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Savills Regional Expansion Bolstered by Key Senior Hires

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Marc Tennant, Alec James Smith, Amelia Sykes, Filippo Simonato, Lin Zhou (left to right)

Savills has continued its rapid strategic expansion with the hiring of a number of seasoned professionals to take on senior roles to lead several functions within the residential agency division, such as off-plan and secondary market sales, international sales, and exclusive projects.

Andrew Cummings, Head of Residential Sales Middle East at Savills,said, “These signature hires are a further demonstration of Savills strategic commitment to the Middle East region. Our leadership position in global real estate derives from the quality of our people. As such, I am thrilled to be joined by such experienced and respected professionals to support the ambitious growth of our business. These latest appointments of top talent in the industry showcase that we are making rapid progress in our ambitious expansion plans for the UAE and the region.”

Alec James Smith has recently become part of Savills as the Director of Sales and Leasing, assuming a pivotal role in advancing the brokerage’s presence in Dubai. Boasting more than 12 years of extensive real estate expertise, Alec has progressed swiftly from his initial position as a leasing broker to handling sales and senior management roles. Currently, he is set to lead a team comprising over 100 agents, overseeing operations throughout Dubai. Notably, Alec holds qualifications as a building surveyor.

Marc Tennant, an experienced negotiator and off-plan specialist, joins Savills with a real estate track record spanning two-decades, half of which were spent in senior roles in Dubai. Tennant assumes the role of Director of Exclusive Projects and Off-Plan in the Middle East. Tennant will lead the launch of a number of new exclusive project mandates. Under-construction properties dominated demand during last year, with 55% of the units sold being off-plan, which amounts to a total of 65,000 off-plan units.

To capitalise on Savills 700 global offices, Filippo Simonato joins as a Director of International Residential Sales. Simonato’s role will liaise with the global Savills network to raise the profile of the Middle East region and drive inbound investment. Recognising the particular importance of investment from China, Lin Zhou has been appointed Head of the China Desk to cater to Chinese demand for property, working with Savills 9,000 employees across 18 offices within China.

The critical role of talent acquisition in a competitive market is entrusted to Amelia Sykes, who is one of the most well-known and respected professionals in her field. Skyes assumes the role of Head of Talent Acquisition for Savills Middle East.

The residential sector in Dubai continues to be active, as per the latest Savills research, showing that it had its best year on record in 2023. Transaction activity grew in the city by 29% y-o-y to an all-time high of 118,200 units. The sustained rise of the Dubai luxury market has also further established the emirate’s position as a global benchmark for prime and branded residences. While the high-end sector of the property market continues to boom, it is expected that we will see a rise in the number of mid-market developers respond to the growing demand for the more affordable sector.

The recent change to the Golden Visa scheme, which removes the requirement for a minimum downpayment for an AED 2 mn property, is more than likely to further fuel the growth of the real estate market. The allure of long-term visas, coupled with the emirate’s stability, world-class lifestyle, and business environment, positions Dubai as an attractive destination for investors seeking stability and long-term residency.

The Abu Dhabi market is also in good shape, as highlighted by the Abu Dhabi Department of Economic Development in its “Business Activity Report” for 2023, which reported significant annual growth of key indicators, further bolstering the business ecosystem’s attractiveness. The capital’s strong economic growth is underpinned by the stellar performance of the non-oil sector, which accounts for 52.8% of the emirate’s GDP.

Cummingsconcludes, “In just the first month of our expansion we sold one of the most expensive properties on Palm Jumeirah at AED 88 million amongst other deals, demonstrating the ongoing demand for prime property. Savills will soon be launching some new exclusive development projects, whilst at the same time furthering our prime and core offerings across the UAE. This leadership team is well placed to support the growth to 100 agents within 2024, whilst at the same time providing the world class service standards that Savills is known for.”

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VAST Data Partners with Google Cloud to Enable Enterprise AI at Scale Across Hybrid Cloud Environments

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Professional headshot of Cem Kul, General Manager of SO/ Ras Al Khaimah resort

VAST Data, the AI Operating System company, today announced an expanded partnership with Google Cloud, the first fully managed service for the VAST AI Operating System (AI OS), enabling customers to deploy the AI OS and extend a unified global namespace across hybrid environments. Powered by the VAST DataSpace, enterprises can seamlessly connect clusters running in Google Cloud and on-premises locations, eliminating complex migrations and making data instantly available wherever AI runs.

