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How Connected Data Ecosystems Are Unlocking New Business Growth

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Cloud data ecosystems are the way forward for both industrial enterprises and the technology providers that support them, says Rónán de Hooge, Executive Vice President, Cloud Platform Business, AVEVA. An industrial environment where machines anticipate their own maintenance needs, supply chains innovate in response to real-time demand and resource shifts, and industries operate with unparalleled efficiency and minimal waste—all orchestrated by human experts?

That vision is fast becoming a reality as industries organize in response to the evolving business landscape. Disrupted supply chains, resource scarcity, changing customer needs and increasing regulation are all now commonplace in our integrated, digital-first economy. Success in this challenging environment depends on collaboration. When suppliers, distributors and other chain partners share business information, insights and best practices, they can create combined value that exceeds what each can achieve individually.

Businesses aren’t just connected to each other—they’re interdependent. In industry and elsewhere, the future of business increasingly relies on a connected data ecosystem. Data ecosystems represent the next wave of digital transformation. They leverage a trusted network of technologies to connect people with data from industrial operators and their partners.

With industrial data ecosystems, companies gain access to new capabilities or expertise they may not have in-house. More importantly, a unified view across the value chain, enables companies to discover crucial new insights and leverage broader expertise that enhance their abilities amid a changing business environment. When this industrial intelligence is unified and shared in the cloud, every value chain participant – including partners, regulators and customers – can visualize routes to better efficiency, productivity and sustainability.

Data is the bedrock of growth for the industrial enterprise

Businesses everywhere are now using connected data ecosystems with customers, suppliers, partners and operators. Such integrated networks may even straddle two or more formerly separate sectors. In all cases, they carry value for each player within the ecosystem, including for technology developers.

At the core of this collaboration is data. Industrial organizations now collect data in greater quantities and from a wider variety of sources than ever before. Too often, however, this strategic asset remains siloed at the point of collection because of technology, security and governance barriers, rendering it inaccessible to even internal departments.

Sharing data across an organization—as well as with external partners—gives every player within the ecosystem a contextual understanding of how to optimize their role in the value chain. Industrial organizations are therefore catalyzing digital transformation to create seamless collaboration across the lifecycle and unlock greater value and sustainability gains for all stakeholders.

Around the world, many players are already leveraging these platform services to drive positive outcomes on several fronts:

  • Drive efficiency through collaboration: Sharing data from a single source of truth empowers experts—regardless of location or technical background—to make better decisions faster.
  • Achieve environmental, social and governance (ESG) targets: Viewing unified value chain data in context helps surface the interdependent areas where sustainability action can have the greatest impact, such as greater circularity, improved efficiency, reduced emissions and better regulatory compliance.
  • Enhance individual and joint innovation: The competitive advantages gained from secure data-sharing communities strengthen trusted supplier and partner relationships. By adding context to real-time data, companies can expedite R&D, innovate together and mutually enhance competitive advantages.
  • Improve decision-making: Seamlessly connecting diverse data sources and extensible applications within an ecosystem gives businesses richer and more complete insights that can reduce operational costs and improve revenue outcomes.
  • Transform business for faster revenue: An industrial data ecosystem delivers value within hours instead of days or weeks. Accordingly, companies can achieve faster adoption, expand their market reach, and leverage economies of scale—all while reducing costs through lower software investments upfront and lower ongoing IT and maintenance expenses.
connected data ecosystems

How ecosystem building works for technology companies

As industries begin strategizing for the outcomes enumerated above, data ecosystems are helping them meet their needs. This kind of ecosystem thinking also supports innovation for technology providers and developer partners.

Such digital platforms bring together a multitude of complementary solutions and applications that can be tailored to specific business needs. At their core, such an industry data community is a network of interconnected software applications, services, and platforms that integrate seamlessly to enhance process efficiencies while uncovering new value for end customers.

With an open and neutral platform, partners can expedite the development of emerging technologies and services, driving agility and value for customers. The ability to securely share specific data streams within a standardized format and with granular control supports the development of new applications and value-added services – without compromising intellectual property.

This adaptability is a game-changer at a time of increasing cross-domain innovation, when developments in one field, such as artificial intelligence, can support progress in another area. Connected data ecosystems provide the advantages developers need in an ever-evolving industrial landscape.

Industry appetite and the flywheel effect

Different industrial sectors have either already added to, or are accelerating, their investment in connected data ecosystems. The vast majority (90%) of respondents in IDC’s 2023 Future of Industry Ecosystems global survey said they plan to maintain or accelerate their investment into such data ecosystems this year and next. Principal motivations included increasing business agility, better process automation, improved systems integration, and increased data-sharing with partners, including for ESG reasons.

