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MIDDLE EAST RETAIL REAL ESTATE LEADERS TO RETHINK OPERATING MODELS AMID SECTOR TRANSFORMATION, BCG REPORT FINDS

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GCC region’s retail real estate sector is expanding rapidly, but traditional space-centric models are insufficient. A new report by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) titled “Imagining the Future of Retail: Beyond Space” offers a comprehensive examination of the strategic readiness of retail real estate developers across the Middle East.

Drawing on BCG’s project experience and interviews with senior leaders across the GCC’s major mixed-use, retail, entertainment, and lifestyle developments, the report says that the region’s retail real estate sector is witnessing its most ambitious physical expansion in generations, with millions of square meters of gross leasable area (GLA) under development across megaprojects in Riyadh, Jeddah, Dubai, and Doha. In several GCC markets, luxury retail space expansion has already outpaced growth in addressable consumer spending, reshaping sales per square meter and current development strategies. In addition, competition is intensifying as new supply comes online. Up to 25% of revenue at leading assets comes from non-GLA sources. Assets that lack digital and data capabilities may need to evolve to stay relevant in future customer journeys.

“The forces reshaping retail are converging faster than most operators recognize, and traditional space-centric models are no longer sufficient for what lies ahead,” said Andrea Pierobon, Partner at BCG Middle East. “The GCC has built world-class retail destinations, and the opportunity now is to rethink what retail real estate actually delivers in terms of moving from space-centric models to capability-led approaches.”

Factors Transforming the Traditional Retail Operating Model

The report identifies five converging forces that are systematically transforming traditional retail operating models. Retailers are reducing store size and numbers, opening smaller formats, and experimenting with new space as online commerce grows. The omnichannel imperative means retailers and developers can no longer treat digital and physical as separate strategies. Experience-led consumption is fundamentally shifting what consumers expect from physical retail environments, demanding immersive engagement rather than transactional convenience.

Retail media monetization represents an emerging value stream that most GCC operators have yet to capture, with global retail media revenues forecast to grow by $213 billion by 2028. AI-powered discovery is transforming how consumers navigate their shopping journeys, with more than half of consumers under 34 already using AI tools as part of their purchasing decisions.

BCG outlines three disruption scenarios (not predictions) that retail real estate leaders must actively plan for now:

  1. What if: over 50% of retail sales move online, fundamentally challenging the economics of traditional mall development, as we see in advanced markets around the world
  2. What if: Data replaces product margins as the primary value driver, shifting power toward operators who can capture and monetize customer intelligence, as we already see with many leading global retailers
  3. What if: AI agents become the primary decision-makers in consumer journeys, disintermediating traditional brand and retailer relationships, as we see adoption of Gen AI and Agentic tools accelerating.

Three Archetypes, One Imperative

The analysis also identifies three distinct strategic archetypes emerging across GCC retail real estate, each requiring a different operating model, capital allocation strategy, and capability set. Community and convenience retail serve localized, high-frequency needs with efficiency and accessibility at its core. Experience-led destinations compete on immersive engagement, cultural programming, and social connection rather than transactional retail alone. Ecosystem platform developers position themselves as orchestrators of broader consumer and commercial ecosystems, capturing value through data, partnerships, and integrated services.

“There is an immediate opportunity to shape the next chapter of GCC retail real estate, and to innovate for future retail needs, rather than continuing with the traditional development model,” said Andy Veitch, Managing Director & Partner and Head of Consumer Practice, BCG Middle East. “Those who act decisively, by choosing a clear archetype, investing selectively in enabling capabilities, and shifting from space delivery to business model innovation, will define the category for the next generation.”

The report outlines future-proofing levers that operators must activate: redefining the value proposition, repositioning the tenant mix, creating experiential programming, building data and analytics capabilities, developing retail media offerings, enabling omnichannel integration, investing in sustainability and ESG, forging strategic partnerships, and transforming organizational capabilities.

However, the report reveals that most organizations remain tied to more traditional leasing models, siloed functions, and occupancy-led KPIs. Without targeted investment in data and analytic capabilities, customer experience design, and agile decision-making infrastructure, progress against these imperatives will remain uneven.