Enterprises want to run AI where it performs best, but data rarely lives in one place and migrating can take months and costs millions. Fragmented storage and siloed data pipelines make it hard to feed the AI accelerators with consistent, high-throughput access and every environment change multiplies governance and compliance burdens.

VAST and Google Cloud address this challenge by making data placement a choice rather than a constraint. In this recorded demonstration, VAST showcased the power of the VAST DataSpace to connect clusters across more than 10,000 kilometers, linking one in the United States with another in Japan. This configuration delivered seamless, near real-time access to the same data in both locations while running inference workloads with vLLM, enabling intelligent workload placement so organizations can run AI models on TPUs in the US and GPUs in Japan without duplicating data or managing separate environments.

“Together with Google Cloud, VAST is building a unified data and computing environment that extends to wherever a customer wants to compute and unleashes the potential of AI by unlocking access to all data everywhere,” said Jeff Denworth, Co-Founder at VAST Data. “Delivered as a managed AI Operating System on Google Cloud, customers can go from zero to production in minutes – we’re turning hybrid complexity into a single, intelligent fabric that provides fast access to data, regardless of where it resides to accelerate time to value for agentic AI.”

“Bringing VAST AI Operating System to Google Cloud Marketplace will help customers quickly deploy, manage, and grow the data solution on Google Cloud’s trusted, global infrastructure,” said Nirav Mehta, Vice President, Compute Platform at Google Cloud. “VAST can now securely scale and support customers on their digital transformation journeys.”

Powering Google Cloud TPUs with seamless data access and near-local performance

Recent performance results also show how the VAST AI Operating System connects seamlessly to Google Cloud Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) virtual machines, integrating directly with Google Cloud’s platform for large-scale AI. In testing with Meta’s Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct model, the VAST AI Operating System delivered model load speeds comparable to some of the best options available in the cloud, while maintaining predictable performance during cold starts.

These results confirm that the VAST AI OS is not just a data platform but a performance engine designed to keep accelerators fully utilized and AI pipelines continuously in motion.

“The VAST AI OS is redefining what it means to move fast in AI, delivering model load speeds comparable to cloud-native alternatives while providing the full power of an advanced, enterprise-grade AI platform,” said Subramanian Kartik, Chief Scientist at VAST Data. “This is the kind of acceleration that turns idle accelerators into active intelligence, driving higher efficiency and faster time to insight for every AI workload.”

With VAST on Google Cloud, customers can benefit from:

  • Deploy AI in Minutes, Not Months: Organizations can run production AI workloads on Google Cloud today against existing on-premises datasets without migration planning, transfer delays, or extended compliance cycles. Using VAST DataSpace and intelligent streaming, they can present a consistent global namespace of data across on-prem and Google Cloud instantly.
  • Reduce Data-Movement Costs: Stream only the subsets that models require to avoid full replication and reduce egress – cutting footprint and redirecting budget from data movement to AI innovation with infrastructure that is future-ready for the demanding AI pipelines in genomics, structural biology, and financial services.
  • Maximize Google Cloud Innovation with Flexible Data Placement: Choose what to migrate, replicate, or cache to Google Cloud while keeping one namespace and consistent governance by applying unified access controls, audit, and retention policies everywhere to simplify compliance and reduce operational risk. Leverage VAST DataStore and VAST DataBase to unify prep, training, inference, and analytics without rewiring pipelines.
  • TPU-Ready Data Path: Feed TPU VMs over validated NFS paths with optimized model loading and metadata-aware I/O, delivering fast, consistent warm-start performance and predictable behavior during cold-starts.
  • Build on a Unified Platform: The VAST AI Operating System delivers a DataStore, DataBase, InsightEngine, AgentEngine and DataSpace that scales across on-premises and Google Cloud environments and adapts to changing business needs without architectural rewrites, enabling data scientists to use a variety of access protocols with a single solution.
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AUKEY PARTNERS WITH THE BROOKLYN NETS FOR AN ELECTRIFYING NBA SEASON

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Barclays Center arena interior during Cavaliers vs Nets NBA game with Aukey

AUKEY, a leading innovator in cutting-edge tech accessories, is proud to announce a multiyear partnership with the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets, beginning this 2025-26 NBA season. This collaboration is AUKEY’s first sports partnership, marking an exciting milestone for their expansion and reflecting their ongoing commitment to delivering high-quality, innovative technology experiences to a global audience.

