Ahmad Shakora, Group Vice President- META, Cloudera

We are now in an era where digital connectivity underpins many areas such as commerce, security, governance, and social life.

In the Middle East, with ever-changing external factors, access to data has transitioned into a critical asset, with organisations and nations increasingly focused on protecting a vast array of information.

 For businesses operating in this region, traditional efficiency-focused IT strategies are no longer sufficient. Robust business continuity and disaster recovery must take center stage.

The expanding risk matrix

The current operating environment highlights several areas of vulnerability for global digital infrastructure, demonstrating that risks can be either planned or entirely unexpected:

• Government interventions can result in significant, sudden internet restrictions. Additionally, physical data center infrastructure is susceptible to multiple external factors. Severe and unpredictable environmental events, including extreme heat and unexpected flooding, can place a strain on the physical and cooling infrastructure of centralized data centers, forcing facilities offline
• Unexpected impact on physical infrastructure can arise, causing noticeable latency
• Total reliance on centralized third-party platforms amplifies operational risks. These can stem from planned events, such as routine maintenance and vendor migrations, or unplanned events, such as global software updates that inadvertently lead to widespread, cascading outages

In response to these varied and potentially compounding threats, the Gulf Cooperation Council is shifting from efficiency-first cloud adoption to resilience-first planning. Nations are accelerating investments in localized data centers, sovereign cloud environments, and multi-channel data access architectures that can withstand both cyberattacks and physical military threats.

In the UAE, the sovereign cloud market is projected to grow at a compound annual rate of 23% through 2033, signalling a sustained commitment to securing critical data and reducing exposure to fragile global dependencies.

When resilience becomes the backbone of survival

These external forces elevate Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery from a regulatory checkbox to a fundamental requirement for corporate survival. For CIOs and CTOs operating in the Middle East, ensuring operational resilience requires highly specific architectural choices.

Tech leaders who view infrastructure through a purely technical lens may be vulnerable. Data infrastructure must function as a strategic fortress. Resilience must supersede efficiency as the primary design goal. To continue operating amidst disruptions, tech leaders should look for the following differentiators when building their enterprise data infrastructure:

1. Cloud power, local control: do not put all the eggs in the public cloud basket. Organizations need a setup that works the same way whether it is in a giant data center or a small server at a remote branch. By running mini-clouds locally, enterprises keep the speed and control without being at the mercy of a service provider’s outage. Infrastructure must allow organizations to run data and AI workloads anywhere, converging the best of public cloud with on-premises deployments, including secure air-gapped environments.

2. Maintain internal control over enterprise AI: if there are disruptions to internet access or travel is restricted, AI shouldn’t stop working. Sovereign Private AI, by design, brings the thinking power to where the data actually sits. This keeps sensitive data secure and ensures automated systems stay online even if the rest of the world goes offline.

3. Diversify technology partners: tech leaders should implement an Open Data Lakehouse architecture that unifies 100% of the organization’s data to avoid vendor lock-in and catastrophic single points of failure. A critical design principle to look for is the strict separation of compute and storage. By utilizing highly scalable, S3-compatible object storage independently from computing power, enterprises can leverage robust data replication and erasure coding to ensure high durability, guaranteeing that all backup data remains safely within sovereign boundaries.

4. One view, no silos: managing fragmented data across a region during a crisis can be chaotic. CIOs need a Unified Data Fabric that breaks down silos and provides a single view of all organizational data with centralized, end-to-end security and governance across complex hybrid environments. Coupled with this, infrastructure must support Data in Motion: the ability to seamlessly move and process real-time data from any source to any destination. If a subsea cable is damaged or a data center goes offline, this capability ensures business-critical decisions can still be made seamlessly as traffic reroutes.

5. Visibility & isolation: Operational survival requires extreme visibility. A resilient infrastructure must feature granular observability across the full IT stack for proactive health monitoring, incident response, and data-flow policy enforcement. By using containers to isolate different tasks, enterprises can ensure that if one part of the business encounters technical issues, the risk is contained, protecting critical operations.

The future of business in the Middle East belongs to leaders who treat their infrastructure as a sovereign fortress.

True resilience requires moving past simple cloud adoption to build localized, hyper-resilient architectures that remain fully functional when global networks fail. CIOs and CTOs must now prioritize digital autonomy by anchoring their most critical operations in hardened, local environments that can withstand physical and international uncertainties. By designing for total isolation, leaders can ensure their organization remains operational and secure regardless of regional instability. The ultimate competitive advantage is the ability to maintain power and connectivity.

The post THE MIDDLE EAST’S DIGITAL FAULT LINES: A RESILIENCY BLUEPRINT FOR CIOS AND CTOS appeared first on The Integrator.

Healthcare and wellness businesses across the GCC are growing in a market that is becoming more digital, specialised, and commercially active. The GCC healthcare market is projected to grow from $121.9 billion in 2025 to $170.5 billion by 2030, according to Research and Markets, creating stronger demand for trusted platforms that connect buyers, sellers, service providers, and investors. Yet many businesses still rely on personal networks, fragmented supplier searches, and informal channels when selling equipment, finding operational support, or exploring business transactions.

MedSahra, the first B2B MedTech ecosystem platform focused on healthcare and wellness trade across the GCC, outlines five facts that show how marketplaces can bring more structure to this evolving sector.

Verified businesses build trust

Healthcare transactions often involve high-value assets and licensed businesses, which makes trust essential from the first interaction. A B2B marketplace becomes stronger when sellers and buyers are verified before they engage with others. This can include requesting documentation that confirms a company is legally registered and operational. For buyers, this reduces uncertainty. For sellers, it creates a more credible environment where serious business conversations can begin with greater confidence.

