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Unlock Business Value with GenAI Through a Data Semantic Approach

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By Robert Thanaraj, Sr Director Analyst at Gartner

Semantic representations of information are crucial for the functionality of large language models (LLMs), which is fuelling a heightened focus on semantics within data and analytics (D&A) and AI. 

Data silos become entrenched and limit an organization’s capacity to draw insights from its data. Without understanding the relationships within data, the individual pieces of information become less useful.

Semantic approaches facilitate a shared understanding of business terms and their interrelationships, which is vital for providing the necessary context for generative AI (GenAI). In a Gartner survey on the evolution of data management, 44% of the respondents from AI-ready organizations reported that semantic alignment is a key factor in assessing the AI readiness of their data.

D&A leaders can enhance and expand their semantic understanding by leveraging emerging technologies such as knowledge graphs and augmented data catalogs, thereby unlocking greater value from their information resources.

What is Data Semantics?

Data semantics refers to the meaning and interpretation of data within a business-specific context, as opposed to focusing on the physical representation of data through a data dictionary or a business glossary. It involves understanding what a data element represents, how it should be used, and its relationships with other data elements. Without this understanding, data is of limited use for AI use cases.

Semantic modeling is a practice of connecting technical metadata with business metadata.

A business glossary serves as the foundation for all things “semantic,” documenting the meanings of business-related terms. When the semantics and rules of a business glossary are well-understood, it leads to better data quality, easier integration and greater usefulness, supporting interactions with LLMs. The glossary also supports business goals like reducing costs and managing risks by making definitions clear, consistent and easy to trace back to their sources.

Top Recommendations for D&A leaders

  • -Upskill your data engineers with semantic modeling techniques such as the use of knowledge graphs in building business ontologies.
  • -Introduce DataOps practices to “deliver value from data” more easily, quickly and broadly. Take a people-, product- and governance-centric approach.
  • -Invest in converged data management platforms. Establish a platform engineering team that produces platform services for platform tenants.

Key Benefits of Data Semantics

Leveraging and governing semantics effectively enables:

  • Improved Data Understanding: Both people and applications gain a unified view of data and its structure. For example, if several medical e-commerce sites use consistent relationships between terms, applications can extract and aggregate information across these sites to support user queries or serve as input for other applications.
  • Knowledge Reuse: Relationships uncovered by one group can be reused or built upon by others for new use cases, allowing previously identified connections to be embedded in future work.
  • Enhanced Accuracy with LLMs:  Incorporating knowledge graphs into the training and inference processes of LLMs serves as a factual base (i.e., data and metadata source) for mitigating errors and hallucinations.
  • Enhanced Interoperability and Innovation: By adopting semantic modeling, organizations open themselves to a wider range of use cases and enable more effective data interchange.

Link Data from Different Sources to Derive Data Relationships

Semantic reconciliation plays a crucial role in effectively linking data from different sources. It is also essential for inferring relationships between disparate datasets. Without a clear understanding of the relationships, correlations and distinctions among the meanings of data from different modalities such as text, videos, images and structured data, organizations cannot fully realize the potential of their data assets.

Modern semantic tools use algorithms to find connections in data. These tools recommend the best ways to clean, organize and analyze information. They also track where data comes from and how it is used for better governance.

With augmented data discovery, algorithms automatically detect correlations, segments, clusters, outliers and relationships, presenting the most statistically significant and relevant results. By using these semantic approaches, organizations can connect information from different sources, uncover relationships and gain valuable insights that drive better decisions.

In business ecosystems, the degree of openness is driven by members’ strategies, common goals and shared interests. For example, governments, nongovernmental organizations, charities and community groups can collaborate on health or public policy issues, or in open-source developer communities. This creates an opportunity for exploiting the knowledge of data and the meaning of data in terms of what can be applied to several digital business moments.

Lastly Think Data Semantics Before Introducing Large Language Models

Organizations are spearheading transformative initiatives to implement large language models in order to transform their operations. However, data and analytics leaders often rush to integrate LLM capabilities without first ensuring these tools are aligned with real business outcomes. To maximize value, it’s essential to connect LLMs with robust semantic frameworks.

Knowledge graphs are a powerful foundation for leveraging LLMs in business contexts. These machine-readable data structures capture semantic knowledge about both physical and digital entities. These worlds include entities and their relationships, which adhere to a network of nodes and links forming the graph data model.

