Saudi Arabia has emerged as one of the region’s most active AI economies, with enterprises showing a strong appetite for AI-led transformation. IDC data previously showed AI ranking among the country’s top digital investment priorities, with 66% of Saudi organizations expected to increase AI and digital investments in 2026. The current geopolitical scenario, however, introduces a more complex operating environment – one shaped by greater cost pressure, risk sensitivity, and increased scrutiny of investment decisions.
For CIOs, the focus now is on sustaining AI momentum and delivering measurable business value amid increasing uncertainty. In today’s environment, business and technology leaders must not only justify AI investments but also ensure their AI strategies are resilient in the face of operational, economic, and geopolitical disruption.
Join us for the exclusive IDC Virtual Roadshow to explore how Saudi organizations can continue advancing their AI agendas while responding to rising geopolitical uncertainty and a more demanding investment climate.
Prioritize AI Deployments with Measurable ROI
Revalidate Cloud and Infrastructure Resilience
Strengthen Cyber Readiness
Reassess Data Governance, Sovereignty, and Compliance
Modernize Data Platforms for AI Readiness
Diversify Technology Supply Chains
AI is raising the bar for enterprise infrastructure. IDC keynote session will explore the evolution from traditional datacentres to purpose-built AI factories, examining how compute, cloud, and facilities must adapt to meet the scale, performance, and economics of the agentic enterprise.
Matt Eastwood
SVP, World Wide Research, IDC
This session explores how organizations can move beyond AI experimentation to deliver measurable business outcomes, emphasizing that success depends on aligning strategy, data, governance, and adoption, not just deploying technology. Led by Plat4mation’s Chief AI Officer alongside ServiceNow, it shares practical best practices to help organizations translate AI ambition into scalable and real-world impact.
Stef Knaepkens
Chief AI Officer, Plat4mation
Olivia Hambert
Partner Technology Strategist MEA, ServiceNow
As AI adoption accelerates across industries, intelligence must scale seamlessly from the device to the edge and into the cloud. In this session, we explore how Qualcomm is enabling this new computing paradigm through a unified, end‑to‑end platform that delivers performance, efficiency, and scalability across the compute continuum .
Attendees will gain insight into Qualcomm’s device‑to‑edge‑to‑cloud strategy, including how its AI compute platforms support real‑world deployments across enterprise, cloud, and regulated environments. The session will highlight live implementations, ecosystem partnerships, and roadmap evolution, demonstrating how Qualcomm is helping customers and partners scale intelligence reliably, securely, and efficiently everywhere.
Charles Chebli
Managing Director UAE and Head of AI Cloud MEA, Qualcomm
Understand why your AI data needs to be Cyber Resilient and how to protect it and leverage AI in your data protection strategy.
Etienne Niken
Sales Engineer Manager, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, Commvault
Most organizations have access to powerful AI tools — but many still struggle to turn them into real business value. The challenge is not AI itself, it’s the data. Critical enterprise knowledge remains unstructured, fragmented, and often constrained by regulatory and sovereignty requirements, especially under frameworks like PDPL.
In this session, we explore a practical path forward: enabling AI to work directly on enterprise data where it lives — securely, with governance and sovereignty by design. We will also share real-world examples and sector use cases from organizations operating at scale in Saudi Arabia.
Murad Abu Abed
AI Field Technical Director, Cohesity
Organizations are deploying AI faster than they can govern it, creating a critical Governance Execution Gap — the distance between where AI is being used and where organizations can see, control, evidence, and define it. Without a governed foundation, AI operates outside accountability and transparency, becoming a liability rather than an asset. Closing this gap is essential to transforming AI into a trusted, sustainable, and nationally valuable capability.
Mutaz Salim
Founder & CEO, D Station
Alexey Sidorov, PhD
Chief Data Evangelist and Data Management Director, Denodo
As Saudi Arabia accelerates its AI ambitions, the infrastructure beneath it matters as much as the intelligence above it. This session explores how enterprise leaders are building cloud foundations that are resilient, sovereign, and ready to scale, turning Vision 2030’s digital promise into operational reality.
