Latest news with #FahadAlanazi
Zawya
18 hours ago
- Business
- Zawya
IBM-DFF study: Saudi Arabia's thriving AI leadership with CAIO roles
Career backgrounds of Saudi CAIOs show a strong emphasis on data: 75% have focused on data, compared to 73% globally Riyadh, Saudi Arabia – A new study by the IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV) and the Dubai Future Foundation (DFF), reveals that Saudi Arabia's approach to AI leadership aligns with global trends while also demonstrating distinct national priorities. The research, which surveyed over 600 Chief AI Officers (CAIOs) across 22 countries, showcases Saudi Arabia's unique strengths and opportunities for growth in AI leadership. "Saudi Arabia's commitment to AI is evident in its adoption of CAIO roles and the support these leaders receive from senior executives," said Fahad Alanazi, General Manager, IBM Saudi Arabia. "This study underscores the Kingdom's strategic focus on AI, as reflected in its governance models, budget control, and a strong emphasis on building business cases for AI investments." Key findings from the study indicate that: 22% of organizations in Saudi Arabia have adopted the CAIO role, aligning closely to the global average (26%). Saudi Arabian CAIOs have strong executive support, with 67% saying they get sufficient backing from the CEO and 83% saying they have broader C-suite support. A clear trend emerges in the professional backgrounds of Saudi CAIOs, with 75% saying they have focused on data in their careers, higher than the global average (73%). Saudi Arabia's governance model stands out, with 50% of organizations adopting a hub-and-spoke AI operating model, reflecting Vision 2030's sector-wide coordination. This aligns with global trends, where organizations using a centralized or hub-and-spoke model can achieve a 36% higher ROI on AI initiatives. The study underscores Saudi Arabia's remarkable progress in AI leadership – Saudi CAIOs presently oversee 67% of AI budgets, outpacing the global average of 61%. Moreover, CAIOs prioritize building business cases for AI, with 58% doing so, above the global average of 45%. The findings also highlight strategic opportunities to further strengthen the country's position. 38% of Saudi CAIOs were appointed from within the organization, below the global average of 57%. Prioritizing internal talent development will cultivate a resilient workforce, ensuring continual growth in AI capabilities. As Saudi Arabia continues to invest in AI leadership, these findings serve as a roadmap for honing the country's AI capabilities and maximizing the return on its AI investments. For more information and to access the full study, visit: *Study Methodology The IBM Institute for Business Value (IBM IBV), in cooperation with Oxford Economics and The Dubai Future Foundation conducted a global survey in the first quarter of 2025 to examine the emerging role of CAIOs. The study employed a cross-sectional survey design, collecting responses from 600+ CAIOs or equivalent across 21 industries and 22 countries. The survey examined the role, responsibilities, and challenges faced by CAIOs across organizations, covering the origins of the position, career backgrounds, perceptions of influence and challenges, team structure, and key responsibilities. It also assessed AI initiative performance, impact measurement, organizational strengths in AI governance, and areas for improvement. The IBM IBV and IBM's thought leadership think tank, combines global research and performance data with expertise from industry thinkers and leading academics to deliver insights that make business leaders smarter. For more world-class thought leadership, visit: To receive more insights, subscribe to the IdeaWatch newsletter: About IBM IBM is a leading provider of global hybrid cloud and AI, and consulting expertise. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Thousands of governments and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM's hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM's breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and consulting deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM's long-standing commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service. Visit for more information. Media Contact: Aymen Alfaraj IBM Communications
Zawya
16-04-2025
- Business
- Zawya
IBM z17: The first mainframe fully engineered for the AI age
User Experience Reimagined via new Assistants and Agents Riyadh, Saudi Arabia – IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the IBM z17, the next generation of the company's iconic mainframe, fully engineered with AI capabilities across hardware, software, and systems operations. Powered by the new IBM Telum® II processor, IBM z17 expands the system's capabilities beyond transactional AI capabilities to enable new workloads. IBM Z is built to redefine AI at scale, positioning enterprises to score 100% of their transactions in real-time. z17 enables businesses to drive innovation and do more, including the ability to process 50 percent more AI inference operations per day than z16.2 The new IBM z17 is built to drive business value across industries with a wide range of more than 250 AI use cases, such as mitigating loan risk, managing chatbot services, supporting medical image analysis or impeding retail crime, among others. IBM z17 is the culmination of five years of design and development which included the filing of more than 300 patent applications filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office. Designed with the direct input of more than 100 clients and in close collaboration with IBM Research and Software teams; the new system introduces multi-model AI capabilities, new security features to protect data, and tools that leverage AI for improving system usability and management: Bringing AI to Data – z17 AI inferencing capabilities are powered by a second-generation on-chip AI accelerator built into the IBM Telum® II processor, featuring increased frequency, compute capacity, a 40 percent growth in cache, enabling more than 450 billion inferencing operations in a day and one millisecond response time.2 Expanding Acceleration for AI – The IBM Spyre™ Accelerator expected to be available 4Q 2025 via PCIe card, will provide additional AI compute capabilities to complement the Telum® II processor. Together, they will create optimized environments to support multi-model methods of AI. The Spyre™ Accelerator is specially engineered to bring generative AI capabilities to the mainframe including running assistants, leveraging enterprise data contained in the system. Leveraging AI to Enhance User Experience – z17 is designed to bolster the skills and efficiency of developers and IT operations with the use of AI assistants and AI agents, including IBM watsonx Code Assistant for Z and IBM watsonx Assistant for Z. In addition, for the first time, watsonx Assistant for Z will be integrated with Z Operations Unite to provide AI chat-based incident detection and resolution using live systems data. 