Private listings support business sales

Selling a healthcare or wellness business is often sensitive because owners may not want staff, competitors or the wider market to know they are exploring a transaction. In many cases, owners are left to rely on word-of-mouth or private referrals because there is no clear, specialised marketplace for these opportunities. Public listings can create unnecessary concern among employees, patients, and competitors before a deal is even serious. Private listings can make this process more practical by allowing sellers to present opportunities discreetly, while helping buyers discover small private clinics to large hospitals in different sectors, including general, dental, dermatology, cosmetology, pediatric and others areas, with existing infrastructure, equipment, and customer bases.

Equipment access becomes more efficient

Medical equipment is a major investment, yet many owners struggle to sell pre-owned devices through the usual channels. In some cases, distributors may only buy back equipment when the owner is purchasing a new device, which leaves clinic owners with limited options when they simply want to sell. A dedicated marketplace creates a clearer route for listing and discovering all types of medical and wellness equipment, whether new or pre-owned, across healthcare and wellness categories, including  dental, diagnostic, general medical, cosmetology and others. This is increasingly relevant as the UAE medical devices market is projected to grow from $3.18 billion in 2025 to $4.71 billion by 2032, according to Fortune Business Insights. Marketplaces can also help users find providers for repair, calibration, upgrades and spare parts.

Support services become easier to find

Running a clinic or wellness business requires more than medical expertise, and finding reliable service providers can be a constant operational challenge. Owners often depend on search engines, personal recommendations, or scattered supplier contacts when they need support for digital marketing, accounting, logistics, customs, software development, printing, pest control, equipment repair, calibration, hardware upgrades, or software upgrades. A B2B marketplace can make supplier discovery more structured by bringing relevant service providers into one professional ecosystem where businesses can compare options and start conversations more efficiently.

Consulting adds structure to transactions

Complex business decisions often require specialist support, especially when buying equipment, selling a clinic, or preparing for a larger transaction. Consulting partners can support areas such as M&A, accounting, audit, legal guidance, equipment planning, and operational readiness. This advisory layer is becoming more important as healthcare providers adopt more connected technologies, with GCC connected medical devices and wearables projected to grow at a CAGR of around 20.19% between 2025 and 2030, according to MarkNtel Advisors. A marketplace that connects businesses with relevant experts can help transactions become more informed, secure, and commercially viable.

The post FIVE WAYS B2B MEDTECH MARKETPLACES ARE RESHAPING HEALTHCARE BUSINESS appeared first on The Integrator.

For years, foldable smartphones have existed within a category shaped by compromise. Users typically had to choose between slim form factors and flagship-grade performance, with many foldables sacrificing battery life, imaging capabilities, or long-term usability in favour of portability and design.

OPPO’s new Find N6 appears designed to challenge that equation directly.

With the Find N6, OPPO is positioning foldables less as experimental devices and more as fully capable flagship smartphones that happen to fold. The device combines a slimmer profile with flagship imaging, next-generation processing, and the largest battery yet seen within the Find N series, signalling how rapidly the foldable segment itself is evolving.

A New Hasselblad Imaging System

At the centre of the device is OPPO’s new Hasselblad Master Camera System, led by a 200MP Hasselblad Ultra-Clear Main Camera alongside a 50MP periscope telephoto lens supporting 6x optical-quality zoom and up to 120x digital zoom.

The system also integrates a redesigned ultra-wide camera and OPPO’s True Color Camera sensor technology aimed at improving white balance and colour accuracy across different lighting conditions.

The Find N6 additionally inherits several imaging capabilities from OPPO’s Find X flagship lineup, including the LUMO Image Engine, Hasselblad Portrait Mode, Hasselblad Master Mode, and XPAN-style panoramic photography modes designed to emulate cinematic film aesthetics.

Bringing Flagship Video Features to Foldables

Video also forms a major part of the Find N6’s flagship positioning. All three rear cameras support 4K 60fps Dolby Vision recording, while the main 200MP sensor additionally supports 4K 120fps Dolby Vision capture for higher frame-rate workflows.

The inclusion of Log video support also pushes the device further toward professional and enthusiast creators looking for greater flexibility during post-production and colour grading workflows.

Powered by Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

Performance is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 Mobile Platform, featuring the third-generation Qualcomm Oryon CPU architecture.

According to OPPO, the platform delivers improvements in both performance and power efficiency, helping the foldable maintain smoother multitasking and sustained workloads without heavily compromising battery endurance.

The newer Adreno GPU architecture also introduces improvements across graphics performance, efficiency, and ray tracing capabilities, reinforcing the device’s flagship-level positioning beyond design alone.

Tackling the Foldable Battery Challenge

Battery life has historically remained one of the biggest limitations within foldable smartphones, largely due to internal space constraints.

OPPO addresses that challenge with a 6,000mAh Silicon-Carbon battery, representing the largest battery integrated into a Find N device to date while maintaining an ultra-slim 8.93mm folded profile.

The device also supports 80W SUPERVOOC wired charging and 50W AIRVOOC wireless charging, helping reduce downtime for users balancing heavy productivity, content creation, and entertainment workloads.

The Foldable Category Is Maturing

More broadly, the Find N6 reflects a wider transition happening across the foldable smartphone category itself.

Earlier generations of foldables were often viewed as engineering showcases that required users to compromise somewhere along the experience. Increasingly, however, newer foldables are attempting to position themselves as mainstream flagship devices capable of matching traditional smartphones across imaging, performance, endurance, and portability simultaneously.

With the Find N6, OPPO appears intent on pushing that transition further, presenting a foldable device focused not only on design innovation, but on delivering a more complete flagship experience without the compromises that once defined the category.

The post OPPO Find N6 Signals the End of Foldable Trade-Offs appeared first on The Integrator.

Yet another compelling new piece by Mariam Abouzeid, Marketing Manager, MEA at Nothing Technology

There is a $771 million evolution happening at the center of the Middle East marketing industry. For the past five years, the global narrative around influencer marketing was built on a flawed premise that reach equals influence. Brands in New York and London debated whether the creator economy was a bubble, while marketers obsessed over vanity metrics and fleeting viral moments. In the GCC, we stopped debating and started building. The influencer marketing market in the GCC is valued at $315.5 million in 2025 and is projected to reach $771.6 million by 2032. But the real story is not the money. It is the maturity.

