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Cisco 2024 Trends: Hybrid Work Model is Here to Stay

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  • Cisco unveils the transformative collaboration trends poised to impact hybrid work environments.
  • As hybrid work becomes standard practice, Cisco emphasizes the critical importance of cybersecurity, revealing further insights from the Cisco 2024 Cybersecurity Readiness Index

Cisco recently announced key insights into the future of hybrid collaboration and workplace trends. As businesses continue to navigate the shift towards hybrid work environments, Cisco’s latest predictions highlight the transformative impact of AI-driven collaboration technologies and the evolving challenges of cybersecurity.

As the global workforce continues its transition towards a more permanent hybrid model, organizational leaders are strategically balancing investments in physical office setups while empowering employees with flexible work arrangements, ultimately enhancing the productivity of today’s hybrid workforce. According to Cisco’s own Hybrid Work Study 2024, a significant 83% of organizations acknowledge that collaboration-driven enhancements effectively attract and retain top talent.

Reflecting on its innovations in the past year and the solutions prepping to unveil this year, Cisco emphasizes the enduring significance of the hybrid collaboration trends that promote inclusivity, innovation, and flexibility.

AI-Powered Collaboration Experiences

The adoption of AI in collaboration is set to revolutionize how we work and collaborate. Today, Cisco’s advanced AI audio and video intelligence technologies enable devices to intelligently follow presenters, listen for audio cues, switch between cameras, and optimize meeting views in real-time, creating an immersive virtual experience.

Looking ahead, technologies will continue to get even closer to fundamentally eliminating distance in any room type. As organizations map priorities for the year, it is critical to invest in technology that supports the integration of rapidly evolving AI capabilities, ensuring long-term value and fostering inclusivity and equity in collaborative environments.

Equitable and Inclusive Meetings

Meetings where everyone is physically present are no longer the norm, making it critical to provide equitable and inclusive meeting experiences. This fundamental shift in office dynamics has led to a substantial increase in virtual meetings among in-office workers, highlighting a 50% rise in participation compared to other work modes before offices reopened.

Despite this shift, only a limited number of conference rooms today are equipped with video conferencing technology, with basic camera and audio solutions falling short in achieving truly inclusive meeting experiences that capture the essence of in-person interactions.

To address these challenges, organizations will need to adopt advanced solutions that transcend physical barriers and emulate the richness of face-to-face collaboration, enabling all meeting participants to feel connected and engaged regardless of their location.

Workspace Transformation

With the ability to work from anywhere, motivating employees to return to corporate offices presents a unique challenge. Organizations are embarking on a journey to reimagine and revitalize workspaces, surpassing the comforts of home to generate excitement and collaboration.

These redesigned spaces prioritize organic interactions, essential for office environments where creativity and teamwork thrive on spontaneous, serendipitous encounters. Designated brainstorming areas and cutting-edge technology will further support co-creation and whiteboarding for both in-person and hybrid participants.

Cybersecurity in Hybrid Work Environments

With organizations navigating the shift towards hybrid work models, cybersecurity must remain top of mind. Recent insights from the Cisco 2024 Cybersecurity Readiness Index reveals that 86% of employees in UAE companies connect to work platforms from unmanaged devices. The study further indicates that 86% of UAE companies acknowledge that logging in remotely as part of hybrid arrangements has increased the risk of cybersecurity incidents in their organizations to some extent.

Cisco emphasizes the critical importance of integrating AI-driven cybersecurity measures into collaboration technologies to ensure the security and efficiency of hybrid work environments. By leveraging advanced technologies, Cisco enables organizations to navigate the complexities of hybrid work securely.

Cisco’s Approach

Ahmad Zureiki, Director of Collaboration Business, Cisco Middle East and Africa commented: “The demand for hybrid work collaboration solutions for businesses in the region continues to grow. Organizations are recognizing the value of adaptable workspaces and technologies that empower employees to work seamlessly, whether in the office or remotely. Cisco is committed to driving innovation in collaboration through advanced technologies and solutions in AI, ensuring that the future of work is inclusive, secure, and efficient.”