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NETSCOUT EXTENDS ADAPTIVE DDOS DEFENSE PROTECTION TO ADDRESS THE RISING BUSINESS COST OF WEAPONIZED BROADBAND AND IOT DEVICES

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NETSCOUT® (NASDAQ: NTCT), a leading provider of observability, AIOps, cybersecurity, and DDoS attack protection solutions, today announced an extension of its Adaptive DDoS Protection (ADP) solution enabling service providers to automatically detect and mitigate outbound DDoS attack traffic. By extending protection from the attack target towards its source, NETSCOUT helps operators prevent compromised subscriber devices from disrupting their own networks, consuming costly capacity and attacking customers and organizations across the internet.

Consumer broadband routers, cameras and other IoT devices are increasingly being weaponized by Turbo-Mirai class botnets capable of generating multi-terabit attacks. These outbound attacks have already caused costly service outages, reputational damage and customer loss, and damage to peering relationships risking a large increase in transit costs at service providers around the world. By detecting and mitigating malicious traffic generated by compromised device populations before it leaves their networks, service providers can reduce abuse complaints and infrastructure costs while protecting their own networks and services and helping lower subscriber churn and regulatory risk.

“The combination of higher-speed broadband connectivity and vulnerable IoT devices has been weaponized by a new class of massive DDoS botnets,” said Patrick Donegan, founder and principal analyst, HardenStance. “Source-side mitigation, or attack suppression as it’s sometimes known, is a critical part of the equation. NETSCOUT’s approach, backed by its ATLAS Intelligence Feed (AIF) and ASERT analysts, gives service providers the tools they need to detect and stop attacks before they have an impact, protecting their customers and the broader internet from the large-scale DDoS attacks we have seen.”

Using AI-powered threat intelligence and automated detection and mitigation, NETSCOUT’s ADP solution, an addition to its Arbor Sightline and Arbor Threat Mitigation System:

  • Automatically detects and mitigates ever evolving attacks through dynamic detection, intelligent redirection and adaptive mitigation.
  • Extends these capabilities to outbound traffic, combining enhanced, customized detection with comprehensive threat intelligence tailored for each ISP.
  • Uses NETSCOUT’s proprietary AI/ML-powered DDoS detection to analyze massive volumes of outbound internet traffic to uncover attacks designed to hide within legitimate flows.
  • Draws on unique global real-time intelligence of DDoS activity covering approximately half of all internet traffic to rapidly detect and mitigate DDoS attacks and pinpoint the responsible, compromised devices.

“We are extending DDoS defense from the target to the source,” stated Darren Anstee, CTO, Security, NETSCOUT. “By using our internet-scale visibility to derive localized threat intelligence for our customers, NETSCOUT can identify and precisely suppress attacks at their origin, before they cause problems locally or at their target. This capability gives our customers a new level of comprehensive defense across their peering, transit, cloud and customer edges.”

This expansion of capabilities demonstrates how NETSCOUT is applying its global threat visibility and proven ADP solution to meet emerging service provider challenges. By extending an established inbound DDoS workflow to outbound and cross-bound threats, NETSCOUT enables operators to improve network-resilience, cost-controls and revenue protection through its proven Arbor Sightline and Arbor TMS solutions.

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Illumio Named Leader and Customer Favorite in Forrester Wave for Microsegmentation

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Illumio Inc., the breach containment company, today announced it has been named a leader in The Forrester Wave™: Microsegmentation Solutions, Q3 2026  report. Illumio received the highest scores among all evaluated vendors in both the Current Offering and Strategy categories and was named a “Customer Favorite” for its outstanding customer feedback among evaluated vendors. According to the report, “Repeat customers indicate their satisfaction with the consistently high quality of technical support, regardless of the personnel assigned to their account.”  

The report evaluated 10 microsegmentation providers against a comprehensive set of criteria covering product capabilities, strategy, innovation, and customer experience. Illumio received the highest scores possible in 10 evaluation criteria, including areas related to visualization, host-based enforcement, product security, vision, and innovation. According to the report, “Illumio excels at essential microsegmentation functions.”

“Illumio was founded on a simple belief: breaches are inevitable, but cyber disasters are not. We have been singularly focused on one objective — reducing lateral movement and attack surface, and increasing resilience in every organization,” said Andrew Rubin, CEO and Founder of Illumio. “Being named both a Leader and a Customer Favorite reflects to us the strength of our technology, vision, and even more importantly our ability to deliver real outcomes and risk reduction, which is the foundation of the trust our customers place in us every day. In the model threat world we are all now entering, defense must be coupled with resilience. Recovery is the new defense — and the new cyber.”