Having overseen communications strategies that collectively generated billions of impressions across the region, I have watched Dubai and Riyadh transform from emerging markets into the global vanguard of creator led brand building.

The signals are clear. The Middle East is not catching up to the global influencer economy. We are leading it. We are doing it by fundamentally reprioritizing how creators are used, moving them out of the traditional PR umbrella and embedding them as the ultimate engine for mass awareness and deep brand trust. When you look at brands like Huda Beauty, which generates over $75 million a year through the strategic amplification of creator content, you see the blueprint for the future. Huda Kattan built a billion dollar empire right here in Dubai not by treating influencers as a PR add on, but by embedding them into the core architecture of the brand. This creator first model has paved the way for a new generation of Middle East beauty empires, from Youmna Khoury’s Youmi Beauty to Aliona Shcherba’s Aliona Cosmetics, proving that the region is no longer just consuming global beauty trends. It is exporting them.

The Mass Awareness Machine

Before we examine where the Middle East is going, it is worth understanding the foundation it has built. Influencers are the most powerful mass awareness engine ever created. In a region where the GCC is on track to have 263,000 active influencers in 2025, brands have access to a decentralized media network that no television buy or billboard campaign can replicate. When 60 percent of Saudi users and 48.1 percent of UAE users use social networks as their primary tool for researching brands and products, creators are not supplementing the media plan. They are the media plan. According to EMARKETER, US social network amplified content ad spending is projected to match creator sponsored content revenues at $14.15 billion in 2027 before surpassing them in 2028. Brands are about to spend more money boosting creator content than they pay

creators to make it. In the UAE and Saudi Arabia, this strategy is already taking hold. Ounass, the Middle East premier luxury e-commerce platform, provides a perfect example of this evolution. They do not just pay influencers for one off posts. They use data driven insights to identify top performing creators, then amplify that content through targeted performance marketing, blending emotional storytelling with rational product attributes to build a luxury narrative that resonates deeply with Gulf consumers and drives measurable return on ad spend/ But here is where the Middle East diverges from the global playbook. While Western brands are still treating influencers purely as awareness tools, the GCC has moved further up the value chain.

The QSR Reality Check: Awareness vs Consideration

To understand this shift, look no further than the highly competitive food and dining sector in the Middle East. This is a category where influencer marketing has been deployed more aggressively than almost any other. At the mass market end, brands like Americana operating KFC and Pizza Hut, McDonald’s, Papa Johns, and Subway pour millions into influencer campaigns to stay top of mind. Yet AlBaik, the beloved Saudi homegrown champion, topped YouGov KSA QSR Rankings 2026 with a consideration score exceeding 50 percent, a position built on decades of genuine consumer love, not just influencer hype. Global giants McDonald’s and KFC follow at 26.9 percent and 23.2 percent consideration respectively, despite their enormous social media presence.

At the premium end, the contrast is even sharper. Shake Shack, Five Guys, P.F. Chang’s, Joe & The Juice, and homegrown hero SALT have all built their GCC presence on the back of creator driven content, using beautiful food photography, viral reels, and influencer queues around the block. Nobu and Zuma in Dubai have become synonymous with aspirational lifestyle content, their dining rooms perpetually filled with creators documenting every dish.

Consider the rise of % Arabica. The Kyoto born coffee brand has grown into a $1.3 billion global giant with virtually zero traditional marketing. In the UAE, its minimalist, highly aesthetic stores were designed specifically for the Instagram and TikTok era. The brand relies entirely on organic discovery, user generated content, and influencer footfall to drive its massive queues. It is the ultimate example of a brand built entirely on the back of social media awareness and creator aesthetics          .

The stories of FIX Dessert Chocolatier and Bi Laban are perhaps the most instructive. FIX Can’t Get Knafeh of It chocolate bar became a global social media phenomenon in 2024 and 2025, generating a staggering 1,259 percent year over year explosion in social conversations. The viral awareness was undeniable, leading to $22 million in sales at

Dubai Duty Free in the first quarter of 2025 alone 10 . But as the Ehrenberg Bass Institute for Marketing Science noted, the viral fad diluted the brand identity, turning a specific product into a generic design brief copied by everyone 11 . Similarly, Bi Laban became a regional sensation engineered through influencer seeding and relentless creator buzz. The queues were real. But when the hype faded, the business fundamentals were exposed. Viral awareness, it turned out, is not a substitute for operational excellence, quality consistency, and genuine consumer loyalty.

The data reveals a stark reality. Hype does not seamlessly translate into habit. While 53 percent of Saudi residents eat fast food weekly, their ultimate choice of where to dine is driven by cleanliness at 48 percent and price at 46 percent, operational realities that no influencer can fake 12 . Influencers drive the initial discovery, cited by 61 percent of consumers as their source for finding new spots, but they are highly inefficient at closing the sale 12 .

The Cost of Misalignment: When Influence Breaks Brands

If the Middle East is learning how to build brands through creators, the global market has provided the ultimate cautionary tales of what happens when influence is misaligned with brand equity. The collapse of the Adidas and Yeezy partnership remains the most expensive influencer marketing failure in history. Adidas tied its cultural relevance to a single, highly volatile creator. When the relationship imploded, Adidas posted its first annual loss in 30 years, warning of a $1.3 billion revenue hit due to unsold inventory 13 . The lesson for regional brands is clear. Renting cultural relevance from a creator without building your own brand equity is a catastrophic financial risk.

Similarly, Pepsi infamous Kendall Jenner campaign remains the textbook example of scripted authenticity failing spectacularly 14 . Pepsi paid a massive premium for Jenner reach, assuming her follower count would automatically translate into cultural resonance. Instead, the tone deaf execution sparked a global backlash, proving that massive awareness without genuine cultural alignment actively damages brand trust. These global failures have taught Middle East marketers a crucial lesson. Awareness without alignment is dangerous. Influence must be anchored in trust, not just reach.