'The industry is quickly learning that AI will only be as valuable as the infrastructure it runs on,' said Fahad Alanazi, General Manager, IBM Saudi Arabia. 'With z17, we're bringing AI to the core of the enterprise with the software, processing power, and storage to make AI operational quickly. Additionally, organizations can put their vast, untapped stores of enterprise data to work with AI in a secured, cost-effective way.' Fully Integrated Across Hardware and Software IBM z17 is a system designed from the ground up to fully integrate into hybrid environments by tightly joining hardware innovations, software capabilities for AI, and rich support for open-standards and tooling. This enables differentiated performance and reliability while reimagining how developers and systems operators engage with and manage IBM Z, including: Operating System for AI – IBM also previewed z/OS 3.2, the next version of its flagship operating system for IBM Z, planned to be released in the third quarter of 2025. z/OS 3.2 is designed to support hardware-accelerated AI capabilities across the system and operational AI insights for system management capabilities. Additionally, z/OS 3.2 will provide support for modern data access methods, NoSQL databases, and hybrid cloud data processing. These new capabilities will help AI software tap into a broader set of enterprise data and derive predictive business insights. Unified IT Operations – Also announced today was IBM Z Operations Unite, which brings together key performance metrics and logs from multiple sources across IBM Z, in OpenTelemetry format, to streamline IBM Z operations with AI. The new solution is designed to accelerate the time to detect anomalies, isolate the impact of potential incidents, and reduce the resolution time. Used in conjunction with IBM Concert, operations teams can benefit from intelligent correlation of operational data across the entire enterprise. IBM Operations Unite will be generally available in May, 2025. AI Accelerator for Business Efficiency – With the expansion options for the IBM Spyre™ Accelerator expected to be available 4Q 2025 via PCIe card, IBM z17 aims to transform the user experience on the platform. Clients will be able to run IBM's growing catalog of assistants and agents, based on IBM's Granite models, natively on z17 without taking on the added risk associated with moving data or sensitive business logic off platform. Together, these solutions are engineered to form an optimized stack, to enable clients to drive more productivity with security and scale. Built for Resiliency: Security and Cyber Defense at the Core IBM z17 furthers the platform's history of strong security and resiliency capabilities. New developments in AI have enabled the deployment of added intelligence across this ever-growing area of importance for clients as new threats appear every day. This includes several new capabilities, including: Secrets Management – Capabilities from HashiCorp, an IBM Company, announced in March are now available on IBM Z to help standardize secrets management across hybrid cloud. IBM Vault uses identity-based security to authenticate and authorize access to secrets, certificates, keys, tokens and other sensitive data. With the addition of IBM Vault, clients can have a single solution to help protect critical workloads by managing the entire secrets lifecycle across their full IT estate. AI-powered Data Security – IBM intends to deliver new capabilities for discovering and classifying sensitive data on the platform. This would tap into Telum® II and utilize natural language processing so mission-critical data can be identified and protected. Additionally, our latest AI-driven security solution, IBM Threat Detection for z/OS, is designed to detect and identify potentially malicious anomalies that might be the result of a cyber-attack. IBM Extends AI-Enabled Support to IBM z17 IBM's tailored, comprehensive support experience helps IBM Z clients meet demands beyond traditional maintenance. Delivered by IBM Technology Lifecycle Services, IBM Support for z17 helps clients optimize their environments for peak performance to address risk and disruptions for mission-critical operations. IBM's AI processes streamline incident remediation and help improve case resolution time, built on IBM watsonx, now support IBM Z systems. IBM Delivers Secured and Agile Storage IBM Storage DS8000 plays a key role as an integrated storage solution for IBM Z. The latest generation of IBM Storage DS8000 (10th Generation) is designed to harness the full power of IBM z17, providing organizations access to critical workloads, consistent and optimized data performance, and a modular architecture to adopt the latest IBM research-backed technologies to fuel business growth while monetizing data. Together, IBM Z and IBM Storage offer a modern infrastructure delivering a secured and agile platform for mission-critical workloads. Availability IBM z17 will be generally available June 18, 2025 For more information, visit The IBM Spyre™ Accelerator is expected to be available starting in Q4 2025. About IBM IBM is a leading provider of global hybrid cloud and AI, and consulting expertise. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Thousands of government and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM's hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM's breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and consulting deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM's long-standing commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service.
