For decades, digital transformation in the Middle East was largely shaped by outside forces, global hyperscalers, cybersecurity giants, and international integrators. But as governments roll out ambitious national visions, from knowledge-based economies to sovereign cloud and AI-first agendas, the balance is shifting. The region is no longer content to import solutions; it is producing its own. Homegrown champions are now stepping into the role of system builders, combining local relevance with global competitiveness, anchoring sovereign digital infrastructure and reshaping industries in the process.
Few companies capture this moment more vividly than e& enterprise, the digital transformation arm of global technology group e&. With a remit that stretches beyond corporate IT to the backbone of economies, it is becoming both a commercial powerhouse and a trusted partner to governments. At the helm of this push is Khalid Murshed, who became CEO in January 2025 after more than 20 years inside the group, including a pivotal term as e& UAE’s CTIO. His challenge is to accelerate adoption at scale and position e& enterprise as the growth engine of the region’s digital future.
Building a growth engine
Murshed’s approach to his first year has been defined by methodical alignment of teams, platforms, and pipelines. “Instead of rushing into quick wins, my priority has been to synchronise the many moving parts of e& enterprise into a cohesive growth engine,” he says.
That discipline has paid off. In the first half of the year, the company delivered strong double-digit topline growth YoY (+27%), a signal that the long-term strategy is already bearing fruit.
But for Murshed, outcomes matter as much as outputs. In a crowded technology landscape, e& enterprise has focused on building systems that endure. “The market is filled with AI pilots and digital proofs-of-concept, the real challenge is to create systems that work at scale – nationally, across industries, and with trust at their core,” he explains.
The initiatives rolled out in his first year reflect that philosophy. The UAE Sovereign Launchpad has created a pathway for government entities and regulated industries to migrate mission-critical workloads with confidence, ensuring data residency and compliance at every step. A generative AI partnership with Microsoft is already moving beyond lab trials, delivering real-time analytics and augmentation in healthcare, finance and manufacturing. To ensure AI systems are operationalised in live settings, e& enterprise brought in Katonic for robust machine learning engineering. The AI Academy, built in partnership with Emeritus, is designed to reshape executive leadership, training C-suite figures to see AI not as a tool but as a lens for strategy.
In parallel, e& enterprise has implemented AI solutions that put this philosophy into practice. In banking, AI-powered personalization engines analyse millions of interactions to generate deeper customer insights and improve decision-making. In public safety, the Hassantuk smart-fire system uses AI algorithms to reduce false alarms, optimize emergency response time, and enable real-time monitoring of thousands of villas across the UAE. Together, these solutions reflect how applied intelligence is already shaping outcomes at scale.
Furthermore, a strategic MoU with Abu Dhabi Investment Office (ADIO) and Exeed is pushing AI-driven production intelligence into UAE manufacturing, reimagining how the sector competes. Moreover, the Utilities Copilot platform brings AI into national infrastructure, helping predict grid outages, optimise operations, and improve service reliability for citizens. In parallel, an agreement with Salesforce combines Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Tableau with e& enterprise’s engageX platform, creating a fully integrated, locally hosted CX solution that helps public and private sectors personalise journeys, unify channels, and build trusted, lasting customer relationships.
These projects show how trusted intelligence can strengthen both institutional efficiency and public well-being. “We’re not chasing hype or volume,” says Murshed. “We’re building the operating system for sustainable, intelligent growth, uniting AI, cloud, and intelligence-led cybersecurity with IoT and experience layers to deliver trusted services, resilient infrastructure, and faster, better decisions.”
In this context, the company has built on its geographic expansion outside the Gulf. A landmark partnership with Serbia’s Office for IT and eGovernment is expanding hyperscale-ready data centre capacity in Kragujevac by up to 40 MW, positioning the Balkans as a sovereign cloud hub and lowering latency for regional enterprises. Together with 4iG in Hungary and PPF Telecom, this collaboration lays the groundwork for a secure, high-capacity backbone that links MENA to Europe.
e& enterprise’s growth momentum has also been matched by strong industry recognitions. Earlier this year, it was recognised by IDC MarketScape as a Leader in Gulf colocation services while its cybersecurity arm Help AG was named a Major Player in Middle East GRC. The engageX platform, e& enterprise’s omnichannel communications offering, was listed as a Major Player worldwide in CPaaS. For Murshed, these acknowledgements show that the company’s approach is resonating with the market.
Vision meets accountability
Perhaps the most significant structural shift has been e& enterprise’s transition to operating with its own profit and loss. Having spent years as Chief Technology nd Information Officer (CTIO), Khalid was familiar with pushing technology innovation forward. But with full P&L responsibility, his role is not just to architect solutions but to safeguard the financial health and growth of the business.