Cisco’s collaboration solutions have leveraged AI for years as a powerful tool to facilitate seamless hybrid interactions. It is no doubt that hybrid work models are here to stay. By offering employees flexibility and choice, this model will continue to not only benefit individuals but also organizations by fostering talent recruitment and retention without geographical constraints.

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Snowflake powers KSA’s Zahid Group’s data and AI transformation to unlock enterprise value

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Zahid Group, one of Saudi Arabia’s leading diversified business groups spanning heavy equipment, energy, transport and manufacturing, and others, has selected Snowflake, the AI Data Cloud company, as the strategic foundation for its enterprise data and AI transformation, giving the Group a scalable way to strengthen governance, advance AI adoption, and elevate customer experiences enterprise-wide. The relationship was formalized during a signing ceremony at Zahid Business Park in Jeddah, launching a multi-year investment that will strengthen productivity and support technology-led growth in line with Saudi Vision 2030.

With Snowflake, Zahid Group’s Digital Solutions Division is unifying data from across its business streams and departments on a governed, secure, centralized and scalable lakehouse platform. A modern business intelligence ecosystem will give leaders faster access to information, enabling them to spend less time reconciling reports and more time acting on insights. The next phase will use Snowflake Cortex AI to enable employees to engage with data through natural language, reducing reliance on traditional reporting and shortening the path from question to decision.

Snowflake’s adoption at Zahid Group comes as Saudi Arabia accelerates its goal of becoming the Middle East’s leading AI infrastructure and technology hub. The Council of Ministers has designated 2026 as the Year of AI, and PwC estimates that AI could contribute around 12.4% of the country’s GDP by 2030.

Before adopting Snowflake, Zahid Group’s data was dispersed across multiple systems, requiring extensive manual consolidation and resulting in reporting inconsistencies that slowed decision-making. As an early proof of value, the Caterpillar Helios initiative demonstrated the power of secure, real-time data sharing through Snowflake. Building on this foundation, Zahid Group is now extending Snowflake’s capabilities across its digital ecosystem, enabling real-time data streaming and integration with core platforms such as Infor and Salesforce.

This connected architecture has standardized critical reporting processes, reducing month-end reporting cycles from days to hours, and in many cases minutes. By eliminating manual effort and improving data consistency, it provides leaders with timely, trusted insights that support faster decision-making and strengthen a culture of data-driven innovation.

Suzan Sadek, Group IT Manager, Zahid Group, said: “Data is one of the most valuable assets of the digital economy. By choosing Snowflake, we are building a trusted and scalable data foundation that enables AI-driven innovation, faster decision-making, and improved customer experience. This transformation strengthens Zahid Group’s competitiveness, while supporting Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 ambition to create a data-driven economy.”

Michel Nader, General Manager for the Middle East, Turkey & Africa, Snowflake, said: “Zahid Group is demonstrating how trusted data can become the foundation for enterprise AI at scale. Snowflake brings information closer to customers while providing leading AI capabilities to enable digital transformation across Zahid’s operating environment. We are proud to support the company’s next phase too, where employees can access trusted insights faster and strengthen the Group’s ability to create lasting and scalable value across its businesses.”

Looking ahead, Zahid Group will expand Snowflake’s platform’s role across the Group, extending governed data products, advanced analytics and AI capabilities into more business functions to deliver measurable value for customers, partners and employees.

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PNY Technologies Joins LEAP 2026 with the Latest AI Technologies – Riyadh, Saudi Arabia | 31 August to 3 September | Booth H3-D10

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PNY Technologies announces its participation in LEAP 2026, taking place in Riyadh from 31 August to 3 September, where it will present its latest AI infrastructure and accelerated computing solutions.

The showcase will feature the technologies behind PNY’s AI infrastructure portfolio, from the AI Enterprise Factory to the latest NVIDIA RTX PRO and GeForce graphics solutions, together with networking and infrastructure technologies.

Visitors will also be able to explore the PNY AI Factory Digital Twin Configurator, which allows users to design and configure their own AI factory using digital twins and NVIDIA Omniverse.