The Beauty Blueprint: From Awareness to Empire

If the F&B sector illustrates the limits of viral conversion, the beauty and luxury sectors provide the blueprint for the great reprioritization. Huda Kattan built Huda Beauty into a billion dollar empire using this exact logic. She did not treat influencers as a direct sales channel. She treated them as a massive awareness engine. Today, Huda Beauty generates over $75 million a year through paid media amplification of creator content. The brand understood early that organic influencer

posts build top of funnel awareness, but it is the paid amplification of that content that drives actual scale.

Similarly, Mona Kattan fragrance brand Kayali has mastered this shift. Kayali does not rely on influencers to push promo codes. It uses them to build cultural relevance and awareness around scent layering. The result? According to Sephora merchant partners, Kayali now has one of the highest repurchase rates in the entire fragrance category globally 15 . The brand uses influencers to get the consumer attention, but relies on product quality and brand equity to secure the conversion and the repeat purchase.

This blueprint is now being replicated by the most powerful creators in the GCC. Kuwaiti influencer Noha Nabil leveraged her massive regional following to launch Noha Nabil Beauty, building a brand deeply rooted in Arab culture and diversity that earned her a spot on the Forbes Women Behind Middle Eastern Brands list 16 . Similarly, Emirati superstar Balqees Fathi transformed her 13 million Instagram followers into a luxury cosmetics empire with Bex Beauty, merging global innovation with specific GCC beauty ideals 17 .

These founders understand that influence is the spark, but operational excellence and cultural alignment are the engine.

The Trust Capital of the World

This is why the Middle East is winning. Brands here have realized that influencers are not a shortcut to conversion. They are the architects of trust. According to the 2026 Edelman

Trust Barometer, global trust is contracting inward. People are retreating into insular, values aligned circles, making it harder than ever for mass corporate messaging to penetrate 18 . Yet, the UAE topped the 2026 Edelman Trust Index globally with a score of 80 out of 100, up eight points from the previous year 19 .

Why? Because brands in the UAE and Saudi Arabia understood early that trust cannot be broadcast. It must be brokered. As Edelman research highlights, in an insular world, trust is built and scaled by creators who act as cultural mediators 18 .

This is backed by new academic research. A 2026 study from Imperial College Business School on influencer authenticity found that the era of renting credibility through one off posts is over 20 . Professor Omar Merlo research proves that when brands treat influencers as long term partners rather than transactional media channels, they move from a transactional to a transformational relationship with consumers 20 .

The Global Validation: Unilever Pivot

The model pioneered in the Middle East is now being adopted by the world largest advertisers. In early 2026, Unilever made a declaration that validated everything regional marketers have been building. The FMCG giant shifted 50 percent of its total digital advertising budget away from traditional corporate ads and directly into social media and creators 21 . By April 2026, that commitment had translated into a network of 300,000 influencers actively promoting Unilever brands globally 22 .

Unilever CMO Leandro Barreto described the strategy as building Desire at Scale, using creators to embed brands authentically in culture 22 . This is exactly what the Middle East has been doing for years. When a global giant like Unilever restructures its entire marketing apparatus to match the creator first model, it proves that influencer marketing has officially graduated from the PR department to become the central nervous system of modern brand building.

The Academic Consensus on Brand Value

The data is clear, and the academic consensus is catching up to what we already know in the GCC. A recent Harvard Business Review study on how brand associations drive customer spending found that what consumers spontaneously think about a brand matters far more than what they agree with on a rating scale 23 . The research proves that brand equity is built through deep, authentic associations over time.

Furthermore, as McKinsey 2026 State of Marketing report highlights, branding has returned as the number one priority for marketing leaders globally 24 . CMOs view branding ability to drive distinctiveness and embody a clear value proposition as critical to building competitive differentiation 24 . In the Middle East, we know that the fastest, most authentic way to build that distinctiveness is through the voices of trusted creators.

The Way Forward: Leading the Next Era

The next wave of global marketing innovation will not come from Silicon Valley or Madison Avenue. It is coming from Dubai and Riyadh. According to EMARKETER, 57 percent of ad buyers globally say influencer ads and partnerships are their top investment priority for 2026. The world is finally waking up to the power of the creator economy, but the Middle

East is already living in its future.

We have moved past the vanity metrics. We have moved past the debate over whether influencers belong in PR or paid media. We have built an ecosystem where creators are the undisputed architects of mass awareness, brand trust, and deep consideration.

The Middle East audience is among the most digitally connected and brand aware anywhere in the world, and it expects marketing strategies that reflect that level of sophistication. Influencer marketing is not just growing here. It is setting the global standard. The brands that recognise this will not just win the region. They will lead the world.

The post How the Middle East Moved Beyond Followers to Build Brands appeared first on The Integrator.

Aethra Advisory, a global hiring strategy & mobility architecture practice, has launched in the UAE as the first independent advisory practice dedicated to helping organisations design their global hiring infrastructure. The business will support founders, HR leaders, scale-up operators, and strategic decision-makers across UAE companies expanding internationally and global businesses entering the UAE, and wider Middle East, helping them navigate cross-border hiring, employment models, mobility programs, and compliance risk in an increasingly global workforce environment.

Aethra Advisory enters the market at a time when more companies are hiring across borders before they have built the systems needed to support those decisions. Many organisations still select Employer of Record (EOR) platforms, vendors, visa routes, or employment structures based on speed, only discovering compliance gaps, cost leakage, or operational limitations months later. Aethra sits at the architecture stage, helping leaders make structural decisions before vendors and execution routes are selected. As the global cross-border workforce and migration solutions market is projected to reach $11.37 billion by 2033, growing at an annual rate of 11.8%, this advisory layer is becoming important for companies that need global workforce models built for scale rather than short-term hiring fixes.

