$ 11 billion draws a map of databases and cloud services in Saudi Arabia

In 2006, British mathematician Cliff, Keef Hambi, launched his famous saying: “Data is the new oil, which will continue the economy with the coming decades.” It seems that Saudi Arabia, which is historically at the forefront of the oil industry, is looking forward to the future according to this saying, which declares the insistence on the development of the data industry and cloud services, so that it makes a major contribution to the diversification of the economy and to put its mark on the map of the sector in the region. To be commercially and economically beneficial, it needs a lot of investments, which reflects the kingdom of the kingdom through the establishment of giant data centers, the introduction of cloud services and the acceptance of large companies for these services, leading to a shift to the digital economy. This trend was recently clear, as many companies, led by Amazon and data volt, this month in Riyadh, during the “Leip 24” conference, were announced for investments of more than $ 11 billion, to build major data centers in the kingdom, including 10 billion share of the two giant companies alone. These investments raise a question about the motives behind the pump of these businesses in Saudi Arabia, which is considered a emerging market in this area. A request of the new projects The most important motivation for investment in these centers is the various sources of demand in the largest economy in the region, according to the partner specializing in the cloud transformation of the consulting company “BWC” (PwC) Mina Ghobour. In an interview with “Al -Sharq”, he pointed out that one of the most important request engines “is represented by new government facilities and projects in the kingdom, similar to” Neom “, the future city that is completely established in the cloud.” Ghabbor explained that such new cities will not follow the traditional method of dealing with data as it prefers to build their data host facilities, in addition to their orientation from the first moment to adopt the most advanced and safe solutions. “Neom” is not a single example. The giant oil company “Aramco” has invested a lot of money to improve digital transformation and cloud services, supported by artificial intelligence. And the latest steps towards this transformation, disclosure during “Libya 24” of its great linguistic model (similar to Chatgpt), has been trained in the company’s data, helping employees to perform daily tasks and obtain information from the company’s “cloud”. The Restrictions Statute for the infrastructure in existing institutions in addition to the new projects, one of the demand cars is the direction of many government and semi -government institutions to adopt cloud services, especially because “the digital infrastructure of many of these institutions to limit restrictions and some work on programs out of 20 or 30 years,” according to Ghabbour. The acceleration of this shift supports the high cost of the restrictions of the infrastructure, as the cost of the old model to house, preserve and maintain data is higher than the cloud -based peer, with flexibility and the ability to control costs. This growing demand has been tempted, even companies working historically in the field of real estate to enter this market, similar to the Emirati company “Damac”, which has allocated $ 600 million to invest in the development of data centers in Saudi Arabia. But at the same time, this has led to an increase in government requirements related to data security, which compels companies to offer the centers of these information and servers on the land of the kingdom and deal with the resulting information according to their laws, and to draft strict standards to deal with these information in terms of their classification and many secret. The role of the private sector, the private sector, is in turn an important engine to increase the amount of demand. According to a “BWC” study, 60% to 70% of the institutions included in the study have already launched a cloud transformation trip or plan to test it soon. The results of the study represented additional evidence of the demand for cloud services before the private sector, as it was preceded by a survey that the general authority performed for the first time in 2023 for statistics, showing the increase in the contribution of the digital economy to the total local product of the kingdom to reach the year 2022 to 14%. The percentage of institutions purchased by clouds of computing services reached 48% of the total institutions employed in Saudi Arabia. The expansion of other sectors does not stand with cloud services and data processing on the limits of its digital market, but also extends to many sectors. Ghobour estimates that ‘companies’ investments in the kingdom in this area will be more than $ 2030 by $ 2030, but it will generate investments with a double 1.5 times in related sectors,’ which will represent the value of the value of the Cloud Services market in Saudi Arabia at the end of the contract to about $ 25 billion. The upcoming growth, which forced international companies to come to the kingdom and invest in such related sectors, including Chinese communications giant “Huawei”, whose CEO in Saudi Arabia, Eric Yang, announced a previous interview with “Al Sharq” that his business that began the investment journey in the country two decades ago; A complete package of digital solutions and equipment keeps track of the world of cloud services. ‘The New York Times: Saudi Arabia intends to invest $ 40 billion in artificial intelligence and the president of the company, who plans to invest $ 400 million in Saudi Arabia, emphasized that technology and data will be the basis for the economy of the kingdom in the future, which highlights the importance of cloud computers, artificial intelligence and analytical technology in this March. Ayman Al -Batawi, from the British company “Pixbert” Cloud Services, is taking on the presence of a remarkable rise of the Saudi Private Sector for Cloud Services and Data. Added a statement to ‘Al -Sharq’ that the company has taken a regional headquarters in Riyadh, due to the great openness of the market lately, which has caused a promise in the demand for cloud services, which is characterized by various sectors. ” A non -paved road is a way to adopt cloud services and take advantage of data is not easy as it is violated by many challenges. Ghabbor, from “BWC”, notes that the most important of these challenges “are” technical knowledge, and how to evaluate and choose the technology and the producer that fits a specific institution. ” Note that “many companies are losing sight to pay attention to the financial management of cloud services, which takes a lot of knowledge to maintain the cost of these services under control.” According to Ghobour, the additional challenge is “the trouble of finding talents that can understand how and designing this type of technology, and under government requirements specifically for the suppliers of these services.”