The survey interviewed 1,288 C-suite and business line executives decisionmakers across energy, construction, process manufacturing, government and other industries around the world. Overall, the appeal of the connected data ecosystem could lie in its ability to accelerate the flywheel effect, a concept familiar to engineers.

With the flywheel effect, small wins accumulate over time to create a momentum that keeps the business growing. Likewise, within the kind of integrated data community described here, every player can expect to be able to recalibrate for resilience in real-time, driving incremental gains for all stakeholders on a continuous basis.

Whether for industrial enterprises, technology companies or developers, the whole truly then becomes worth more than the sum of its parts. The value of connected data ecosystems—and the potential exponential growth they promise—will be the foundation of our sustainable future.

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New Rubrik Agent Cloud Accelerates Trusted Enterprise AI Agent Deployments

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New Rubrik Agent Cloud Accelerates Trusted Enterprise AI Agent Deployments

AI agents represent the biggest opportunity and the biggest threat to organizations everywhere. Rubrik, Inc., the Security and AI Operations Company, today announced the launch of the Rubrik Agent Cloud to accelerate enterprise AI agent adoption while managing risk of AI deployments.

AI transformation is now mandatory for most organizations. However, IT leaders are constrained because Agentic AI has significant risks including hallucination as well as compromise by threat actors. Rubrik Agent Cloud is designed to monitor and audit agentic actions, enforce real-time guardrails for agentic changes, fine-tune agents for accuracy and, finally, undo agent mistakes. Built on the Rubrik Platform that uniquely combines data, identity and application contexts, Rubrik Agent Cloud gives customers security, accuracy, and efficiency as they transform their organizations into AI enterprises.

“IT and security leaders often don’t know what their AI agents are doing or how to undo their mistakes. Rubrik wants to help them answer: ‘What agents do I have?’ ‘What are they capable of doing?’ ‘How are they performing?’ ‘What did they do?’ and ‘Can I undo that when they screw up?’ said Bipul Sinha, CEO, Chairman, and Co-Founder of Rubrik. “AI agents have the potential to cause 10x the damage in 1/10 of the time. With Rubrik Agent Cloud, we uniquely address this challenge by leveraging our leadership in data, identity, and resilience to help our customers deploy AI agents with peace of mind.”

Accelerate Enterprise AI Deployment and Resilience 

Rubrik Agent Cloud will offer comprehensive agent management capabilities that encompass the entire AI agent lifecycle – from observability and control to performance management and simulation. 

  • Agent Monitor:
    • Auto-discovers both infrastructure-as-a-service (Azure/AWS) agents as well as platform-as-a-service (M365/AgentForce) agents. 

○ Automatically discovers and maps active agents across popular agent builders such as OpenAI, Microsoft Copilot Studio, Amazon Bedrock and other popular agent building tools. 

○ Continuously monitors agent activity and data access, and maintains immutable audit trails capturing context from data, identity, and applications. 

  • Agent Govern:
    • Tracks agent usage, evaluates performance against prompts, and gives teams the tools to control destructive/undesired actions.

○ Defines and enforces agent behavior, access, and action policies in real-time. 

○ A centralized tool to provide integration with enterprise identity systems—helping ensure secure, compliant, and controlled innovation.

  • Agent Remediate:
    • Announced in August 2025, Agent Rewind integrates with Rubrik Security Cloud to provide the industry’s only solution for precise time and blast radius rollback of undesirable or destructive actions.

○ Goes beyond observability to allow organizations to instantly undo unwanted or destructive actions, without any downtime or data loss. 

○ Selective rollback of agent-driven changes ensures continuous protection for critical data and systems, and immutable recovery.

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UAE’s AI market set to soar to Dh170 billion by 2030, driving MENA’s Dh610 billion Artificial Intelligence boom

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UAE’s AI market set to soar to Dh170 billion by 2030, driving MENA’s Dh610 billion Artificial Intelligence boom

The UAE’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) market is forecast to hit Dh170 billion (USD 46.33 billion) by 2030, according to new data from Grand View Research (GVR) in a study that underscores the country’s accelerating dominance in the region’s USD 166 billion (Dh610 billion) AI boom.

Close on the heels of the UAE unveiling its first Arabic-language AI model earlier this year, the new research by the California headquartered- firm reveals that the MENA AI market, valued at USD 11.92 billion (Dh43.7 billion) in 2023, is set to expand almost fifteen-fold to USD 166.33 billion (Dh610 billion) by 2030, growing at an annual rate of 44.8 percent.