The company works upstream of execution, helping companies define where to hire, how to hire, which infrastructure to use, and where risk may emerge. Its services include Global Hiring Blueprint, Mobility Program Design, and Founder Advisory, covering areas such as EOR versus entity decisions, country decision matrices, immigration pathway design, vendor ecosystem strategy, compliance architecture, mobility policies, and 12-month hiring roadmaps.The practice is self-funded, allowing Aethra to provide independent guidance on employee relocation and global mobility cases for UAE-based and international firms.

Sonam Haider, Founder and Global Mobility Strategist, Aethra Advisory, said: “Companies often treat global hiring as a vendor selection exercise, when the real issue is whether the structure can hold under scale. The UAE currently holds the highest hiring sentiment globally, with 56% of employers planning workforce expansion, but growth at this pace can expose weak EOR models, unclear worker classification, poor market entry choices, and fragmented mobility processes. The gaps usually only surface more than a year later. Aethra Advisory gives leaders an independent view before those decisions become difficult and expensive to reverse.”

The business is founded on more than a decade of operator-side experience across global mobility, consulting, in-house leadership, and global employment platforms. The founder has held roles at PwC, Fragomen, Amazon, Uber, Deel, and Multiplier, giving Aethra an inside-the-machine perspective on how global hiring decisions play out. The company is designed for organisations that are expanding into new markets for the first time, building mobility programs that have outgrown their current infrastructure, or managing global hiring across multiple countries without a clear operating model.

Aethra’s framework is built around five pillars: workforce strategy, hiring infrastructure, immigration pathway design, compliance architecture, and mobility operations. This approach helps companies move from fragmented decision-making to a hiring architecture they can own, adapt, and execute against. The company is already seeing early market validation through founder-level conversations with EOR platform leadership and potential strategic partners across the region.

As the UAE continues to grow from a destination market into a global workforce hub, employee relocation and cross-border mobility requirements will continue to increase across both inbound talent and UAE-based organisations managing global hires. Aethra Advisory aims to support this shift by becoming the strategic advisory layer for global hiring and mobility architecture, helping organisations build workforce structures that are scalable, compliant, and aligned with long-term growth.

The post NEW UAE ADVISORY FIRM AETHRA TARGETS GAPS IN GLOBAL HIRING AND MOBILITY STRATEGY appeared first on The Integrator.

A year after IBM’s Deep Blue defeated Garry Kasparov in 1997, Kasparov did something unexpected. Rather than retreat, he invented a new form of chess he called ‘advanced chess’, pairing human players with computers to see what they could produce together. The result was remarkable. Even moderately skilled players, armed with a standard machine, were capable of defeating both grandmasters playing alone and computers operating without human input. The combination was categorically superior to either element in isolation.

By: David Henderson , Group CHRO, Al-Futtaim 

That experiment carries an important lesson for organisations navigating AI today. The instinct understandable, but mistaken, is to frame AI as a technology story. It is not. AI reshapes jobs, redistributes decision rights, resets operating models, and forces us to reconsider deeply embedded ways of working. It intersects directly with creativity, cognition, confidence, identity and employability. It produces as many human questions as it does technical ones.

This is why the organizations that are genuinely converting AI from experiment into competitive advantage are those that have understood it, first and foremost, as a large-scale human transformation, one that demands the business, the CHRO and the CIO working as genuine partners, each bringing what the other cannot.

The organisations winning with AI are not those with the most sophisticated technology. They are those that have most deliberately redesigned how humans and machines work together.

The Case for the CHRO

The most effective AI transformations are driven by a tight three-way partnership:

the business setting the agenda and owning outcomes,

the CIO providing the technology platforms,

data infrastructure and governance,

and the CHRO leading the human transformation that determines whether AI delivers value at scale or stalls in pilots.

Each is essential. None is sufficient alone.

In this paper, I propose a model for how CHROs can lead AI enablement through four interconnected roles: Design Architect, Capability Steward, Adoption Catalyst, and Transition Guardian. Each role addresses a distinct dimension of the human transformation that AI demands. Together, they represent a holistic operating mandate for CHROs who are serious about delivering sustained enterprise value from AI, not just deploying tools.

01) Design Architect: Redesigning work, roles and decision rights for the AI era

AI transformation fails far more often because of organisational design choices than because of technology limitations. When companies deploy AI tools without redesigning how work is done, decision rights blur, accountability erodes, adoption stalls, and productivity gains remain trapped in pilots. The technology is rarely the binding constraint. The organisation almost always is.

The CHRO’s role as Design Architect is to get ahead of that problem. This means providing overarching direction on how work should be redesigned so that human judgment and AI-generated insight are deliberately combined, not accidentally layered on top of each other. It means clarifying which decisions remain human-led, which are AI-supported, and where accountability ultimately sits. And it means building an operating model architecture that is dynamic enough to evolve as AI capabilities continue to develop rapidly.

Being intentional on organisational design means staying one step ahead of technological adoption, not one step behind it. The CHRO must proactively reimagine how AI reshapes the value chain and translate that vision into operating model decisions — rather than reactively course-correcting after tools have already been deployed.

02) Capability Steward: Building enterprise-wide, continuous learning systems that keep pace with AI

The CHRO’s role as Capability Steward is to build the learning infrastructure that makes this possible at scale. This means moving decisively away from episodic, one-size-fits-all training models, which are structurally unsuited to the pace of AI change, towards continuous, contextual learning systems that are embedded in daily workflows.

It means developing AI fluency across the workforce, not just in specialist teams. And it means maintaining ongoing insight into which capabilities are emerging, shifting or declining as the skills economy evolves.

The CHRO must protect long-term capability health and resilience, not simply optimise for short-term productivity. Organisations that treat AI learning as a one-time training event will struggle to sustain adoption. Those that build continuous learning as an organisational capability will compound their advantage over time.

03) Adoption Catalyst: Empowering employees as co-creators of AI value, not passive recipients of it

Many CHROs of my generation were trained in a change management orthodoxy that starts at the top of the house, guiding coalition, executive sponsorship, structured project timelines. That model is not wrong, but it is increasingly insufficient for AI.

