AI Sovereignty and Resiliency

23 Apr 2026 United Arab Emirates

AI Sovereignty and Resiliency

What CIOs Must Prioritize Now

23 Apr 2026 United Arab Emirates

Overview

The Middle East is navigating a period of significant geopolitical and economic change. For technology leaders in the UAE, the priority is not only to manage risk, but also to sustain innovation, resilience, and long-term digital progress in an increasingly complex environment.

The current crisis is introducing new variables into the global technology economy. IDC’s latest outlook indicates that IT spending in the Middle East and Africa is expected to grow by around 5% in 2026, with a downside scenario of 3–4% growth should geopolitical pressures persist. At the same time, IDC expects the near-term impact to be more toward timing and spending mix shifts than by a broad pullback in demand.

The regional picture is unlikely to be uniform. Gulf markets such as the UAE are expected to show greater near-term resilience than more import-dependent economies, giving CIOs in the Emirates a different challenge: how to maintain momentum on strategic priorities while adapting to shifting risk, regulatory, and investment conditions.

Join Us

The IDC Middle East Virtual Roadshow – UAE Edition will explore how these forces are reshaping CIO priorities in the Emirates and what they mean for technology investment, AI adoption, digital sovereignty, cybersecurity, and enterprise resilience in the months ahead.

Key Imperatives

Resilience First

Ensuring enterprise operations remain uninterrupted through stronger infrastructure, disaster recovery, and business continuity strategies.

Digital Sovereignty

Strengthening control over data, infrastructure, and digital ecosystems to support strategic autonomy in the Middle East.

AI Acceleration

Sustaining AI innovation and scaling intelligent capabilities even as organizations navigate crisis.

Cloud Continuity

Designing resilient cloud architectures that support multi-region availability, operational stability, and sovereign requirements.

Cyber Protection

Safeguarding digital infrastructure, data, and enterprise operations against evolving cyber threats and disruptions.

Smart Investment

Balancing cost pressures while prioritizing strategic technology investments that drive long-term innovation and resilience.

Agenda

AI Sovereignty and Resiliency

One Day Event

11:00 am

Welcome Address

11:05 am

IDC Keynote: The CIO Agenda Reset: What’s Changing for Technology Leaders in the GCC

Attendees will gain insights into new priorities around resilience, data sovereignty, multi-cloud strategies, and talent transformation as CIOs navigate an increasingly AI-first, regulation-driven, and fast-growing digital economy.

Ranjit Rajan

Ranjit Rajan

Vice President, Research (META), IDC

11:20 am

Anchored in Intelligence: AI, Data Sovereignty & Resilience in Shifting Economies

The rules of the digital economy are being rewritten. As Gulf economies navigate an era of unprecedented change, the ability to harness AI while maintaining control over data and digital infrastructure has never been more critical. AI is the new currency of power — and for organizations across the region, harnessing the value whilst maintaining sovereignty and resilience is no longer optional; they are strategic imperatives.

Join ServiceNow as we examine the strategies, technologies and practices needed to build intelligent, sovereign and resilient foundations — ones that withstand disruption and drive sustainable long-term growth.

Ask Questions and stand a chance to win exciting e-gift vouchers.

Tolga Tutel

Tolga Tutel

Field CTO, Middle East & Africa, ServiceNow

Shakeel Baig

Shakeel Baig

Specialized Solutions Sales Leader, Saudi Arabia, ServiceNow

11:35 am

Architecting for Resilience and AI Independence in a Volatile World

In an era where geopolitical shifts and economic volatility are the new constants, CIOs are being asked to do the impossible: innovate at lightning speed while guaranteeing absolute operational resilience. This session explores how a “Sovereign-First” approach—powered by open hybrid cloud and automated AI—allows Middle Eastern enterprises to reclaim control over their data, their costs, and their future. Join Red Hat as we share real-world blueprints from regional leaders like Emirates NBD on how to build a technology foundation that doesn’t just survive disruption but thrives on it.

Ask Questions and stand a chance to win exciting e-gift vouchers.

Anirban Mukherjee

Anirban Mukherjee

Director of Solutions Architecture, Middle East & North Africa (MENA), Red Hat

11:50 am

Digital Sovereignty: From Policy Imperative to Technology Strategy

As geopolitical tensions, regulatory pressures, and data security concerns intensify, digital sovereignty has moved beyond policy debates into the heart of technology strategy. This session explores how organizations are translating sovereignty requirements into concrete architectural and operational decisions—from cloud and data residency to vendor selection and cyber resilience. Attendees will gain insight into balancing control with innovation, and how to design future-ready digital ecosystems that meet both regulatory demands and business objectives in an increasingly fragmented global landscape.

Ask Questions and stand a chance to win exciting e-gift vouchers.

