Shure MEA has launched its Experience Zone in Dubai, a dynamic and multi-faceted training hub designed to showcase how audio innovation can transform collaboration, government meetings, and education across the region. The new facility is poised to provide hands-on demonstrations in realistic settings, reflecting the Middle East’s ballooning preference for advanced AV technologies in response to meeting spaces, digital governance, and modern learning environments that require clear audio delivery.

Addressing Sector-specific Needs

The launch places strong emphasis on three sectors driving the region’s digital transformation. In Unified Communication, the focus is on seamless integration with leading conferencing platforms, supporting the Middle East’s meeting spaces. In Government, Shure highlights secure and resilient systems that ensure clarity and confidentiality for official proceedings and public addresses. In Education, advanced solutions empower classrooms and lecture halls, enabling interactive, technology-driven learning both in-person and online.

The Experience Zone is divided into four demo spaces that mirror real-world environments. In small rooms, Shure highlights compact, easy-to-deploy solutions that emphasize clarity and reliability. The facility will feature medium rooms to showcase scalable systems designed to grow with organizational needs, larger rooms to demonstrate robust setups that ensure coverage and flexibility in complex environments, while the auditorium will illustrate how high-performance solutions deliver clear, consistent audio to large audiences. These immersive setups allow visitors to not only hear the difference but also to experience how Shure’s innovations adapt seamlessly to varied applications.

“The Experience Zone will demonstrate how audio can empower sector-specific needs. By immersing visitors in real-world scenarios, we’re not just showcasing products – we’re demonstrating how Shure solutions are shaping communication experiences,” said Antony Lovell, Sales Director, Shure MEA.

Key Features

Shure MEA’s Experience Zone is designed to be more than a demo room. It serves as a regional resource for partners, customers, and IT decision-makers, providing a robust environment that combines interaction with knowledge-sharing. By creating this platform, Shure is reinforcing its role not only as an innovator but also as a trusted partner within the Middle East’s expanding technology ecosystem.

With Dubai’s position as a global innovation hub and the region’s rapid pace of digital transformation, the launch underscores Shure MEA’s long-term commitment to supporting sustainable growth. By combining immersive demos with sector-driven insights, the Experience Zone sets a new benchmark for how audio solutions are experienced in the Middle East.

Exclusive Interview with Ayman Hamdan, Co-founder of Unifonic

1. How does E3 Customer Experience Conference showcase innovation and advance Saudi Arabia’s digital transformation goals? 

The E3 Customer Experience (E3CX) Conference plays a crucial role in advancing Saudi Arabia’s digital transformation by serving as a dynamic marketplace where innovation, policy, and technology converge. For Saudi organisations, the event offers the opportunity to explore real-world solutions, moving beyond abstract concepts to evaluate validated use cases and production-ready technologies. It brings together key stakeholders, including vendors, system integrators, government agencies, and enterprise buyers to collaborate on critical issues such as compliance, integration, and security. 

Crucially, the conference supports Saudi Vision 2030’s emphasis on secure, locally governed digital services and a growing domestic software as a service (SaaS) ecosystem. It enables partnerships between platform providers, local cloud operators, telcos, and system integrators that address national priorities like data residency. For policymakers and regulators, E3CX provides a neutral, insight-rich platform to observe market capabilities, refine regulatory frameworks, and accelerate public-sector procurement. Sessions focus on operational readiness and business impact, including service-level agreements (SLAs), security, pilot-to-production timelines, and demonstrable return on investment (ROI). 

By bringing together technical teams, buyers, and regulators under one roof, the conference shortens procurement cycles, fosters collaborative problem solving, and ensures that digital initiatives deliver measurable economic and social outcomes. Ultimately, E3CX is where Vision 2030’s digital ambitions are translated into scalable, impactful services for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. 

• Where do you see CX in MENA in three years? 

Over the next three years, customer experience (CX) in the MENA region will shift from being a set of separate channels to a smooth, ongoing conversation that follows customers wherever they are. Mobile messaging and voice will become the primary means of engagement across discovery, purchase, and support. Companies that treat these conversational journeys as a key part of their revenue strategy, rather than just support tools, will be the ones that succeed. AI will move beyond small tests to full-scale use, helping personalise interactions in real time while also meeting local regulations. This will result in faster responses, fewer false positives, and more localised customer experiences. 

At the same time, Arabic-first design will become essential. Businesses that focus on dialect accuracy and culturally relevant design will see better engagement and conversion. Moreover, CX success will be measured by more than just satisfaction scores; business leaders will look closely at how chat and messaging contribute to revenue, customer retention, and cost efficiency. Data residency and local regulations will also play a bigger role in how companies choose their technology partners as governments and large enterprises will prioritise vendors that can demonstrate local hosting, audit logs, and clear data governance. While automation will handle routine tasks, skilled human agents will still be needed for complex or emotional conversations. Finally, CX will increasingly become tailored by industry, with sectors like banking, aviation, and government developing domain-led playbooks for conversational automation, featuring specialised models, compliance patterns and measurement frameworks. Thus, early adopters are poised to win procurement and set an example for others to follow. 

• With Vision 2030 shaping the SaaS market, how is Unifonic enabling better CX for Saudi businesses and public sector buyers? 

With Vision 2030 driving the transformation of the software as a service (SaaS) market in Saudi Arabia, Unifonic is uniquely positioned to enable better customer experience (CX) for both Saudi businesses and public sector buyers. The growing demand for SaaS solutions in the MENA region is fuelled by the rise of new digital models, and Vision 2030 has further accelerated this by emphasising the need for secure, locally compliant, and scalable digital services. 

