance-first orchestration layers, and modular LLM serving infrastructure that respects national compliance frameworks. But no company can do this alone. This is a global mission. Open by Design. Governed by Default Governments around the world are already realising that private AI cannot be built on public cloud monopolies. Digital identity and agent oversight need to be open and transparent, not hidden, ad hoc, or opaque. So the future must be open by design – in code, in data, in protocols, and being governed by default. From Digital IDs that authenticate not only humans, but also agents and their behavior, to full knowledge graphs that maintain shared institutional knowledge across systems, together with audit trails that document every decision, every inference, every prompt. This goes beyond technology. It involves creating a new kind of digital society that is designed to empower states, safeguard citizens, and align intelligence with democratic values. The Path Forward This transformation will not be easy. It will require bold policy, sustained investment, cross-border cooperation, and, above all, technical leadership grounded in values. But make no mistake, digital cooperation is not optional. It is the condition for sovereignty in an agentic world. Without it, we are left with silos, vendor lock-in, and algorithmic drift. With it, we build a future where intelligence, human or machine, serves the public good. So let's move beyond the buzzwords. Let's build platforms, protocols, and public goods that are open, modular, and sovereign. Let's treat agents not just as tools, but as members of a digital society in need of governance, trust, and cooperation. And maybe, when we look back at today from the vantage point of tomorrow, we'll remember this moment not as a crisis, but as the moment we chose to govern the future together. This opinion piece is authored by Sergio Gago Huerta, CTO at Cloudera.


Arabian Business
9 hours ago
- Arabian Business
AI's impact expands beyond underwriting in insurance sector: Report
Artificial intelligence (AI) continues to reshape the insurance sector, extending its influence beyond underwriting and risk profiling to other critical areas of the insurance value chain, according to a new survey by GlobalData. Underwriting and risk profiling remain the areas most positively impacted by AI, with 45.8 per cent of industry professionals identifying them as the top beneficiaries. However, this represents a decline of nearly 10 percentage points since 2023, suggesting that insurers are increasingly applying AI in other functions. Claims management and customer service followed, with 20.3 per cent and 17.6 per cent of respondents, respectively, citing these areas as most influenced by AI. Customer service, in particular, has seen notable growth, increasing by 6.2 percentage points since the previous poll. Similarly, AI's role in product development more than tripled in recognition, rising from 1.9 per cent to 7.2 per cent. Charlie Hutcherson, Associate Insurance Analyst at GlobalData, said insurers are now broadening their AI applications beyond underwriting, despite challenges such as regulatory hurdles, data quality, and fairness in risk models. He highlighted the increasing traction AI has gained in customer service, where automation enables faster triage, more accurate responses, and higher satisfaction rates. Hutcherson also pointed out a rising impact of AI in product development, reflecting insurers' growing focus on trend analysis, identifying coverage gaps, and accelerating speed to market. He described the overall shift as a sign of a 'more mature and diversified approach,' with insurers recognising AI's transformative potential across multiple areas of their business. With rising competition, insurers face pressure to differentiate themselves by expanding AI capabilities not just in efficiency-driven processes but also in customer-facing and product innovation areas. Hutcherson stressed the need for a holistic deployment of AI, balancing efficiency gains with fairness, transparency, and regulatory compliance.' Those who can strike this balance will be best positioned to build long-term trust and value,' Hutcherson said.