Harish Dunakhe
Senior Research Director, Software & Cloud (META), IDC
Ahmed AlRifai
Group IT Director, Al-Muhaidib Group
Hazem Jarrar
Chief Technology Officer (CTO), King Faisal Foundation
Sivakumar Seshadri
Head of Digital, Confidential Government
SVP, World Wide Research
IDC
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Senior Research Director, Software & Cloud (META)
IDC
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Chief AI Officer
Plat4mation
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Partner Technology Strategist MEA
ServiceNow
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Chief Data Evangelist and Data Management Director
Denodo
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Founder & CEO
D Station
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Managing Director UAE and Head of AI Cloud MEA
Qualcomm
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Group IT Director
Al-Muhaidib Group
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Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
King Faisal Foundation
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Head of Digital
Confidential Government
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Sales Engineer Manager, Saudi Arabia and Qatar
Commvault
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AI Field Technical Director
Cohesity
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Matt Eastwood is Senior Vice President of IDC’s enterprise infrastructure, cloud, telecom, security, developers, channels and enabling technology research groups. Mr. Eastwood and his team research people, process and technology trends affecting the enterprise technology marketplace worldwide. Mr. Eastwood first joined IDC in 2000 as part of the server team and his responsibilities have evolved and expanded during his tenure. In his current role, he leads a team of more than 100 analysts providing insights and analysis to IT suppliers, buyers, investors, and distributors through more than 75 syndicated research programs. Mr. Eastwood also leads IDC’s BuyerView primary research programs which are focused on defining emerging trends in cloud, developers, service providers, edge, AI and security.
Mr. Eastwood joined IDC in 2000. He provides in-depth market analysis, research, and consulting on all aspects of the enterprise infrastructure marketplace to IT professionals, investors, resellers and technology suppliers. During his tenure at IDC, Mr. Eastwood has led IDC primary research focused on emerging trends in enterprise systems and data centers. This primary research allows IDC to make continuous assessments regarding how customers are deploying and using enterprise infrastructure power digital transformation. Recent topics covered in Mr. Eastwood’s research include: Software Defined Infrastructure, Integrated infrastructure, Convergence, Disaggregated Infrastructure, Virtualization & Automation, Cloud Computing, High Availability, Platform Migration and Datacenter Workloads. Mr. Eastwood also serves as IDC’s lead analyst covering Dell and VMware.
Prior to joining IDC, Mr. Eastwood worked for twelve years as a senior project manager and environmental consultant at CDM Smith in Boston. Mr. Eastwood was responsible for managing the planning and design of large environmental infrastructure projects including wastewater collection and treatment facilities. In addition, Mr. Eastwood served as Operations Manager of the firm’s New England practice.
Mr. Eastwood received a bachelor’s degree in Civil/Environmental Engineering from Northeastern University in Boston and earned his MS in Engineering Project Management from WPI in Worcester, MA. He is a Registered Professional Engineer (PE) in Massachusetts.
AI is raising the bar for enterprise infrastructure. IDC keynote session will explore the evolution from traditional datacentres to purpose-built AI factories, examining how compute, cloud, and facilities must adapt to meet the scale, performance, and economics of the agentic enterprise.
Harish Dunakhe leads IDC’s research & advisory practice for the software program in the Middle East, Africa, and Turkey (META) region.
He is responsible for a team of research analysts and manages the delivery of insights in IDC’s software program and syndicated research. Harish and his team have expertise in studying technology trends to provide our clients with thought leadership and actionable insights. He is based in Dubai.
Harish has a strong understanding of leveraging technologies to solve business problems in the public sector, travel & transportation, hospitality, IT, and retail. He has significant knowledge of emerging technologies such as blockchain, RPA, artificial intelligence, and cloud. He works with clients to understand the intricacies, opportunities, and challenges involved in their technology transformation journeys.
Harish brings more than 17 years of experience working with leading system integrators and other technology companies across the Middle East, South Asia, and India. Prior to joining IDC, he held senior roles spanning technology sales strategy, program governance, and large account business planning at Global MNCs such as Wipro, DXC Technology, and Sonata Software.
As Saudi Arabia accelerates its AI ambitions, the infrastructure beneath it matters as much as the intelligence above it. This session explores how enterprise leaders are building cloud foundations that are resilient, sovereign, and ready to scale, turning Vision 2030’s digital promise into operational reality.
Stef Knaepkens is the Chief AI Officer at Plat4mation, bringing more than 30 years of experience in digital transformation and organizational change. He has led large‑scale IT transformations across industries, including post‑merger integrations, enterprise‑wide restructuring programs, and end‑to‑end ITIL implementations in over 30 organizations worldwide.