LLMs can streamline the creation of ontologies, which define categories and relationships within data. By using “few-shot” learning prompts—providing just a handful of examples—users can guide LLMs to generate base ontologies in open formats that suit their needs. These initial frameworks can then be refined for greater detail as required.

Additionally, LLMs support ontology mapping by helping users align entities and relationships across different datasets or systems. With targeted prompts and sample mappings, organizations can extract relevant connections from their data and improve accuracy through iterative refinement.

By adopting large language models alongside semantic representations like knowledge graphs and ontologies, organizations position themselves for faster deployment of advanced analytics solutions that deliver meaningful business value.

Check out our previous post NMK Interactive 2025 Sets New Middle East AV Benchmark

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IT services spend in MENA set to reach up to 28% of total IT budgets as services-led transformation accelerates

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The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is entering a decisive, services-led growth phase in its IT sector, as enterprises and governments accelerate large-scale digital transformation initiatives. Investments in cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), data centres, and cybersecurity are reshaping technology priorities, with implementation, integration, and managed services gaining prominence over traditional software-led models.

Industry analysis by Grand View Research (GVR) reveals that IT services currently account for around 21–22% of total IT spending across MENA, a share expected to rise to between 26 and 28% by the end of the decade. The region’s professional IT services market, valued at USD 33.9 billion (Dh124.5 billion) in 2024, is forecast to grow to nearly USD 58.3 billion (Dh214 billion) by 2030, registering a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of approximately 9.5%.

Sourav Bhanja, Middle East Head of GVR, said: “Many B2B IT services firms in the region continue to underinvest in digital engagement. Professional platforms such as LinkedIn remain underutilised, while company websites often lack strong case studies, sector-specific storytelling, and clear positioning.”

Government-led digitalisation programmes, sovereign cloud deployments, smart city initiatives, and national data strategies, coupled with rising enterprise adoption across sectors such as banking and financial services, healthcare, energy, logistics, and public infrastructure, are driving this shift. As hyperscalers and global technology firms expand their regional footprint, demand for localised integration, migration, and managed services continues to accelerate.

Bhanja also emphasised the importance of leadership visibility in the region’s competitive IT market: “Technical capability alone is no longer enough. Firms that combine deep technical expertise with consistent marketing, strong leadership visibility, and clear communication of value are the ones most likely to succeed in the MENA market.”

The analysis highlights that with growing competition among IT services providers, market visibility and differentiation have emerged as critical growth drivers. Integrated, always-on digital marketing strategies are increasingly vital, as many B2B IT services firms underutilise channels such as LinkedIn, websites, thought leadership content, newsletters, blogs, infographics, and short-form video to engage decision-makers.

Market data also indicates a broader shift towards digital-first engagement. Digital advertising spend in the Middle East, estimated at USD 32 billion (Dh117 billion) in 2024, is projected to rise sharply to USD 81.4 billion (Dh298.9 billion) by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 16.7%. In contrast, the regional events and conferences market is expected to expand at a more modest 7.1% CAGR, reflecting changing enterprise marketing priorities.

Grand View Research concluded that IT services firms combining technical depth with strong market communication, data-driven marketing, and visible leadership will be best positioned to capture the next phase of growth across MENA.

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Loylogic Shares 2026 Vision to Advance the Global Rewards Marketplace

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Advanced AI innovation, intelligent marketplace design, and trusted global infrastructure position Loylogic for continued leadership in rewards and loyalty commerce.

Gabi Kool, CEO, Loylogic

As the Middle East loyalty market is projected to reach $3.27 billion in 2025, expanding 16.3% year-on-year, and digital-first, personalized, and coalition-based models reshape the industry, brands face rising expectations around relevance and engagement. Against this evolving landscape, Loylogic, a leader in global loyalty rewards management, today shared its 2026 strategic outlook, outlining how the company is evolving its global rewards marketplace to support brands navigating rapidly changing loyalty expectations.


The company enters the year with a renewed focus on continued investment in AI-powered rewards marketplace intelligence, enhanced catalogue curation, and deeper integration capabilities designed to improve reward relevance, partner value, and member experience across industries and geographies. Rather than simply expanding choice, Loylogic’s approach centres on intelligent rewards marketplace design, aligning consumer relevance, operational efficiency, and long-term value creation within a single global platform.