Top-down governance and strategy remain essential. But scalable AI value does not come from mandates. It comes from the bottom up, from employees who understand the work and are empowered to apply AI where insight is deepest and value most immediate.

The CHRO’s role as Adoption Catalyst is to create the conditions for this to happen: building cultures of experimentation and knowledge-sharing, aligning incentives and recognition to reward participation, and enabling employees to co-create AI use cases rather than simply receive them.

This is a fundamental shift from change management to what I would call change orchestration, leaders creating the environment in which adoption flourishes, rather than driving it through compliance.

Employees need to define the tools they need , not simply learn the tools they are given. That distinction is everything when it comes to whether AI adoption takes root or stalls.

Bottom-up adoption is not a cultural nicety. It is the mechanism through which AI becomes embedded, differentiated and commercially meaningful at scale. Organisations that get this right do not deploy AI. They make AI part of how the organisation thinks.

04) Transition Guardian: Ensuring AI adoption is ethical, transparent, and in the long-term interest of employees

AI introduces legitimate concerns that the CHRO cannot afford to minimise: fairness, transparency, surveillance, bias, job security, long-term employability. If these concerns are not addressed proactively and honestly, trust erodes, and without trust, adoption stalls regardless of how good the technology is.

This means embedding ethical guardrails and human oversight into AI adoption from the outset, not retrofitting them under regulatory pressure. It means communicating honestly with employees about what AI will change, what it will not change, and what pathways exist for reskilling and redeployment.

And it means treating strategic workforce planning not as an HR administrative function, but as a core enabler of organisational resilience.

Today’s employees need to focus less on specific target jobs and more on building transferable skill profiles that will serve them across a career that is certain to be turbulent. They need to feel that their organisation has their back. The CHRO must make that commitment credible, not through reassurance, but through concrete pathways.

Trust is not a soft outcome of AI transformation. It is the hard prerequisite for scaling it. The CHRO who treats it as such will find that ethical, transparent AI adoption does not slow the transformation down — it is the thing that makes it durable.

The CHRO Skill set for AI Enablement

Having defined the four roles the CHRO must play, it is worth being specific about the skills and attributes required to execute each one. In an environment where AI success is increasingly determined by organisational design, capability building, adoption dynamics and trust, not technology, these capabilities define whether the CHRO is shaping the transformation or reacting to it.

A few points of emphasis.

As Design Architect, the most underrated skill is enterprise co-creation — the confidence and credibility to act as a genuine co-owner of AI strategy with the CIO and business leaders, not merely as a supporting function.

As Adoption Catalyst, cultural signal awareness is often more powerful than formal programmes, leadership language and behaviour either accelerate or silently undermine adoption at scale. And as Transition Guardian, clear and honest communication, including on uncertainty and difficult tradeoffs, is the foundation on which all of the other skills rest.

Without it, none of the others land.

Conclusion: The Human Transformation Imperative

Organisations that are genuinely winning with AI are not those with the most sophisticated technology stacks. They are those that have most deliberately and thoughtfully redesigned how humans and machines work together, rethinking operating models, building capability at scale, empowering employees as co-creators, and managing the transition with ethics and transparency.

The CHRO who grasps this, who acts as Design Architect, Capability Steward, Adoption Catalyst and Transition Guardian simultaneously, becomes one of the most important executives in the organisation. Not because HR has staked a claim to a technology agenda, but because the most important levers for AI value creation are organisational and human, and those are precisely the levers that CHROs are equipped to pull.

Kasparov’s advanced chess experiment showed us, a quarter of a century ago, that the most powerful outcomes emerge not from humans or machines working alone, but from their deliberate, skillful combination. The CHRO’s mandate is to make that combination work, at enterprise scale, at pace, and without losing the trust of the people it depends on.

That is not a supporting role. It is a defining one.

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David Henderson is Group CHRO of Al-Futtaim Group, one of the Middle East's largest diversified conglomerates. He has previously served as CHRO of Zurich Insurance Group, MetLife and PepsiCo.

The post Why AI Transformation is a Human Imperative, and the Role the CHRO Must Play appeared first on The Integrator.

Consumer apps have never been easier to use. With AI improving navigation, personalization, and responsiveness, platforms now offer a far more seamless experience, helping users move through tasks, content, and decisions with little visible effort. But convenience alone is not the same as value. Recent research found that the average adult now spends 88 days a year on their phone, highlighting both the scale of digital dependence and the urgency of building products that deliver something more meaningful than another scroll session.

Concurrently, expectations have changed. McKinsey has reported that 71% of consumers expect personalized interactions, while KPMG’s UAE research shows that integrity has now overtaken personalization as the strongest driver of customer experience. People still want services that understand them, but they also want trust and clarity that technology is working in their interest.

This is the backdrop for the rise of behavioural AI in consumer apps. The next phase of app design will be judged by its ability to predict what a user may click next, and more by how well it turns intent into action with less friction.

The problem with designing for activity, not action

For years, most consumer platforms have optimized for clicks, scroll depth, watch time, and repeat visits. Those metrics are useful, but incomplete. They show that a user remained active, not whether the user made progress.

A person may spend 20 minutes in a fitness app and still not complete a workout. A user may open a finance platform several times and still delay a decision. Someone on a social app may swipe through dozens of profiles and leave with no meaningful connection, no meeting arranged, and no clearer sense of what they are actually looking for. In each case, the platform can still record engagement, even while the user experiences indecision, overload, or disappointment.

That is why the intention-action gap has become such an important issue in consumer technology. Most people do not fail to act because they lack interest. They fail because friction builds up. Too many options, poor timing, and repetitive interfaces make follow-through harder than it should be. Traditional engagement design often worsens that problem because it rewards prolonged activity instead of successful resolution.