Ahmed I Farrag

Ahmed I Farrag

Chief Technology Officer, IBM

12:05 pm

Secure information Management for AI, by OpenText

Control your enterprise information to drive trusted, scalable results with AI.

In an AI-first world, success depends on secure, connected, high-quality, and well-governed data. OpenText helps organizations unlock AI’s full potential by unifying data sets across systems such as ERPs, CRMs, supply chains, content management and more, ensuring accuracy with zero hallucination and making sure AI is used in context, all of this in a compliant and secure ways. From ingestion and curation to search, summarization, and protection, we deliver secure information management that fuels smarter automation and scales to make your enterprise ready for the evolving demands of AI.

Ask Questions and stand a chance to win exciting e-gift vouchers.

Marc Merheb

Marc Merheb

Director Solutions Consulting, Middle East Region, OpenText

12:20 pm

Securing AI at the Edge: Innovate with AI While Keeping Your Data Safe and online

Unlock AI innovation without compromising data privacy or system uptime. Cloudflare’s Connectivity Cloud solves the modern CIO’s challenge by bringing computing and security directly to the edge.

Here is how Cloudflare empowers your secure AI transformation:

  • Fast AI: Run AI models directly on Cloudflare’s nearest servers for lightning-fast answers.
  • Advanced AI Security: Protect applications from hidden risks like prompt injections and shadow AI. Cloudflare acts as a protective firewall for your LLMs and applies Zero Trust protocols to secure AI agents.
  • Unified Control & Resilience: Manage AI APIs, control costs, and oversee data localization from a single dashboard. You can rely on a massive global network built to absorb cyberattacks and ensure continuous uptime.

Ask Questions and stand a chance to win exciting e-gift vouchers.

Bader Shaath

Bader Shaath

Senior Solutions Engineer, Cloudflare

12:35 pm

Building Resilient Workloads on the Cloud

Google Cloud’s approach to resilience is founded on its global, architecturally robust network, spanning 43 regions and 130 zones, and its deep Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) expertise, focusing on minimizing failure impact and duration. Utilizing this platform (“Resilience ON the Cloud”) involves a shared responsibility model, requiring customers to deploy critical applications using multi-zone and multi-region architectures to ensure rapid, automated failovers and high availability. The deck reviews enterprise Disaster Recovery (DR) strategies categorized by risk protection and RTO/RPO, including Backup & Restore, Pilot Light, Warm Standby, and Multi-Site Active/Active. Finally, the presentation emphasizes Google Cloud’s built-in Security, Privacy, and Compliance, detailing global certifications, a zero-trust model (BeyondProd/BeyondCorp), and specific customer controls over data through features like default encryption, Data Residency, and Access Transparency.

Ask Questions and stand a chance to win exciting e-gift vouchers.

Akshay Dalal

Akshay Dalal

Head of Regional Risk and Compliance, UAE, Google Cloud

Ahmed Afrose

Ahmed Afrose

Head of Customer Engineering UAE, Levant and North Africa Dubai, UAE, Google Cloud

12:50 pm

Governance, Protection and Resiliency in the era of AI

This session highlights the challenges of managing a rapidly expanding global datasphere, expected to reach 175 zettabytes by 2025. With most data unstructured and recently created, organizations face growing complexity, data sprawl, and security risks, even as AI unlocks valuable insights.

He introduces two frameworks. The 5-Step Value Pyramid helps organizations move from data storage to value creation: identifying useful data, migrating from legacy systems, optimizing storage, automating workflows, and leveraging AI for insights. The 3-2-1-0 Resiliency Standard strengthens data protection by ensuring multiple copies across different media, including one air-gapped, with zero recovery errors.

The presentation concludes by emphasizing Iron Mountain’s integrated approach to physical and digital data management, combining sustainable data centers and advanced restoration capabilities to support AI readiness while ensuring strong governance and long-term data protection.

Ask Questions and stand a chance to win exciting e-gift vouchers.

Cliff Madru

Cliff Madru

Vice President, Digital Solutions, Iron Mountain

1:05 pm

From Risk to Resilience in the AI Era

The role of the CISO is expanding faster than ever. AI adoption is accelerating, regulatory pressure is intensifying, and boards expect clearer answers on risk, resilience, and return on security investment. At the same time, CISOs face growing personal accountability while still being expected to enable innovation rather than slow it down.
In this executive level session, let us unpack the key findings from The CISO Report 2026: From Risk to Resilience in the AI Era and explore what they mean for security leaders

Ask Questions and stand a chance to win exciting e-gift vouchers.