This session explores how organizations can move beyond AI experimentation to deliver measurable business outcomes, emphasizing that success depends on aligning strategy, data, governance, and adoption, not just deploying technology. Led by Plat4mation’s Chief AI Officer alongside ServiceNow, it shares practical best practices to help organizations translate AI ambition into scalable and real-world impact.
Olivia is a Partner Technology Strategist for MEA at ServiceNow, specializing in AI-driven transformation, partner ecosystems, and enterprise innovation across the Middle East and Africa. She works closely with strategic partners and organizations to accelerate the adoption of intelligent workflows and autonomous enterprise solutions. Passionate about bridging business strategy and technology, Olivia helps organizations unlock operational efficiency and deliver impactful digital experiences through AI.
This session explores how organizations can move beyond AI experimentation to deliver measurable business outcomes, emphasizing that success depends on aligning strategy, data, governance, and adoption, not just deploying technology. Led by Plat4mation’s Chief AI Officer alongside ServiceNow, it shares practical best practices to help organizations translate AI ambition into scalable and real-world impact.
Dr Alexey Sidorov was born with the “Passion for Data” programmed in his DNA.
Alexey started his carrier 30-years ago building volumetric model of radioactive pollution of Chernobyl nuclear disaster Zone with Russian Academy of Science and since then earned his reputation as the strategic adviser in all aspects of Data Management.
Prior joining Denodo as Chief Evangelist, Alexey built and managed enterprise-wide Data Integration platforms for industry giants like Nokia and Deutsche Bank. In the last 15 years Dr Alexey has been helping many companies across 3 continents to Digitally Transform their business with the edge-cutting Data technologies from Teradata and Informatica.
I am a high-impact leader with over 27 years of experience driving international growth and digital transformation for major organizations. I bring a unique mix of business strategy and deep technical knowledge, specifically in Cloud, ERP, and complex systems integration.
Throughout my career, I have specialized in scaling startups into market leaders and leading successful organizational turnarounds. I focus on managing high-stakes negotiations and building the strategic partnerships needed to make Dstation a world-class industry leader.
My Core Strengths:
Growth & Scaling: I have a proven track record of taking small ventures and turning them into market leaders.
Technical Expertise: I have extensive knowledge of Digital Transformation, SOA, and CRM platforms.
Operational Excellence: I specialize in change management, P&L, and leading teams through complex transitions.
Organizations are deploying AI faster than they can govern it, creating a critical Governance Execution Gap — the distance between where AI is being used and where organizations can see, control, evidence, and define it. Without a governed foundation, AI operates outside accountability and transparency, becoming a liability rather than an asset. Closing this gap is essential to transforming AI into a trusted, sustainable, and nationally valuable capability.
Charles Chebli is a senior executive operating at the intersection of artificial intelligence, sovereign cloud, and national digital transformation strategies across the Middle East and Africa.
As Managing Director UAE and Head of AI Cloud MEA at Qualcomm, he leads the regional strategy to position AI as a core economic and infrastructure layer, driving large-scale partnerships with governments, sovereign entities, and global technology leaders to enable next-generation AI ecosystems.
Charles brings a proven track record of building and scaling strategic businesses from inception to multi-billion-dollar impact. During his career, he established and grew one of the region’s most critical AI companies into a global top-tier portfolio, delivering significant revenue growth while shaping the foundations of sovereign AI infrastructure.
He is recognized for his ability to translate emerging technologies into board-level value creation, advising on AI investment strategy, infrastructure economics, and ecosystem development. Through his work, he has contributed in a practical way to the Gulf region’s evolving AI journey, in line with national efforts on economic diversification and digital sovereignty.
Charles holds a Master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence for Public Services, and is a frequent advisor and speaker on AI as critical infrastructure, enterprise transformation, and the future of intelligent economies.
As AI adoption accelerates across industries, intelligence must scale seamlessly from the device to the edge and into the cloud. In this session, we explore how Qualcomm is enabling this new computing paradigm through a unified, end‑to‑end platform that delivers performance, efficiency, and scalability across the compute continuum .
Attendees will gain insight into Qualcomm’s device‑to‑edge‑to‑cloud strategy, including how its AI compute platforms support real‑world deployments across enterprise, cloud, and regulated environments. The session will highlight live implementations, ecosystem partnerships, and roadmap evolution, demonstrating how Qualcomm is helping customers and partners scale intelligence reliably, securely, and efficiently everywhere.