Unifonic meets these demands by offering a unified conversational platform designed for production from day one. Our technology prioritises Arabic-first experiences, ensuring conversational journeys resonate across different dialects and feel natural to users. This focus on language and cultural relevance reduces friction, increases engagement, and drives higher conversion rates across customer acquisition and support workflows. For the public sector and large enterprises, we have adopted a collaborative go-to-market approach that includes joint pilot design, clear key performance indicators (KPIs), and quick iteration cycles. This enables stakeholders to validate the platform’s impact before committing to scale. 

On the ecosystem front, Unifonic works closely with local cloud operators, telecommunications companies, and system integrators to integrate seamlessly with existing infrastructure and accelerate deployment. We also invest in developer programs, training initiatives, and accelerator partnerships to nurture local talent, directly supporting Saudi Vision 2030’s objective of job creation. 

Unifonic operates at the intersection of language, compliance, and production readiness. We empower Saudi organisations to move their conversational projects beyond experimentation into scalable, measurable services that improve both citizen and customer experiences, fully aligned with the Kingdom’s digital transformation, economic growth, and workforce development goals. 

• What is Unifonic Intelligence? 

Unifonic Intelligence is the AI engine that powers the Unifonic customer engagement platform. It brings together four key modules: the AI control centre for governance and oversight, AI chatbot for customer-fa cing virtual agents, agent copilot to assist human agents in real time, and a content creator with marketing recommendations to automate and personalise campaign messaging. Together, these components empower businesses to deliver faster, smarter, and more personalised customer experiences. 

What sets the platform apart is its underlying AI framework, which uses a retrieval-augmented generation approach to ensure responses are grounded in the customer’s real data and up-to-date enterprise knowledge. We carefully evaluate and select leading open-source large language models (LLMs), optimising them for Arabic dialects and region-specific intents. This results in conversational AI that not only understands local nuances but also delivers factually accurate interactions. Early adopters can expect enhanced engagement, improved customer satisfaction and better business decisions through data-driven insights. 

• How does the partnership with Humain and Groq enable this platform and what does it mean for customers? 

Our partnership with Humain and Groq is both a technical and commercial enabler that strengthens the Unifonic AI Powered Customer Engagement Platform with unmatched performance, security, and scalability. Groq provides industry-leading inference hardware and performance engineering, focused specifically on inference execution, which is the critical backbone of live conversational systems. This means significantly faster model execution, lower latency, and scalable throughput, all of which are essential for delivering high-quality customer experiences. At the same time, Humain ensures that these capabilities are deployed locally, with full integration into regional compliance frameworks, and enterprise-grade operational controls across Saudi Arabia and the wider MENA region. 

Groq and Humain led the development of the inference architecture, performance tuning and deployment playbooks. While Groq tuned serving layers for peak low-latency performance, Humain implemented the local hosting, networking and operational controls required by enterprise customers. This joint approach allows us to push new model variants from testing to production in days rather than months, all while maintaining full audit trails and governance that regulated enterprises require. For customers, the benefits are measurable: inference and model serving are hosted in Saudi-based environments, preserving data residency; response times are faster, improving user satisfaction and reducing drop-off; and Arabic language support is significantly enhanced because of regionally-tuned models and dialect validation. 

Ultimately, this partnership gives Unifonic the infrastructure and operational foundation to deliver Arabic-first, compliant AI for enterprises across the region. At the upcoming E3 Customer Experience (E3CX) Conference 2025, we will be showcasing these engineering achievements and inviting customers to join our early adopter program to start delivering measurable business outcomes. 

Fortes Education, a global leader in delivering world-class, holistic education, has announced the appointment of Dr. Sreejit Chakrabarty as the Group Head, Technology, AI & Innovation, further strengthening its vision to integrate cutting-edge digital technologies into education and investments.

This appointment comes at a time when the UAE is accelerating its national agenda around AI adoption, digital learning, and future-ready skills development. With schools across the country being encouraged to embed technology into learning, Fortes Education aims to lead the way in shaping a progressive academic ecosystem that equips students with the tools of tomorrow.

Dr. Chakrabarty, a globally recognised voice in EdTech and emerging technologies, brings an exceptional academic and professional background. Holding a PhD in Artificial Intelligence, an MBA in Systems, and a Bachelor’s in Electronics Engineering, he has spearheaded transformative initiatives across K-12 education and beyond. His pioneering contributions include setting up laboratories on AI, robotics, extended reality, smart farming, and autonomous systems in schools, as well as leading one of the world’s first K-12 blockchain-based pilots for issuing digital passports and micro-credentials.

Speaking about his appointment, Dr. Sreejit Chakrabarty said, “I am deeply honoured to take on this role at Fortes Education. The UAE has demonstrated bold leadership in placing AI and digital learning at the core of its future vision, and I look forward to advancing this mission within Fortes Education. My focus will be on creating impactful innovations that will prepare students for the future and bridge the gap between technology and real-world problem-solving.”

His thought leadership has been showcased on CNN International, and he has been honoured with titles such as CIO of the Year and Education Influencer of the Year. As a sought-after keynote speaker, Dr. Chakrabarty has addressed global audiences at FORBES 30 Under 30, GITEX, GESS, BETT, and the World AI Show, cementing his reputation as a trailblazer at the intersection of innovation and education.

Commenting on the key appointment of the year, Dr. Neil Hopkin, Director of Education, Fortes Education said, “We are delighted to welcome Dr. Chakrabarty to the Fortes family. His global expertise, pioneering initiatives, and forward-looking mindset align seamlessly with our mission to nurture learners who are future-ready. With his leadership, we are confident of advancing our technology and AI-driven education strategies, empowering students and teachers alike to thrive in the digital age.”

With this appointment, Fortes Education reaffirms its commitment to being at the forefront of educational innovation, echoing the UAE’s national drive to champion AI, robotics, and digital transformation across sectors.