Yahoo
13-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Arab National Bank deploys IBM platform to combat fraud
Arab National Bank (anb) has partnered with IBM and ejada to enhance its fraud protection measures, adopting IBM Safer Payments to provide cross-channel security for its customers. This move aligns with the Saudi Central Bank's (SAMA) requirements for improved enterprise-wide fraud monitoring. ejada Systems, an IT service provider in the Middle East and Africa, facilitated the integration of IBM Safer Payments across anb's digital platforms. This has enabled the bank to consolidate customer behaviour insights and bolster the effectiveness of its fraud protection strategies. IBM Safer Payments ensures that the bank's clients are protected from fraudulent activities without hindering legitimate transactions. The AI-driven system provides custom decision models for more accurate fraud detection, reducing reliance on vendors and data scientists. This agility is bolstered by analytics and simulation tools that allow anb to proactively adapt to emerging fraud risks. IBM Saudi Arabia general manager Fahad Alanazi said: 'At IBM, we believe in harnessing data intelligence and advanced technologies to drive profound impact on businesses and communities. 'As digital and cyber threats grow in an increasingly connected world, our collaboration with anb exemplifies our commitment to empowering organisations with secure, cutting-edge solutions.' The implementation of IBM Safer Payments at anb is a response to the escalating costs associated with data breaches in the Middle East, as reported by IBM's 2024 Cost of a Data Breach Report. The report highlights a 10% rise in breach costs, reaching an average of SAR32.8m ($8.7m). anb chief information officer Naif Al-Harbi said: 'Our customers' trust in us is key to our success. We put security front and center so our clients can rest assured that their money and personal information are well-protected. 'IBM Safer Payments allows us to protect our clients' financial and personal data in real-time while maintaining the quality of their experience.' Last month, Saudi Arabia-based Alinma Bank partnered with IBM to launch an API marketplace using the tech provider's0020hybrid cloud and AI integration. "Arab National Bank deploys IBM platform to combat fraud" was originally created and published by Retail Banker International, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site. Sign in to access your portfolio
Zawya
11-03-2025
- Business
- Zawya
Anb leverages IBM's AI-powered solution for advanced payments fraud protection
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: Arab National Bank (anb) has partnered with IBM and ejada to implement IBM Safer Payments to deliver cross-channel fraud protection capabilities to help safeguard and empower its customers, providing greater access to advanced, secure and innovative banking experiences. anb's adoption of IBM Safer Payments, an AI-driven solution for real-time performance monitoring and fraud prevention, aligns with Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) requirements to enhance enterprise-wide fraud monitoring. With the rise of digital banking, fraud risks have intensified. IBM's 2024 Cost of a Data Breach Report reveals that the average breach cost in the Middle East rose to SAR 32.8 million, a 10% increase from 2023. The energy sector faced the highest costs (SAR 36.9 million), followed by financial (SAR 35.81 million) and industrial sectors (SAR 34.52 million), emphasizing the critical need for robust fraud prevention anb's adoption of IBM Safer Payments ensure state-of-the-art security is in place. It represents a critical investment in safeguarding its clients from fraud while also ensuring their genuine transactions are not disrupted in error. IBM Safer Payments provides anb with custom, user-friendly decision models allowing the bank to detect and respond to fraud with greater speed and accuracy, all without vendor or data scientist dependencies. This flexibility is complemented by powerful analytics and simulation tools needed to continuously monitor business performance, enabling anb to stay ahead of evolving fraud threats. 'Our customers' trust in us is key to our success. We put security front and center so our clients can rest assured that their money and personal information are well-protected. IBM Safer Payments allows us to protect our clients' financial and personal data in real-time while maintaining the quality of their experience,' said Naif E. Al-Harbi, Chief Information Officer, anb. 'Everything we do to protect our customers from fraud and cybercrime also helps us support Saudi Arabia's reputation as a leading ecommerce and trading hub globally,' he added. 'At IBM, we believe in harnessing data intelligence and advanced technologies to drive profound impact on businesses and communities. As digital and cyber threats grow in an increasingly connected world, our collaboration with anb exemplifies our commitment to empowering organizations with secure, cutting-edge solutions,' said Fahad Alanazi, General Manager, IBM Saudi Arabia. 