“The Middle East, and especially the UAE, is no longer just an adopter of global AI technologies – it’s, in fact, shaping its own playbook,” said Swayam Dash, Managing Director at Grand View Research. “With sovereign funds backing innovation, and policies like the UAE’s new Strategic Plan 2031 leading the way with focus on utilising artificial intellegence in achieving greater financial efficiency for the federal government, the region is becoming a laboratory for how AI can drive both governance and growth.”

GVR’s report further highlights that nearly three in four UAE companies have maintained or increased their AI investments in the past year. Machine learning and deep learning remain the backbone of this transformation, particularly in healthcare, logistics, and financial services.

According to the report, the AI in Healthcare market in the Middle East and Africa, valued at USD 193.1 million (Dh 709 million) in 2023, is projected to reach USD 1.47 billion (Dh 5.39 billion) by 2030 growing at a CAGR of 33.6 per cent, while the region’s legal AI sector – currently at USD 43.3 million (Dh 159 million) – is expected to almost triple to USD 121.5 million (Dh 446 million) at a CAGR of 18 per cent over the same period.

“The release of region-specific AI metrics for the first time quantifies what many have sensed – that the UAE and its neighbours are at the tipping point of a generational transformation,” Dash added. “And the next wave of opportunity will come from specialisation. Sectors like healthcare and legal technology are still emerging here and hence the potential is immense. With the AI in regional healthcare market alone projected to touch USD 8.39 billion (AED 30.8 billion) by 2033, we’re looking at a decade of exponential growth. Likewise, the legal AI space, though currently small, represents a first-mover opportunity in digitising governance, compliance, and regulatory frameworks – areas where the Middle East can define its own benchmarks rather than follow global ones.”

The study also notes how the MENA region is further emerging stronger as one of the world’s most dynamic AI frontiers driven particularly by government-led digital transformation agendas, rapid urbanisation, and the rollout of AI-enabling technologies such as 5G, cloud, and IoT,

“Machine learning and deep learning continue to dominate adoption across smart-city initiatives, healthcare, and urban management ­– with the UAE leading the charge in real-world integration,” said Dash.

The full Grand View Research MENA AI Market Report offers an in-depth analysis of these evolving trends, uncovering how data, policy, and innovation are converging to redefine the region’s digital economy.

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FVC and SearchInform Join Forces to Boost Insider Threat Prevention and Data Protection in MENA

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FVC and SearchInform Join Forces to Boost Insider Threat Prevention and Data Protection in MENA

FVC, a prominent distributor specialising in innovative technology solutions, is pleased to announce its strategic partnership with SearchInform, a leader in information security and insider threat prevention solutions. Together, they are committed to strengthening organizations’ defenses against data leaks, corporate fraud, human-factor related risks.

K.S. Parag, Managing Director, FVC:

“We are excited to welcome SearchInform to our cybersecurity portfolio. The company offers the most powerful and localized DLP on the MENA market. SearchInform solution stands out from the competition due to a number of advantages. The system can be deployed within a few hours, protects the maximum number of data transfer channels, provides smart content-based blocking for all controlled channels and also use digital watermarks to trace the source of potential leaks. SearchInform DLP supports analysis of data in Arabic and has security policies, tailored for requirements of local organizations, enabling timely detection and prevention of confidential data leaks. The solution leverages AI to monitor atypical data transfer channels, recognize graphic elements, transcribe audio into text, detect attempts to photograph PC screens with smartphones.”

SearchInform offers a range of products, including DCAP, DLP, and SIEM. All the tools are seamlessly integrated. Technical support is provided through a specialist assigned to the company, who has extensive experience thanks to clients from various fields.

Commenting on the Partnership, Artem Volodin, CEO SearchInform MENA, stated:

“We are proud to collaborate with FVC, whose expertise in the Middle Eastern market will strengthen our efforts to combat insider threats and data leaks. The region needs a comprehensive solution that will enable organizations to meet regulatory standards, including SAMA, PDPL, DCC, ECC, UAE Information Assurance (IA) Regulation etc. and global ones, such as GDPR, PCI DSS. SearchInform delivers tools for data protection and risk mitigation across all levels: FileAuditor secures file systems, DLP covers workstations and human risks, Risk Monitor addresses corporate fraud, and SIEM protects IT infrastructure.”

The partners are currently conducting expert training, partner enablement sessions, and are also negotiating the implementation of SearchInform products in local companies.

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