By Gaurav Mohan, SVP Sales – APAC, India, Middle East & Africa, NETSCOUT

The Middle East is building one of the world’s most advanced digital economies. Across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the wider Gulf, artificial intelligence is moving from experimentation into production. Sovereign cloud strategies are reshaping infrastructure. 5G is powering smart cities,, autonomous services and new digital business models. Yet as organisations accelerate innovation, many are struggling to maintain visibility across these digital infrastructures that gives them the knowledge they need to manage, control and protect their business.

Today’s digital services rarely operate within a single environment. Applications, workloads and services are spread across sovereign clouds, hyperscalers, regional data centres, telecommunications networks and edge environments, each generating its own telemetry, tools and operational workflows. As a result, organisations often gain more data but less understanding of how their services actually behave end to end.

According to Enterprise Management Associates’ Network Management Megatrends 2026 report, 51 percent of enterprises now manage four or more distinct network domains, 38 percent of organisations lack end-to-end visibility across their network domains and even 24 percent acknowledge having areas where their monitoring tools cannot see at all. This highlights a growing paradox that organisations are rich in data but poor in visibility.

That means decisions are made using incomplete information. Incident response slows down, operational risk increases, and it becomes even harder to protect the customer experience. In the Gulf, the challenge is particularly relevant. As data is increasingly localised to meet regulatory obligations, applications and workloads naturally cluster around where that data resides. While this strengthens governance and compliance, it can also fragment visibility if organisations lack a consistent view across multiple environments.

Often the most valuable operational and security information never travels between users and applications. It moves silently between cloud workloads, databases, APIs and servvices inside the infrastructure itself. If organisations cannot observe and understand these interactions, they miss the activity that often matters most.

The conversation is no longer simply about visibility. It is about whether organisations can trust the data used to make operational and AI-driven decisions. The question that must be answered is do they have the trusted operational data that is the authoriative network evidence that gives them the certainty they need to make better, smarter decisions – faster.

High-fidelity network data provides a more accurate and consistent view of network activity, helping teams fill the gaps left by logs, metrics and sampled telemetry. It enables organisations to move beyond assumptions and approximations, allowing teams to understand events as they occur and investigate them with confidence.

The most authoritative source of network intelligence comes directly from network packets, providing  an independent record of how applications, infrastructure and users actually interact. Rather than relying solely on sampled metrics or instrumented logs, it gives teams evidence grounded in observed network activity. The result is a clearer understanding of both operational and security events.

In the Middle East, where regulatory expectations continue to evolve and data sovereignty remains a priority, that level of accuracy carries particular importance. Organisations are increasingly expected to demonstrate resilience, accountability and operational transparency. Meeting those expectations becomes significantly harder when visibility is incomplete.

AI does not eliminate operational uncertaity. In fact, it magnifies and can force-multiply whatever uncertainty already exists. Feed AI incomplete or inconsistent data and it simply automates bad decisions faster. Feed it complete, contextual and trusted network intelligence, and AI becomes more accurate, responsive and reliable.

The Middle East has invested heavily in building world-class digital infrastructure. As AI, sovereign cloud and connected services continue to expand, organisations tha combine comprehensive visibility with trusted, high-fidelity network intelligence will be able to thrive. In the next phase of digital transformation, success will be defined not simply by how much infrastructure organizations build, but by how clearly they can see, understand and act across it with confidence.

By Ionut Valentin Sas, SVP Finance, UiPath

Across the GCC, processing standard invoices has become relatively straightforward. Routine invoices are no longer the problem. The real bottleneck begins the moment an invoice falls outside the expected workflow, whether that is a mismatched PO, a missing approval, incorrect coding or a supplier query. From there, the process spills into email threads and spreadsheets, and finance teams pay for it in delayed cash flow, missed early payment discounts, strained supplier relationships and tied-up working capital. The invoice itself was never really the problem. The problem is what happens when it does not follow the usual pattern.

The Trouble with Exceptions

Straight-through processing, where an invoice moves from receipt to payment without human intervention, has been one of finance teams’ most effective ways to handle higher invoice volumes at lower cost. Companies like Canon have reported up to 90 percent STP for certain invoice types.

Yet according to Ardent Partners’ State of ePayables report, even top-performing AP teams only reach around a third. That gap reflects a shift already under way in accounts payable. As routine invoices increasingly process themselves, less time goes into verifying standard transactions, and more of the team’s effort shifts toward judgment, coordination and resolving what falls outside the pattern, such as invoices missing a PO, mismatched purchase orders, supplier follow-ups and approval bottlenecks.

Most automation was built for the predictable majority of transactions. The remaining cases still get routed back to people, with no system designed to resolve them faster or more consistently. Resolving an exception often means pulling information together from ERP systems, procurement platforms, contracts, past transactions and supplier communications before a decision can be made. The challenge is rarely a lack of information. It’s that the information sits across multiple systems and requires someone to piece it together before a decision can be made. That’s where most of the time is lost.

