A catalyst for innovation

We are seeing significant investment and expansion opportunities in Saudi Arabia post COVID-19. What impact can digital transformation and businesses migrating to the cloud have on the Saudi economy?

The Saudi market is one of the largest across the MENA region in terms of IT spending. From the Google Cloud perspective, we wanted to have an in-depth assessment of the market potential in Saudi. Accordingly, we commissioned the economic strategy firm Alphabeta to identify cloud adoption’s potential and economic impact. The study encompassed ten countries in the Middle East, which included the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The study has revealed that businesses in these countries can potentially unlock almost $600 billion worth of opportunities by 2030 through digital technologies, powered by cloud adoption, which is a key pillar of digital transformation.

In Saudi specifically, the study has revealed that businesses in the Kingdom can unlock almost $202 billion of economic impact in 2023 by fully utilising the digital technologies enabled by the cloud. This figure is nearly equivalent to 25 percent of KSA’s GDP in 2019 and clearly shows how digital technologies enabled by the cloud could transform economic development in KSA.

The study also sheds light on the different sectors in KSA that, when digitally transformed, can have the highest potential in driving economic growth; public sector, consumer, retail and hospitality, healthcare, manufacturing, education, and training.

Over the past decade, the Saudi government has taken very proactive steps in driving digital transformation across the Kingdom to power digital growth. For example, the Kingdom launched the National Strategy for digital transformation, a five-year strategy to realise a smart government with digitally enabled services across the board. We’ve also seen important government-led initiatives launched, such as the “Industrial cities telecom infrastructure initiative,” which aims to develop the digital infrastructure of industrial cities in the Kingdom.

Can you tell us about Google Cloud’s region in KSA and your upcoming plans there?

Our strategy in the MENA region consists of three pillars – infrastructure, people, and the partner ecosystem. Our cloud regions provide faster service with low latency in a given location so organisations can deliver their products and services more reliably and at higher speeds. Since KSA is one of our key markets in the region, Google Cloud has announced a memorandum of understanding with Aramco in 2018 to launch a cloud region in the Kingdom. 

Building on that MoU, we concluded an agreement in December 2020 where Google Cloud will deploy and operate a cloud region in Saudi Arabia, while a local strategic reseller, sponsored by Aramco, will offer cloud services to customers, with a particular focus on businesses in the Kingdom.  

This new cloud region will enable Google Cloud customers in KSA to confidently grow and scale their offerings in this market and support companies as they deliver their products and services to consumers. 

The cloud region will be located in Dammam, and we are currently investing in resources and building our team out of a Riyadh-based office. The team will support the cloud region’s deployment and operation as we prepare for the launch – which we are yet to announce. The cloud region will be twice as energy-efficient as an average enterprise data centre when it is active.

Already, our customers based in KSA, such as Herfy and customers who have a footprint in the Kingdom such as Namshi and Noon, depend on us to drive operational efficiencies, reduce IT costs, and accelerate their digital transformations to serve end consumers better.

Are there any sectors in KSA where Google Cloud is seeing the potential for growth and interest in digital transformation?

Our strategy in KSA is to work closely with government and private companies, supporting them throughout their digital transformation journey with our expertise that goes beyond decades of best security practices, and by providing infrastructure, platform, industry solutions and expertise – all on the cleanest cloud in the industry.

Customers who choose Google Cloud as their cloud provider do so due to several differentiated technology offerings: flexibility (open source/multi-cloud), which creates room for greater collaboration; artificial intelligence/machine learning of the highest quality and data solutions enabling better decision-making; culture of innovation in research, development, and engineering, producing modern products and services; security- protecting the privacy and security of corporate and customer data; and lower IT costs and the opportunity to optimise operations using AI and machine learning solutions. 

In KSA specifically, we have seen interest from several industries to go digital such as the digital natives, startups, retailers as they transform to e-commerce platforms, and financial institutions as the Central Bank has started issuing new licenses to encourage FSIs to become digital banks, in addition to telecom and the public sector. 

How secure is Google Cloud?

The increase in cyber and ransomware attacks over recent years has been a wake-up call for the region on the extreme importance of security, and we take this matter very seriously. We have been working with businesses to ensure their data is secure in the cloud. Having a data centre in the country is also an indicator of how we are addressing the security aspect so that businesses run their workloads locally. We help our customers minimise cyber attacks using the strength of our platform, security tooling, security analytics, and fraud management products. Customers who work with us trust Google Cloud with their data as we have decades of experience in security best practices. We have pioneered the  “zero trust” approach– an architecture that builds in multiple layers of defense against unauthorised access. This approach, and other security solutions, help customers minimise the impact of cyberattacks and prevent them completely. Google Cloud also launched Beyond Corp, a security-oriented engineering effort begun in 2012 to re-architect the Corp network to remove privileges granted solely based on having a Corp IP, instead basing authentication on more secure factors.