According to the Forrester Research report, “Organizations with large, heterogeneous environments focused on improving cyber resilience should consider Illumio.”  The report also recognized Illumio for:

  • “Illumio has articulated a vision for microsegmentation as a core element of security operations.”
  • “Illumio is bridging the gap between its traditional users and other parts of the security organization by delivering agents mapped to personas from other teams.”
  • Its UI provides easy access to information that supports both access control and incident response use cases.”

The recognition follows continued innovation across the Illumio Platform, including Network Posture, which helps organizations understand security posture based on real-world traffic and prioritize risk reduction efforts. These capabilities support the growing need for visibility, cyber resilience, and regulatory readiness across complex hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

Designed for operational simplicity, the Illumio Platform combines Illumio Insights and Illumio Segmentation to help organizations identify, assess, and contain cyber risk across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Security teams can uncover high-risk exposures, visualize potential attack paths, and implement segmentation policies from a single platform to contain threats and improve cyber resilience.

The platform is trusted by some of the world’s largest organizations, including BNP Paribas, eBay, and Microsoft, the latter of which has deployed Illumio Insights and Illumio Segmentation across its entire corporate IT environment. Igor Tsyganskiy, Global CISO of Microsoft, said: “When we needed to bring these capabilities into Microsoft, Illumio was the only segmentation solution that would work at the scale of Microsoft and deliver in our environment.”

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Rentify Introduces the First AI Workforce for Property Managers, Expanding Earn AI with Renewal Command Center

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Earn AI grows into a team of specialised AI agents that help property managers scale operations, automate renewals and embed financial services while keeping people in control of every decision.

Dubai, United Arab Emirates: Rentify, a cutting-edge fintech & proptech startup, announced the launch of Renewal Command Center, the third specialised AI agent within Earn AI, its AI-native operating system for rental operations.

Today, Earn AI supports property portfolios representing more than AED 22 billion (USD 6 billion) in real estate assets and over AED 1.3 billion in annual rental value, demonstrating how some of the region’s largest property portfolios are already adopting AI-native rental operations.

Unlike traditional software that only records information, Earn AI detects what needs attention, prepares the required work and coordinates execution. Property managers can upload spreadsheets, lease agreements and fragmented portfolio information and see it transformed into a live, structured portfolio view in under 60 seconds.

Each specialised Earn AI agent has a clearly defined responsibility while operating within approval workflows that ensure property managers remain in complete control of every important decision.

AgentCore Responsibility
Intelligence AgentTransforms spreadsheets, lease agreements and fragmented property data into a structured intelligence layer across an entire portfolio.
Collections AgentAutomated rent collection, payment coordination & portfolio-wide management
Renewal Command Center (NEW)End-to-end renewal workflow that includes lease generation, prepares tenancy agreements accommodating tenant intel, insurance, Open Banking & payments across all Emirates

Nearly 80% residential tenants renew their tenancy agreements each year, making renewals one of the largest recurring operational responsibilities for property managers. Across the real estate industry in the UAE, experienced property managers are expected to oversee larger portfolios while managing renewals, collections, tenant onboarding, documentation, compliance and financial coordination across multiple disconnected systems. As portfolios grow, operational work grows faster than teams.

Through Rentify’s product Rent Shield in partnership with YallaCompare, landlords and tenants can seamlessly access rental insurance during the renewal process. Integration with Spare, a leading open finance provider, enables Open Finance-powered affordability assessments and Pay-by-Bank payment orchestration that supports Rentify’s existing digital payment infrastructure. The platform will also make rent renewal seamless with embedded financial services.

Rajneel Kumar, Co-founder, Rentify, said, “We built Earn AI around a simple idea that technology should handle the operational heavy lifting so property managers can focus on outcomes for landlords and tenants. For decades, the only way to scale was to hire more people, but AI changes that. Renewal Command Center takes that idea into one of the most repetitive workflows in property management, connecting renewals, tenant intelligence, Open Banking, embedded insurance and payments in a single flow, with every critical decision still made by a person.”

Rashed Hareb, Co-founder & CEO, Rentify, said, “Property managers don’t need more dashboards. They need greater operational capacity. Over the next decade, every major operational function  within the property management business will gain a specialised AI counterpart. Our role is to build an operating system that enables those teams to work together seamlessly.”

Rentify believes the future of property management is not about replacing people with artificial intelligence. It is about giving every property manager a specialised AI workforce that quietly handles repetitive operational work, allowing people to focus on relationships, judgement and portfolio growth.

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