Invoicing in the UAE

The UAE’s move toward mandatory e-invoicing is one of the clearest signals of this shift. For many organisations, this transition will expose processes that have remained largely hidden while invoices were handled manually. Standardised, machine-readable invoices make routine processing easier, but they also shine a light on the exceptions that continue to require human intervention. As a result, organisations have an opportunity to redesign how those exceptions are managed, rather than simply digitising existing processes. The mandate requires structured, machine-readable invoices in place of the PDFs and spreadsheets many finance teams still rely on, and it is pushing organisations to take a hard look at how they handle exceptions today.

Compliance is only the starting point. The bigger opportunity is using this transition to modernise broader finance operations and rethink how exceptions get managed, not just to meet the regulatory deadline.

The Importance of Governance

As more of this resolution work shifts to AI agents, visibility, auditability and control become essential. Governance is not there to slow decisions down. It is what gives organisations the confidence to automate lower risk work while keeping higher risk decisions transparent, explainable and subject to human oversight. Done well, orchestration keeps people in charge of decisions, not just faster at processing them. That becomes increasingly important as finance teams automate larger parts of the invoice lifecycle. Confidence in AI comes not from removing people altogether, but from knowing when human judgement should remain part of the process.

The UAE’s e-invoicing mandate makes this need for governance harder to ignore. But governance should not be seen as a brake on AI adoption. It is what makes that adoption trustworthy.

The Shift Finance Leaders Must Make

The old mindset was to automate invoices. The new one is to resolve exceptions.

That is the shift finance leaders now need to make, treating exception management as the next frontier in finance automation rather than an afterthought bolted onto invoice processing. The foundation for that shift is orchestration, bringing people, systems and AI agents together around each exception instead of simply flagging it for someone to pick up later.

AI agents can do much of the groundwork before a person is even involved, gathering supporting information, analysing how similar cases were resolved in the past, recommending next steps and drafting supplier communications. That does not replace judgment. It means the judgment that does happen is faster and better informed. The organisations that gain the greatest advantage will not necessarily be those processing the highest number of invoices automatically. They will be those that can resolve exceptions quickly, consistently and with the right level of oversight, turning what has traditionally been a source of delay into a competitive advantage. The GCC built its reputation in digital government and public services by fixing what was not working, not by polishing what already was. Finance now has the same opportunity in front of it. The invoices were never the hard part. The exceptions are, and the organisations that get ahead of them will be the ones setting the pace for the next phase of digital invoicing in the region.

By: Jason Ou, President at Hisense MEA

As the FIFA World Cup 2026 final approaches this week, we reflect on a tournament that transformed how millions experienced the sport, from living room stadiums to quiet spaces in packed arenas

As we count down the final hours before this week’s showpiece final, the FIFA World Cup 2026 has delivered 103 matches across 16 cities, and with it, a reimagining of what “experiencing football” means.  Hisense served as the official and exclusive Video Assistant Referee (VAR) Review TV Provider for the entire tournament across the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Every controversial offside call. Every penalty review that had fans screaming at their screens. Every red card confirmation that shifted the momentum of a knockout match. The technology referees used to make those match-defining decisions ran on Hisense RGB MiniLED displays. The Video Operation Room in Zurich was upgraded specifically with these screens because VAR officials needed “clear and authentic restoration of live match footage.”

And it delivered.

Two parallel revolutions unfolded across this tournament: one that transformed homes into legitimate viewing destinations, and another that finally opened stadium doors to millions who’d been locked out for decades.

Hisense made an argument before kickoff: the home viewing experience could, in some ways, surpass what you’d get at the stadium itself. If the technology was precise enough for officiating decisions scrutinized by billions and debated across social media within seconds, it was good enough for living rooms worldwide.

For those who invested in the L9Q TriChroma Laser TV, everyday living spaces became premium match-day destinations throughout the tournament. With ultra-large displays up to 200 inches, fans followed every run, pass, tackle, and goal with remarkable clarity.

The flagship UXS RGB MiniLED TV, powered by breakthrough RGB MiniLED technology that delivers exceptional color accuracy, brightness, and contrast, brought fans closer to every moment on the pitch and created a more immersive and lifelike viewing experience for sports, entertainment, and gaming.

The Party Everyone Could Finally Join

For millions of fans living with autism, PTSD, dementia, anxiety, and other sensory processing conditions, the stadium experience had remained firmly out of reach, a party they could hear from outside but never truly join. This tournament changed that.

At this year’s tournament, all 16 host stadiums featured dedicated sensory rooms, making this the first-ever Sensory Inclusive FIFA World Cup. Hisense collaborated with FIFA and KultureCity to install these spaces across every venue in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, and they were used.

As Hisense continues pushing boundaries, making every match feel bigger, every celebration more immersive, and every memory more unforgettable, one truth has emerged from this tournament: the hierarchy of World Cup viewing has been expanded, making room for everyone who loves the beautiful game.

This week, as billions watch the final from living rooms with 300-inch screens and fans with sensory needs take their seats in the stadium, football’s promise will be fulfilled. The beautiful game. Finally, for everyone.