Ahmed AlRifai is the Group IT Director at Al-Muhaidib Group, a leading Saudi diversified conglomerate operating across retail, FMCG, manufacturing, distribution, and investments. With over 25 years of experience, he leads enterprise-wide digital transformation across multiple subsidiaries, driving initiatives spanning ERP modernization, cloud platforms, data architecture, and cybersecurity.
Ahmed is known for his pragmatic approach to AI adoption—focusing not on hype, but on building the right foundations. He emphasizes modern core systems, trusted data platforms, and the integration of analytics and machine learning into business processes. His leadership prioritizes user adoption, organizational readiness, and tangible business value, ensuring AI is embedded into everyday operations in a responsible and scalable way.
He regularly shares practical insights on advancing AI initiatives incrementally and sustainably, aligned with broader transformation strategies and Saudi Vision 2030.
As Saudi Arabia accelerates its AI ambitions, the infrastructure beneath it matters as much as the intelligence above it. This session explores how enterprise leaders are building cloud foundations that are resilient, sovereign, and ready to scale, turning Vision 2030’s digital promise into operational reality.
A recognized technology leader with 35+ progressive experience, known for crafting the
requisite strategic vision to achieve business goals, offering a unique blend of executive acumen,
global team building, and technology solutions development credited with strong ROI and
operational improvement.
A highly creative thinker and analytical problem solver with demonstrated ability to manage
technology projects from planning through execution/completion under pressure of fast-paced
time-sensitive environments.
As the Chief Technology Officer at the King Faisal Foundation, Hazem has significantly
contributed to the building of a responsive technology structure that consistently delivers
results by aligning technology initiatives with strategic business goals; with substantial
improvement to service delivery, standardization, and business/systems performance
As Saudi Arabia accelerates its AI ambitions, the infrastructure beneath it matters as much as the intelligence above it. This session explores how enterprise leaders are building cloud foundations that are resilient, sovereign, and ready to scale, turning Vision 2030’s digital promise into operational reality.
Sivakumar Seshadri is the Head of Digital at Confidential Government. Siva has 32+ years of expertise in the insurance industry with, expertise in bringing result oriented Transformation and Digitization for leading insurers across various continents. He has been instrumental in driving a number of digital initiatives across global insurers which helped them in Digital growth , accelerating revenue, customer norms and market leading combined ratios.
In the recent Past Siva transformed and grew Tawuniya as its Chief Digital officer and prior to that with Al Rajhi Takaful as its COO, CIO & CDO and a founding management executive , leading the organization to become the largest motor insurer in KSA, Siva previously led Banking & Insurance vertical with global technology organizations such as Infosys , Cap Gemini ( Igate), Tata consultancy Services and LIC of India. His expertise covers Digitalization & Transformation, Building and Growing Ecommerce and Ebusiness, Insurance Operations, Technology Management and Strategic Consulting
Siva is a ACII and Fellow of Insurance Institute of India and holds a Masters with specialization in Insurance, He is also as CSQA and is a IBM Certified Design Thinker.
As Saudi Arabia accelerates its AI ambitions, the infrastructure beneath it matters as much as the intelligence above it. This session explores how enterprise leaders are building cloud foundations that are resilient, sovereign, and ready to scale, turning Vision 2030’s digital promise into operational reality.
Etienne Niken has more than 25+ years’ experience in the IT industry and has been with Commvault a leading cyber resilience company for over 12 years. Currently holding a position of SE Manager – Saudi Arabia and Qatar and a trusted advisor to many. An extremely passionate and results driven individual both personally and professionally. His vast experience in Data Management spanning more than 15 years has led him to see and experience the changes in the industry culminating in a front row seat of expertise backed by his industry skills forming lasting bonds with customers.
Understand why your AI data needs to be Cyber Resilient and how to protect it and leverage AI in your data protection strategy.
Murad Abu Abed is an AI Field Technical Director at Cohesity, specializing in enterprise AI, data security, and sovereign data architectures across the Middle East. With over 20 years of experience in data management, cybersecurity, and solution architecture, he helps organizations unlock the value of their data while ensuring strong governance and compliance.
He focuses on enabling AI adoption in regulated industries, ensuring data sovereignty, resilience, and security are built into enterprise AI strategies by design.
