Industry Findings: GCC market direction is driven by aggressive national AI agendas, sovereign-cloud requirements, and heavy digital public-sector investment (Sep-2023). Enterprises increasingly demand providers offering sovereign-grade, compliant, and high-performance compute aligned with local data laws. An example is expansion of hyperscale DC clusters across Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, and Doha, which has significantly redefined regional workload-placement strategies.
Industry Progression: Progress accelerated when Microsoft announced large-scale regional investments across multiple GCC countries in Mar-2024, aimed at expanding AI and cloud capacity. These expansions improve GPU access, enhance regional redundancy, and pressure domestic telecom-cloud providers to modernize interconnect and cybersecurity capabilities.
Industry Player Insights: Within the GCC, cloud supply is defined by Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Ooredoo Cloud. Ooredoo’s Oct-2023 upgrade of its Qatar-based cloud platforms enhanced enterprise-grade security and compute reliability, adding competition for both regional and global hyperscalers.