PNY will also host live demonstrations developed in collaboration with its technology partners, including SOMOD, DDN, INFINIARC, VERTIV, and F5.

The company’s participation in LEAP 2026 reflects its continued commitment to supporting AI innovation across the Middle East and helping shape the technologies powering the region’s digital transformation.

The PNY team, including regional representatives, will be on-site throughout LEAP 2026 to meet with visitors, partners, and members of the media at Hall H3, Booth D10. Attendees wishing to arrange a briefing or interview are welcome to submit a request below.

Contact request: https://forms.pny.eu/pny-at-leap-2026/

Press contact: sverdier@pny.com / mhamdouche@pny.com

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Globant Introduces Glob.AI, Reinventing Technology Services for the AI Era

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Globant (NYSE: GLOB), a global company focused on driving enterprise reinvention through AI, today introduces Glob.AI, a new AI-native tech services model that fundamentally changes how enterprises access, purchase and deploy AI services. Available online through a self-service model, Glob.AI gives organizations access to enterprise-grade, high quality AI Pods (service units run by a set of AI agents and supervised by humans). Companies are charged for what they produce -per output or per consumption- never per seat or per hour.

“For over 20 years, Globant has stayed ahead of every major technology shift, and AI is no different. Glob.AI is our next step: the one-stop shop where our AI Pods live, each specialized by task and industry. Traditional AI adoption drives token consumption far beyond what efficient output requires, and the real cost is the wasted tokens plus the unstructured, manual supervision of AI. AI Pods introduce a smarter model, running the right AI through parallel agents, loops, workflows, and deterministic processes, representing the true state of the art of what AI can deliver today,” said Martín Migoya, CEO and co-founder of Globant.

Glob.AI brings together AI-native velocity with Globant’s 23 years of enterprise delivery baked into the governance layer. AI agents do the heavy lifting, with Globant’s experts supervising their outputs and guiding every step. Glob.AI works to standards–documented, tested, secure, built for enterprise scale. It’s the speed AI promises, with the rigor and quality that businesses need, by including:

  • Well-defined, deterministic, and repeatable processes, supervised end to end by experts
  • Optimized AI usage and transparent pricing: customers pay strictly for expert-validated outputs and/or real consumption — not hours, seats, AI hallucinations, retries, or wasted cycles.
  • At least 30% more productive than the typical engineer-plus-AI approach
  • Full AI sovereignty and governance: total flexibility over which models customers use and where they run them, with zero client data ever used to train external models.
  • Token consumption secured in a client’s proprietary Token Vault, providing full traceability and compounding a client’s institutional knowledge over time.

“AI is not just making the same projects faster, it is making thousands of projects viable that never were before,” said Guibert Englebienne, co-founder of Globant. “Until today, enterprises could not buy technology services this way: instantly, transparently, paying only for results. That is the shift Glob.AI delivers, and the strong demand for AI Pods shows enterprises are ready for it.”

Organizations joining the waiting list at Glob.AI will gain early access to a comprehensive catalog of agentic workflows capable of building and deploying solutions for enterprise platforms and specialized industry use cases. The AI Pods in the offering also include partnerships with major organizations including Anthropic, AWS, Vercel, OpenAI, Adobe, Azure, Google Cloud Platform, SAP and Salesforce.

Traditional enterprise tech services require months of discovery, RFPs, and procurement cycles before the work begins. Glob.AI changes that model entirely. Users can log in and immediately start building enterprise grade software. Tech delivery becomes a live, continuous service rather than a fixed-term project — every improvement and release happening on the platform, fully visible to the client, in real time.

Globant released AI Pods in mid-2025, and they are already in use by several Fortune 500 organizations across media, entertainment, professional services, and finance, delivering early results that include:

  • FIFA experiencing a 20% efficiency increase in throughput generation while maintaining or improving quality rates
  • LALIGA deploying AI across key functions in three months
  • YPF reducing contract timelines by up to 40%
  • PharmaMar achieving 15x faster insights in oncology research
  • A leading commercial bank completing a COBOL migration in 2 months versus 14 as projected with a traditional approach
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