That responsibility has sharpened his view of priorities. Every acquisition, platform, and investment is assessed not only for its technical potential but also for its ability to integrate smoothly, scale efficiently, and strengthen the bottom line. “While P&L responsibility gives you a sharper lens on the entire business, it also forces you to design the system and not only chase outputs,” Murshed explains. “I always weigh which priorities compound customer value and capability over time against those which merely add noise.”
But he is equally clear that success must also be measured by empowerment. When e& enterprise deployed more than 200 AI use cases across healthcare, finance, logistics, retail, and government, it anchored itself on meaningful transformation across sectors. “Financial returns tell you how you’re performing,” he says. “But real impact tells you who you’re empowering.”
This holistic view on progress and value is reflected in his leadership philosophy, where he sees himself less as a lighthouse and more as a bridge.
“A lighthouse shines from afar but remains static,” he says. “A bridge connects what is separate, enabling teams, technologies and markets to move across complexity together.”
Murshed adds: “In a region where transformation moves at national scale, the most effective CEOs are not those who simply shine a light from above, but those who create the pathways that allow others to cross complexity and move forward.”
The e& enterprise chief further remarks that true leadership is about creating clarity, not control, making the destination unmistakable so teams can innovate toward it. And sometimes it means restraint. “The hardest thing about staying quiet in a world that rewards volume is resisting the constant pressure to be heard above the noise,” he reflects. “Impact doesn’t come from shouting the loudest, it comes from knowing when to speak, what to say, and how to listen.”
Scaling with purpose
This disciplined outlook extends into how e& enterprise decides what to build, what to buy, and who to partner with. Murshed is candid about the pitfalls of trend-chasing. “Not every breakthrough belongs in the bloodstream of an enterprise,” he says. “At e& enterprise, we scale what earns trust, not just what attracts attention.”
To enforce that, the company applies a three-lens test before elevating any technology into a platform: can it solve a problem that matters at scale, is there an ecosystem in place to sustain it, and will it age well?
The same lens applies to acquisitions. “The real challenge after any acquisition is keeping the spark that made the company successful in the first place while scaling it to deliver even greater impact,” Murshed says. “Our approach is clear: we integrate to elevate, not to absorb or flatten.”
GlassHouse is a case in point. Known for its precision in cloud infrastructure and long-standing client relationships, it was not folded into a corporate template. Instead, e& enterprise amplified its strengths within a larger system while protecting its agility.
Acquisition remains a critical strategic lever for e& enterprise, not only to accelerate capability building and deepen technological expertise, but also to expand its international footprint across the MEA region. Each acquisition is viewed as a way to unlock operational synergies and regional growth, reinforcing the company’s ambition to become a multi-market digital powerhouse.
“Acquisition is one path,” Murshed adds. “The other is partnership, where we co-create and scale together.” Through its collaboration with Microsoft, e& enterprise is accelerating responsible AI adoption across industries. In parallel, a strategic alliance with AWS is scaling Public Cloud adoption, advancing AI innovation, and building Sovereign Cloud capabilities to help enterprises and governments modernise securely and innovate faster.
At the same time, e& enterprise is transforming how it operates to stay future-ready, driving stronger synergies across its end-to-end portfolio, strengthening delivery excellence, and deepening industry specialization. By aligning capabilities and expertise around industry priorities in utilities, manufacturing, healthcare, finance, and government, the company is moving from broad offerings to integrated, high-impact solutions that deliver measurable outcomes.
The common thread through all these shifts and initiatives is a focus on building platforms over point solutions. Whether in finance, healthcare, manufacturing, or cloud, the intent remains the same: to create durable systems that power economies, and scale with purpose.
A movement, not a moment
For Murshed, the next frontier is trust at scale. “For us, the single biggest lever is building trustworthy intelligence at scale, because trust is what allows technology to move from pilots to platforms, and from individual wins to national outcomes,” he says.
That means designing not for isolated success stories but for regional systems. “Growth will not come from more proofs-of-concept,” he argues. “It will come when AI, cloud, cyber, and data stop living in silos and start working as a single, trusted system, one that governments, regulators, and enterprises are confident to build upon.”
The company will showcase this ambition at GITEX GLOBAL. Its “Shaping Nation’s Ecosystem” zone is designed to demonstrate how AI, cloud, and cybersecurity can bring outcomes that matter to nations: safer environments, smarter cities, and faster growth. The showcase makes that ambition tangible. One through-line is health resilience, a live AI-powered telemedicine journey traces an emergency from roadside triage to ICU stabilisation, with remote specialists and a command centre synchronising decisions in real time.
“At this year’s GITEX GLOBAL, we’re showing how cloud, AI, and cybersecurity come together to power connected economies, not just connected enterprises,” Murshed says. “Our message is simple: a secure, sovereign digital core is becoming the operating system of modern nations and e& enterprise is orchestrating these capabilities so that governments and businesses can innovate at scale.”
Looking ahead, Murshed says the goal is not breadth for its own sake but depth that endures, with trust as the foundation for every platform the company builds.
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