'By leveraging IBM Safer Payments, anb is strengthening customers' trust and providing enhanced security, value, and peace of mind to its clients.' 'At ejada, we are honored to have played a key role in delivering Safer Payments for anb in partnership with IBM. This project has transformed anb's fraud detection and prevention capabilities, the solution has improved customer satisfaction and operational efficiency. Through seamless implementation, we ensured integration across multiple digital channels, enabling anb to gain a unified view of customer behavior. This holistic approach has strengthened fraud defenses while enhancing customer experience. This reflects ejada's ongoing commitment to providing clients with advanced and reliable solutions." Said Mohamed Fouad Thabet, Chief Technology Officer, ejada Systems. These solutions were implemented by ejada Systems—one of the leading IT service providers in the Middle East and Africa—in a significant step towards enhancing anb's efficiency in fraud detection and prevention. Ejada has seamlessly integrated the new solution across the bank's various digital channels, enabling anb to gain a unified view of customer behavior and improve the effectiveness of its fraud protection measures, reflecting ejada's commitment to delivering advanced and reliable technology solutions. About anb Today, anb is one of the largest banks in the Middle East, with its headquarters in Riyadh and regional offices in Jeddah and Khobar. The Bank also extends its services internationally with a branch in London. As a universal commercial bank, anb serves a diverse customer base of over two million Corporate and Retail clients across Saudi Arabia, offering a wide range of banking solutions, including personal banking, business banking, investment products, and specialized services such as SME funding platforms and e-trade facilities. The Bank's extensive distribution network includes traditional branches and specialized TeleMoney remittance centers, ensuring accessibility across diverse customer segments. In alignment with Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 and its commitment to innovation and digital transformation, anb has embraced cutting-edge technology to deliver a full suite of self-service financial solutions. The Bank's fully digital branches, state-of-the-art mobile banking app, and extensive network of ATMs, Cash Deposit Machines, and point-of-sale terminals reflect its dedication to enhancing customer convenience and accessibility. About IBM IBM is a leading provider of global hybrid cloud and AI, and consulting expertise. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. More than 4,000 government and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM's hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM's breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and consulting deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM's legendary commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service. About ejada ejada is a leading IT services provider in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region, enabling enterprises and public-sector organizations to maintain and increase their competitive edge through innovative IT solutions. Through our digital offerings we help our clients accelerate their digital transformation journey; and our business solutions and specialized products enable our clients to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of their operations, expand their offerings, and meet local regulatory and compliance requirements.
Zawya
24-02-2025
- Business
- Zawya
Alinma Bank unveils API platform upon collaboration with IBM
Riyadh: Alinma Bank has partnered with IBM to launch a new application programming interface (API) platform, powered by the company's hybrid cloud and AI integration technologies. The platform introduces a centralised API marketplace that enables fintech firms and SMEs to securely access banking services, according to a press release. The technology stack includes IBM Cloud Pak for Integration, IBM API Connect, Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud, and IBM DataPower, aimed at delivering secure and scalable infrastructure for the involved fintechs. Chief Information Officer at Alinma Bank, Yasser Al Oufi, stated: "Our new API platform provides corporate customers and fintech partners with competitive, secure, and accessible digital services that support their growth." Meanwhile, Fahad Alanazi, General Manager at IBM, said: 'Our collaboration on the API Monetization platform unlocks greater potential for Saudi fintechs and SMEs.' The initiative aligns with Saudi Vision 2030's digital transformation goals and Alinma's 2025 transformation strategy. It is worth mentioning that Alinma Bank registered net profits worth SAR 5.83 billion in 2024 while its total assets hit SAR 276.82 billion.