Most organizations have access to powerful AI tools — but many still struggle to turn them into real business value. The challenge is not AI itself, it’s the data. Critical enterprise knowledge remains unstructured, fragmented, and often constrained by regulatory and sovereignty requirements, especially under frameworks like PDPL.
In this session, we explore a practical path forward: enabling AI to work directly on enterprise data where it lives — securely, with governance and sovereignty by design. We will also share real-world examples and sector use cases from organizations operating at scale in Saudi Arabia.
OpenClaw has been pretty handy quite lately. I can text it from anywhere, on any device. It sends me a news briefing every morning, plans healthy walks including weather-appropriate clothing and is keeping me apprised of the progress of a stereo I ordered from Japan. It takes my chaotic thoughts, turns them into clean Markdown and emails them to relevant people. And it’s all running on a tiny $59 Arduino UNOQ board I stashed on a bookshelf.
Companies can no longer trust their data during a cyber incident – not even their backups. Current statistics indicate that hackers remain in their target networks for an average of over 200 days, manipulating dozens of systems. Backup systems are a prime target, as they can render a ransomware attack ineffective.
Qualcomm relentlessly innovates to deliver intelligent computing everywhere, helping the world tackle some of its most important challenges. Building on our 40 years of technology leadership in creating era-defining breakthroughs, we deliver a broad portfolio of solutions built with our leading-edge AI, high-performance, low-power computing, and unrivaled connectivity. Our Snapdragon® platforms power extraordinary consumer experiences, and our Qualcomm Dragonwing™ products empower businesses and industries to scale to new heights. Together with our ecosystem partners, we enable next-generation digital transformation to enrich lives, improve businesses, and advance societies. At Qualcomm, we are engineering human progress.
Qualcomm Incorporated includes our licensing business, QTL, and the vast majority of our patent portfolio. Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, operates, along with its subsidiaries, substantially all of our engineering and research and development functions and substantially all of our products and services businesses, including our QCT semiconductor business. Snapdragon and Qualcomm branded products are products of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries. Qualcomm patents are licensed by Qualcomm Incorporated.
Commvault (NASDAQ: CVLT) is a leader in unified resilience at enterprise scale. In a constantly evolving threat landscape, Commvault keeps customers ready by unifying data security, identity resilience, and cyber recovery, on one cloud-native, AI-enabled platform. Customers trust Commvault to conduct the fastest, most complete recoveries – not just their data, but their entire business. Purpose-built for the agentic enterprise, Commvault also enables organizations to safely embrace AI while protecting against AI-driven threats.
DStation is a data governance and maturity orchestration partner serving organisations across Saudi Arabia and the GCC.
As AI, automation, and advanced analytics accelerate, many organisations face a growing challenge: technology adoption is moving faster than governance maturity. This creates what we call the Governance Gap.
DStation works with enterprises, regulated organisations, and digital transformation leaders to strengthen data governance frameworks, align technology infrastructure with regulatory expectations, and embed governance directly into operational systems rather than policy documents.
Our focus is helping organisations move from periodic compliance exercises to continuous operational readiness, improving data maturity, accountability, and trust.
In an AI-driven economy, data is no longer just an asset. It is capital, currency, and the foundation of digital sovereignty.
DStation’s product is launching summer of 2026 with a mission to help organisations turn regulatory intent into operational certainty.
Denodo is a global leader in data management, powering trustworthy AI agents and applications. The Denodo Platform, an award-winning logical data management solution, transforms enterprise data into reliable insights for AI, analytics, and self-service initiatives. Organizations worldwide use Denodo to deliver AI-ready, business-ready data in a fraction of the time compared to traditional data lakehouses, achieving up to 4x faster time-to-insight, 345% ROI, and 10x better performance.
Cohesity protects, secures, and provides insights into the world’s data. As the leader in AI-powered data security, Cohesity helps organizations strengthen resilience, accelerate recovery, and reduce IT costs. With Zero Trust security and advanced AI/ML, Cohesity Data Cloud is trusted by customers in more than 140 countries, including 70% of the Global 500. Cohesity is also backed by industry leaders such as NVIDIA, Amazon, Google, IBM, Cisco, and HPE.
Cohesity is certified as a Great Place to Work in multiple countries. Follow Cohesity on LinkedIn and visit www.cohesity.com to learn more.