Tom Gamali

Tom Gamali

Field CTO & Strategic Advisor, MEA-TRC, Splunk

1:20 pm

Beyond Digital Ghosts: Defending the New AI Attack Surface

As organizations embrace Agentic AI enterprise applications, the attack surface is shifting from traditional system access to complex identity replication and new vulnerabilities are introduced. In this session, we will explore the evolving AI security landscape and how proactive AI innovations, like Trend Cybertron, are transforming defense. Attendees will discover a comprehensive blueprint for securing the entire AI lifecycle. We will discuss safely managing the secure end-user AI journey, and enforcing real-time guardrails for AI applications Finally, we will unpack how to fortify underlying AI factory infrastructure using TrendAI AI security stack.

Ask Questions and stand a chance to win exciting e-gift voucher worth AED 500 sponsored by TrendAI. 

Bilal Issa

Bilal Issa

Technical Manager, Gulf, TrendAI

1:35 pm

Open Gold Tracks (Parallel Sessions)

Join the tracks to participate in the session kickoff raffle.

Ask Questions and stand a chance to win exciting e-gift vouchers.

Track A: Future-Ready Security for a Resilient Digital Enterprise

1:35 pm – 1:45 pm

Cyber Resiliency Journey Maps

Hazem AbuShaban
Senior Systems Engineer & Cyber SME – UAE, Commvault

1:45 pm – 1:55 pm

Preemptive Security in an AI World

Tareq Momani
Head of Systems Engineering, Middle East, Infoblox

1:55 pm – 2:05 pm

When Supply Chains Shift: Navigating Infrastructure and Technology Disruptions

Rob Greenman
Principal Sales Engineer, Ping Identity

Track B: Data, Trust, and Sovereignty in the Age of AI

1:35 pm – 1:45 pm

The Sovereign Intelligence: Fueling Regional Innovation via Logical Data Management

Dr. Alexey Sidorov
Chief Data Evangelist and Data Management Director, Denodo

1:45 pm – 1:55 pm

Trusted & Sovereign AI in Action — From Insight to Responsible Execution

Faye Murray
Field Chief Data Officer (EMEA), Dataiku
2:05 pm

Summary & Takeaways, IDC

2:15 pm

Close of Event

Speakers

Shakeel Baig

Shakeel Baig

Specialized Solutions Sales Leader, Saudi Arabia

ServiceNow

Read Bio

Tolga Tutel

Tolga Tutel

Field CTO, Middle East & Africa

ServiceNow

Read Bio

Ahmed I Farrag

Ahmed I Farrag

Chief Technology Officer

IBM

Read Bio

Bader Shaath

Bader Shaath

Senior Solutions Engineer

Cloudflare

Read Bio

Anirban Mukherjee

Anirban Mukherjee

Director of Solutions Architecture, Middle East & North Africa (MENA)

Red Hat

Read Bio

Marc Merheb

Marc Merheb

Director Solutions Consulting, Middle East Region

OpenText

Read Bio

Hazem AbuShaban

Hazem AbuShaban

Senior Systems Engineer & Cyber SME – UAE

Commvault

Read Bio

Dr. Alexey Sidorov

Dr. Alexey Sidorov

Chief Data Evangelist and Data Management Director

Denodo

Read Bio

Tareq Momani

Tareq Momani

Head of Systems Engineering, Middle East

Infoblox

Read Bio

Cliff Madru

Cliff Madru

Vice President, Digital Solutions

Iron Mountain

Read Bio

Faye Murray

Faye Murray

Field Chief Data Officer (EMEA)

Dataiku

Read Bio

Tom Gamali

Tom Gamali

Field CTO & Strategic Advisor, MEA-TRC

Splunk

Read Bio

Rob Greenman

Rob Greenman

Principal Sales Engineer

Ping Identity

Read Bio

Ahmed Afrose

Ahmed Afrose

Head of Customer Engineering UAE, Levant and North Africa Dubai, UAE

Google Cloud

Read Bio

Bilal Issa

Bilal Issa

Technical Manager, Gulf

TrendAI

Read Bio

Akshay Dalal

Akshay Dalal

Head of Regional Risk and Compliance, UAE

Google Cloud

Read Bio

Knowledge Hub

Rethinking Digital Sovereignty in a Disrupted World

For years, digital transformation was measured by speed, scale, and efficiency. Today, resilience is emerging as a defining metric. As digital infrastructure becomes part of a nation’s critical fabric, disruptions no longer remain confined to IT — they impact economies, public services, and trust itself.

Hande Akdede Erbay
| IBM MEA
Head of Data & AI
Learn More

Building Operational Resilience With Open Source

The conversation around digital transformation in the UAE is shifting. Organizations want to adopt artificial intelligence while retaining control over their data and infrastructure.

Anirban Mukherjee
| Red Hat
Director of Solutions Architecture (MENA)
Learn More

Mapping Cyber Resilience in an Era of Disruption

Disruption has become harder to contain. Hybrid cloud has expanded the enterprise footprint. AI is embedded into core operations. Identity now sits at the centre of access.

Yahya Kassab
| Commvault
Senior Director and General Manager – KSA & Gulf
Learn More

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