How behavioural AI changes the model

Behavioural AI is valuable because it looks beyond isolated clicks and interprets patterns in context. It can identify hesitation, momentum, preference shifts, and likely drop-off points. More importantly, it can respond to those signals in ways that make decisions easier and outcomes more achievable.

That changes the app’s role. Instead of acting primarily as a feed, a storefront, or a passive interface, it starts to function more like an active guide. It can narrow choices when users are overwhelmed, surface the next best action when intent is clear, and adapt when behaviour suggests a mismatch. This can mean recommending fewer but better options, improving prompts, changing timing, refining compatibility logic, or reducing unnecessary steps between interest and action.

The commercial relevance of this shift is growing. SAP reported that 82% of UAE marketers say AI is central to their personalization efforts, yet only 31% of consumers believe brands actually personalize content to their needs. Data and automation alone are not enough. Relevance depends on using insight in ways that feel useful, proportionate, and credible to the user.

From digital engagement to real-world outcomes

Behavioural AI becomes especially powerful in categories tied to everyday behaviour and human relationships. In social discovery, for example, the challenge has never been a lack of available profiles. It has been helping people move from superficial activity to meaningful connection.

That is where a social platform like MAXION sits within a more important conversation about the future of consumer apps. Success should not be measured only by how many profiles a person sees or how long they stay active on the app. It should be measured by whether the app improves the quality of interactions and increases the likelihood of real-world meetings.

Behavioural AI can support that by learning from interaction patterns. It can identify where conversations stall, what kinds of introductions lead to better follow-through, how timing affects responsiveness, and which recommendation patterns create genuine alignment rather than short-lived engagement. That creates the possibility of designing around success signals that matter outside the app.

This is also highly relevant in the UAE, where AI adoption is already part of everyday life. KPMG reported that 97% of UAE respondents use AI for work, study, or personal purposes. That level of familiarity creates a more sophisticated user base.

The broader point is that consumer AI is becoming more outcome-oriented. Whether the category is education, wellness, finance, or social connection, the products that stand out will be those that reduce noise, respect user intent, and drive real-world progress. The next generation of successful apps will be defined by how effectively they help people do something worthwhile with them.

The post MAXION on the Rise of Behavioural AI in Consumer Apps appeared first on The Integrator.

Alexander Merkushev, Head of AI projects, Yango Tech

Business pressure rarely arrives in a neat or predictable form. It builds through overlapping demands, such as customers expect faster responses, regulators expect tighter control, leadership teams need clearer visibility, and frontline staff are asked to deliver all of this through systems that often do not move at the same speed. In stable conditions, organisations can usually work around those gaps. Teams compensate manually, service holds together, and inefficiencies stay partly hidden. In high-pressure environments, that buffer disappears. Slow workflows, fragmented systems, and manual bottlenecks become visible very quickly because the organisation no longer has the time or flexibility to absorb them. That is where the case for AI agents becomes much more practical. AI agents are most valuable when they allow businesses to extend operational capacity, where adding more people alone does not solve the problem fast enough.

This is especially relevant in the UAE, where digital maturity has raised expectations across both public and private sectors, with the UAE ranking 11th globally in the UN’s 2024 E-Government Development Index. This stronger digital environment has also raised expectations. Businesses need tools that can help them move quickly, stay consistent, and maintain control when pressure rises.

From Tools to Agents

With around 84% of GCC organisations adopting AI, it must prove its operational value. This is where autonomous AI agents stand apart from basic assistants. The lesson from digital transformation and automation is that technology creates the greatest impact where work cannot be carried out reliably at scale by people alone. That usually means high-volume, repetitive, rules-based, or time-sensitive tasks that still require consistency and traceability. A conventional assistant can answer a question, retrieve a document, or draft a message. An AI agent can operate across workflows, connect with enterprise applications and data sources, retrieve the information needed for a task, trigger an action, and escalate the case when human judgment is required. AI agents are less like a front-end convenience and more like a digital workforce layer that supports execution inside the business.

Keeping Service on Track

Customer service is often the first area where this becomes visible because it sits at the intersection of urgency, expectation, and reputation. When volumes rise, even strong teams can be slowed by manual routing, repeated verification, inconsistent answers, or language limitations. A customer support agent can handle thousands of routine queries across languages and channels without making customers wait for basic answers.

In fact, enterprise deployment data points to AI agents that can operate in 70+ languages, integrate with core business platforms such as CRM and support systems, and scale to handle 100,000+ interactions per day. Outcomes include 95% first-contact resolution, a 70% reduction in calls, and around 40% lower support costs. In a high-pressure environment, the benefit of an AI agent is that it helps the organisation respond at scale without allowing service quality to collapse under volume.

Compliance Under Pressure

Businesses often wrongly assume AI will automatically make operations faster, but the speed needs to be usable inside a controlled environment. If an agent cannot follow policy, log its actions, flag discrepancies, and escalate exceptions correctly, then it simply moves the risk somewhere harder to see. Well-designed AI agents can reduce delay by supporting documentation checks, rule-based workflows, anomaly flagging, and routing complex issues to the right human decision-maker while maintaining auditability.

For instance, Yango Tech’s AI debt collector agent can support repayment workflows, structure payment plan discussions, apply pre-set compliance rules, and manage routine follow-ups while flagging exception cases. A document analysis agent can review procurement files, compare them against required fields, and flag inconsistencies. The limits of disconnected tools are exposed very quickly in high-pressure environments, and businesses need systems that can work inside the operational environment that already exists.

Why digital workers are becoming relevant

In volatile conditions, where teams are stretched, leaders do not benefit from more dashboards or longer reports. Current industry findings show that organisations can lose 30 to 50% of efficiency to repetitive tasks. Too many skilled employees still spend time gathering updates, moving information between systems, or preparing routine reports instead of focusing on judgment, service recovery, and problem-solving. AI agents can absorb that repetitive load and help teams concentrate on higher-value work. They can surface relevant data from multiple systems, summarize key trends, identify pressure points, and reduce the delay between an operational change and a management response. Their role is to help leadership reach judgment faster, with better operational visibility and less reporting friction.