To support enterprise scale deployment, Loylogic continues to operate under a robust compliance and security, compliance and governance framework. The company adheres to internationally recognised standards ISO 27001, GDPR, PCI DSS, and AES-256 encryption, ensuring secure and trusted data handling across every layer of its technology while maintaining alignment with the European Accessibility Act 2025 and WCAG 2.0. All platforms remain adaptable to regional data residency and regulatory requirements.

“As loyalty programs mature, brands are looking beyond scale alone,” said Gabi Kool, CEO of Loylogic. “They want reward ecosystems that are smarter, more relevant, and commercially sound. Our focus for 2026 is about advancing how global rewards marketplaces are designed, governed, and experienced, combining intelligence, trust, and flexibility.”

Advanced AI innovation is central to Loylogic’s next phase of growth. Loylogic continues to enhance its use of advanced analytics and machine learning to support smarter reward discovery, improved marketplace performance, and deeper insights for loyalty operators, while maintaining strict standards for privacy, security, and compliance.

“Our innovation efforts are focused on making rewards marketplaces more intelligent and adaptive,” said Amit Bendre, COO of Loylogic. “This means better insight, better decision support, and better experiences, without compromising on trust, transparency, or regulatory rigor.”


Looking ahead to 2026, Loylogic plans to deepen collaboration with global partners, engage more actively with industry stakeholders, and selectively strengthen capabilities across commercial, product, and technology functions, supporting a growing pipeline of enterprise clients across financial services, travel, and consumer sectors. With a proven global infrastructure, deep marketplace expertise, and a clear strategic direction, Loylogic continues to help leading brands transform everyday engagement into meaningful, long-term loyalty.

About Loylogic

Loylogic is a leader in global rewards marketplaces for loyalty and incentives management, enabling brands to deliver scalable, flexible engagement experiences through a modern commerce platform. Its global catalog and redemption marketplace support meaningful engagement across B2C, B2E, and B2B programs worldwide. With deep expertise in sourcing, fulfilment, and patented points-plus-cash innovation, Loylogic has enabled over 200 billion points and miles transactions, delivered more than $1 billion in commerce, and shipped experiences spanning 100+ categories across 190 countries to more than 10 million loyalty members worldwide.

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Webook.com Strengthens UAE Footprint, Bringing World-Class Entertainment Experiences

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Webook.com, one of the fastest-growing platforms for booking lifestyle and entertainment experiences in the Middle East, is deepening its footprint in the United Arab Emirates following strong traction across the country.

Founded with a vision to transform how people discover and book experiences, webook.com continues to elevate convenience through a unified platform that brings together entertainment, dining, and leisure in a seamless digital journey.

Within the UAE, webook.com has rapidly expanded its user base while curating a lineup of world-class experiences. From comedy nights with Bassem Youssef to electrifying Teddy Swims concerts and the magic of Disney on Ice, webook.com continues to bring some of the region’s most unforgettable events to audiences across the UAE. Beyond these major hosted events, users can also book global entertainment experiences, including MDLBEAST, Riyadh Season, AFCON and other leading events happening across MENA.

Commenting on the expansion, Nadeem Bakhsh, CEO of webook.com, said: “Webook.com was built to curate the experiences that matter most, from front-row access to world-class entertainment to discovering hidden local gems. Expanding our footprint to the UAE allows us to bring a carefully selected lineup of events and experiences to the region. Our goal is to continue providing variety, quality, and seamless access to unforgettable moments.”

As the platform widens its presence across the UAE, it continues to strengthen partnerships with top entertainment brands, cultural institutions, and iconic venues, enabling users to access an unmatched selection of events and experiences.

Webook.com’s technology has proven itself across multiple markets, handling millions of transactions during major events, tournaments, and high-demand ticket releases. With real-time queueing, robust infrastructure, and flexible integration, webook.com delivers landmark events with unmatched reliability and scale.

With momentum accelerating in the UAE, webook.com aims to transform how people discover, plan, and enjoy experiences, turning every booking into the start of a memorable story. Beyond expanding its presence, webook.com is shaping a movement centered on connection, culture, and the joy of shared moments.

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