Through this partnership, AUKEY will team up with the Brooklyn Nets to engage fans both on and off the court. Together, they’ve launched a non-commercial, limited-edition wireless power bank, the MagFusion M 5000 Brooklyn Nets Co-Branded Edition, combining the team’s bold identity with cutting-edge wireless charging technology.

Fans can participate in AUKEY’s social media giveaway activities for a chance to win one on Instagram and Facebook, keeping their energy flowing anytime, anywhere while enjoying exciting game moments.

MagFusion M 5000 Brooklyn Nets Co-Branded Edition

“We’re thrilled to partner with the Brooklyn Nets, a team that embodies creativity, resilience, and the spirit of New York,” said Jackey Li, CEO at AUKEY US. “At AUKEY, we power every moment with strength, endurance, and an unbreakable drive to keep innovating. The Nets share that same unstoppable spirit and we look forward to sharing that spirit of innovation and energy with basketball fans worldwide.”

AUKEY’s work with the Nets will extend in-arena at Barclays Center for the team’s home games, as well as on the team’s social media channels. This partnership represents a fusion of tech, sport, and culture and together, AUKEY and the Brooklyn Nets aim to unlock more power in every moment, from the court to the community, keeping fans charged for what’s next.

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GCC COMPANIES ACHIEVE 30-SECOND PAYROLL PROCESSING WITH 100 PER CENT ACCURACY USING ADVANCED HRMS, REVEALS GREYTHR

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Girish Rowjee, Co-founder and CEO of greytHR

Companies across the GCC region have experienced higher workforce management efficiency using advanced AI-powered HRMS, reporting 100 per cent accuracy and stronger compliance with GCC labour regulations, reveals a recent survey conducted by greytHR, the leading full-suite Human Resource Management System (HRMS) platform. Notably, organisations with around 1000 employees could complete their payroll processing in just about 30 seconds using the innovative platform. 

The findings point to an exponential shift within the GCC HR landscape, where organisations are embracing intelligent automated HR operations amid evolving labour regulations, hybrid work models, and the rise of multi-country workforces. The company’s data shows that 75 per cent of GCC companies are first-time HR automation adopters, while 24 per cent have migrated from legacy systems, highlighting the ongoing regional transition towards fully digitised, compliance-ready HR frameworks.

greytHR is powering this digital shift through its robust cloud-based infrastructure and AI-powered tools, which simplify the entire hire-to-retire employee lifecycle, from recruitment and onboarding to core HR, leave, attendance, payroll, performance, exit and engagement.

Girish Rowjee, Co-founder and CEO of greytHR, said, “At greytHR, we believe that ‘people’ are the primary pillar of any business. A company’s growth relies on the dedication and hard work of its employees. As a result of this belief, we built our HRMS to make employee lifecycle management simpler, more transparent, and more connected within the HR ecosystem. Our goal is to help organisations reinvent how they manage and support their workforce through intelligent, people-focused automation in today’s digital world.”

Through it’s a highly intelligent and unified system, greytHR has been continuously addressing the region’s distinctive challenges and maximising impact through efficient workforce management.

Sayeed Anjum, Co-Founder & CTO, greytHR, said: “As companies expand across borders and hybrid work models become the norm, HR leaders face issues such as manual payroll errors, fragmented systems and limited automation, which can directly impact compliance, employee satisfaction, and productivity. Our platform is tailored to address these pain points and the region’s unique needs by serving as an intelligent, unified system that simplifies all stages of workforce management. This further aligns with our broader vision of creating measurable impact for companies and transforming the regional HR ecosystem through digitisation.”

He further stated: “Currently, IT & ITeS, Business, and Financial Service sectors lead in HRMS adoption, at 19 per cent, 15 per cent and 10.5 per cent respectively, highlighting the vital role of technology-driven and service-oriented businesses in catalysing the ongoing digital HR revolution.”

greytHR offers built-in compliance features tailored to GCC nations, including automated GPSSA deductions, multi-country payroll capabilities, and real-time analytics. Moreover, its intuitive interface and modular architecture make it accessible to businesses of all sizes, from startups to large enterprises.

The company showcased these advanced offerings at the recent HR Summit & Expo 2025, held in Dubai, highlighting its commitment to supporting the region’s evolving workforce needs. As GCC continues to position itself as a global business hub, greytHR remains steadfast in its efforts to positively shape the future of the regional HR industry.

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