High-pressure environments reveal which technologies can support real execution. AI agents are most useful where organisations need to operate at a scale, speed, and consistency that people alone cannot sustain manually. But that only works when the system is designed with the right guardrails. Service quality, oversight, escalation logic, and traceability cannot be added later as an afterthought. Companies like Yango Tech create production-ready AI agents for high-pressure and fault-sensitive environments and help organisations deploy them in a governed, resilient, and reliable way under real operational strain.

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By Khaled Nuseibeh, Hala CEO

Artificial intelligence has quickly become part of the marketing conversation. New tools promise faster production, lower costs and endless variations of creative output. But for companies operating in real-world services, the technology itself is not the most important question. The real question is whether it helps communicate what actually happens on the ground.

In mobility, that distinction matters. When someone books a taxi, the experience is defined by whether the car arrives when it is supposed to. If it does not, no campaign can compensate for that. That reality shaped how we approached Count on Hala, a recent campaign designed to support new user acquisition while reflecting how the service operates across Dubai every day.

Hala runs hundreds of campaigns each year across different customer segments. In a fast-moving, highly competitive market like Dubai, speed and adaptability are essential. Artificial intelligence provides companies with a way to move faster, scale creative output and respond to changing market dynamics without losing clarity or relevance.

The campaign used AI across the creative execution, generating visuals, layouts and voiceovers for content deployed across out-of-home screens and targeted digital channels. However, the strategic direction, messaging framework and approvals remained firmly with our team.

Rather than positioning AI as the centre of the campaign, we focused on communicating measurable operational insights such as pickup speed, fleet scale and reliability. Messages such as “90% of taxi pickups in under five minutes” or “Meeting in 20 minutes? Taxi in 3” translated everyday service performance into clear, relatable moments.

Early campaign indicators reinforce the impact of this approach. In the first month following the launch, Hala recorded a 27.8% uplift in bookings, 19.2% increase in new users, and a click-through rate approximately 5x higher than previous campaigns, reflecting stronger engagement with the campaign messaging and visuals.

AI allowed these insights to be translated into creative assets quickly across multiple formats. But the technology itself was not the story. Running the campaign highlighted several practical lessons about how AI fits into busy marketing teams today.

1. Build campaigns around operational performance, not creative concepts

AI will amplify whatever information it is given. If the underlying service is inconsistent, the campaign will expose that quickly. For this campaign, the creative concept began with operational data, pickup speeds, fleet capacity and everyday travel scenarios across Dubai. These insights formed the foundation of the messaging rather than an abstract creative idea. In sectors such as mobility and transport logistics or aviation, marketing cannot exist separately from operations. Customers experience the service within minutes of seeing the campaign. If the message and the experience do not match, a brand’s credibility will quickly disappear.

2. Use AI to produce campaigns faster without changing the strategy

The campaign began with a simple idea: reliability. In a city like Dubai, where people are constantly on the move, everyday convenience matters. Artificial intelligence helped the team turn that idea into campaign content much faster than traditional production would allow. Instead of coordinating multiple shoots, locations and long approval timelines, operational insights could be turned into clear messages quickly. Lines such as “Meeting in 20 minutes? Taxi in 3” could appear across digital screens, social media and billboards within hours rather than weeks. The team still defined the message, tone and brand standards, while AI helped speed up how quickly those ideas could be produced and shared across the city.

3. AI creative for billboards and outdoor advertising still needs technical expertise

One common misconception about AI-generated creative is that it removes complexity from production. In reality, it often introduces new challenges. Early AI-generated visuals worked well for digital placements but were not always suitable for large-format outdoor advertising. When scaled for outdoor displays, some images were grainy and lacked the resolution required for high-visibility formats.

Achieving the required quality meant using several paid subscription tools and refining outputs across multiple stages. AI can accelerate creative exploration, but production expertise remains essential to ensure the final output meets the standards expected of large-scale advertising.

4. AI marketing still requires strict legal oversight and brand governance

The faster content can be produced, the more important governance becomes. Before launching the campaign, strict internal guidelines were established around how AI could be used. These covered cultural sensitivity, representation and compliance with UAE advertising standards.

All platforms used were vetted to ensure appropriate commercial usage rights, and every output was reviewed in collaboration with legal teams before publication. Regardless of which tools are used, the brand remains responsible for everything that appears in a campaign.

5. AI allows marketing teams to focus on insight-led storytelling rather than asset production

The most noticeable shift from the campaign was internal. Traditionally, marketing teams spend significant time producing individual creative assets. AI changes where that time is spent, instead of focusing on manual production, the team concentrated on identifying the insights that matter most to our customers; people who are moving around the city, whether its short journeys or tight schedules, their need is for reliable transport in everyday situations.

Artificial intelligence then made it easier to translate those insights into multiple creative executions across different formats. For a platform operating in a competitive market and running campaigns across multiple audiences throughout the year, that shift can make a meaningful difference.

In almost every sector, AI is already moving from experimentation into everyday systems across the region. Airlines use it to manage disruption. Logistics companies use it to anticipate congestion. Governments use it to plan infrastructure and transport networks.

Marketing will inevitably follow a similar path. AI will not replace traditional production or human creativity. Photography, filmed content and real-world storytelling remain essential, particularly when authenticity and emotional connection to your customer matters.

While we continue to embrace AI within our creative processes, it has not and cannot replace the creative agencies we work with. Human intervention, intuition, and creativity remain at the core of everything we do.

What AI can do is remove some of the friction in how campaigns are produced, allowing teams to respond faster while maintaining accuracy. Dubai is often described as a testbed for new technologies. In reality, the city simply demands that systems work under pressure, across different languages, cultures and moments of high demand. If an AI-enabled campaign can operate effectively in that environment, it is likely to work anywhere.

For companies exploring AI in marketing, the lesson is straightforward: focus on operational reality first. