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Etihad Salam and AFR-IX telecom Join Forces to Boost Intercontinental Digital Links Across Europe, Middle East, and Africa 

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Etihad Salam and AFR-IX telecom Join Forces

Etihad Salam, a premier telecommunications and digital infrastructure company in Saudi Arabia, has entered into a strategic with AFR-IX telecom, an infrastructure and telecom operator and the developer and operator of the Medusa Submarine Cable System.

This collaboration aims to elevate digital connectivity spanning Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, and Asia.  Through this agreement, Etihad Salam becomes the primary landing and interconnection hub for the Medusa system within Saudi Arabia through Aqaba (Jordan), solidifying the Kingdom’s position as a pivotal digital gateway connecting Asia, Europe, and Africa.

The partnership introduces resilient, high-bandwidth, and low-latency pathways from the Mediterranean to the Arabian Peninsula, fostering expansion for hyperscale data centers, cloud service providers, and digital operators throughout the region. 

With this partnership, Etihad Salam will deliver terrestrial backhaul services and capacity swapping to seamlessly incorporate Medusa’s network into Saudi Arabia and the broader GCC, and onward to Asia. This initiative represents a significant advancement in Etihad Salam’s global cable strategies and underscores its dedication to Saudi Vision 2030’s goals for digital innovation and economic diversification. 

Medusa Submarine Cable System is an 8,760 km undersea cable network linking critical points in the Mediterranean, such as Spain, France, Italy, Malta, Greece, Cyprus, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt. Engineered for high-speed, reliable data transfer between Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, Medusa delivers up to 480 Tbps of capacity, serving as a vital conduit for surging intercontinental data flows. 

Quote from Salam

“Our partnership with Medusa underscores Salam’s commitment to positioning Saudi Arabia as a central hub for regional connectivity,” stated Amjad Arab, Chief Wholesale and Alliances Officer at Etihad Salam. “By linking the Medusa cable to our robust infrastructure, we’re creating innovative international routes that expand our worldwide presence and meet the surging needs for digital and cloud services in the Kingdom. Through this partnership, we seek to offer enriched connectivity services, experiences and bring the world closer, ultimately empowering businesses to scale and innovative in an increasingly digital landscape.” 

Quote from AFR-IX telecom

“We’re excited to collaborate with Etihad Salam, whose expertise and network complement our objective of providing secure, expansive, and high-performance connectivity from the Mediterranean outward,” said Norman Albi, Chief Executive Officer of AFR-IX. “This partnership elevates reliability and coverage for carriers worldwide, driving forward digital advancement across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.” 

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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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