Cloudflare has announced that Dubai, UAE, will be the home of its first office in the Middle East, to further support its growing EMEA operations. Dubai represents a growing Cloudflare team presence in the Middle East and Turkey, following the company’s EMEA headquarters in London, and offices in Munich, Paris, and Lisbon. Cloudflare’s Dubai-based team will help the company grow brand awareness, acquire and support customers, and recruit new talent. As part of the announcement Cloudflare is welcoming its first managing director of the Middle East and Turkey, Bashar Bashaireh, an experienced regional leader with more than 25 years of industry experience in software and technology, who will lead this new office and team.
“The UAE is home to one of the largest economies in the Middle East and an innovation hub for the region, and worldwide. This has always been an important region for us with an emerging, young population hungry for content delivered at high Internet bandwidth, and Dubai is home to one of our 27 data centers located in the Middle East and Turkey,” said Andy Lockhart, Head of Europe, Middle East and Africa Sales at Cloudflare. “After an extensive search, we are delighted to welcome Bashar to lead and grow the team. With an office and a team based in Dubai, we’re committed to this growing business landscape, being closer to our customers as well as expanding our business in the region.”
Cloudflare started to invest in the region by expanding its network into the Middle East and Turkey in 2015. Now with data centers spanning more than 270 cities in over 100 countries worldwide, the company continues to grow its presence to be even closer to Internet-connected users everywhere. In the MET region Cloudflare has 27 data centers located in Bahrain, Iraq, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, Sultanate of Oman, Qatar, Turkey, and United Arab Emirates.
With millions of customers globally, Cloudflare’s customers in the EMEA region represent a wide spectrum of industries and various scales. In December 2021, Cloudflare published its first annual Impact Report showcasing commitment to helping build a better Internet that is principled, accessible for everyone and sustainable. The company focused on crafting a blueprint for a zero-emissions Internet, improving efficiencies of its global network that already runs on 100 percent renewable energy, and launching new tools to help other businesses build sustainability into their applications. In February 2021, Cloudflare launched Project Fair Shot — a program that gave our Waiting Room product free of charge to any government, municipality, private/public business, or anyone responsible for the scheduling and/or dissemination of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Cloudflare’s first managing director of Middle East and Turkey, Bashar Bashaireh, will oversee and lead the company’s business and overall team in the region. “With digital transformation and increased cloud adoption, organizations are in need for a fast, secure and reliable Internet, more than ever, to optimally serve and secure their customers, partners, and employees, and Cloudflare is leading this transition.” said Bashar Bashaireh. “I have been impressed by what Cloudflare has built and I’m thrilled to help to promote such an innovative technology in the region to help to build a better Internet, and to support the development of the regional digital economies.”
Over the last two years, Cloudflare has grown its EMEA team by more than 100 percent and counts approximately 700 employees. For the Middle East and Turkey, the initial functions prioritized for the region include launching new data centers, increasing market share by building partnerships, and expanding our customer base and the local team to cope with the business growth to better serve our customers. Cloudflare’s Dubai location will join its other global offices in San Francisco, CA, Austin, TX, Champaign, IL, Seattle, WA, New York, NY, San Jose, CA, Washington, D.C., Lisbon, London, Munich, Paris, Beijing, Singapore, Sydney, and Tokyo.
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