The United Arab Emirates is accelerating its ambition to become a global leader in digital innovation, with the UAE Strategy for Artificial Intelligence 2031 and its drive toward a fully digital economy setting the pace. This bold vision is inspiring enterprises and government entities alike to explore how AI can transform citizen engagement, service delivery, and enterprise operations. IDC research highlights that organizations across the UAE are prioritizing AI adoption — but success requires overcoming significant challenges in data management, governance, and readiness.

While CIOs and digital leaders are eager to fast-track AI adoption, most face common hurdles. Legacy systems, siloed repositories, and paper-based archives continue to trap vast amounts of valuable information. The rapid growth of unstructured and dark data makes it even harder to create trusted, AI-ready foundations. At the same time, organizations must comply with strict regulatory frameworks, manage sovereignty requirements, and address an acute shortage of AI and data engineering skills. As a result, many AI initiatives are branching off as data projects. IDC’s research reveals that around 50% of organizations in the UAE struggle with poor data quality and have limited to moderate data lineage.

The conversation around AI in the UAE is also shifting rapidly — from initial automation pilots to intelligent automation at scale, and now toward AI-powered governance and secure digital platforms. Forward-thinking organizations are already exploring cloud-enabled platforms, metadata enrichment, and intelligent document processing to reduce operational complexity and accelerate innovation.

Join this exclusive roundtable to learn how you can translate the UAE’s AI vision into measurable outcomes. Gain insights from experts at Iron Mountain and IDC on how to:

•    Build AI readiness across infrastructure, governance, and talent.

•    Manage unstructured and dark data while ensuring compliance with UAE data and security laws.

•    Harness cloud-enabled digital platforms to accelerate innovation.

•    Leverage metadata enrichment, intelligent automation, and AI-powered governance for secure, efficient decision-making.

This interactive session will provide CIOs and digital leaders with practical strategies and peer insights to transform data challenges into AI opportunities. Together, we will explore how to responsibly harness AI and contribute to shaping the UAE’s digital future.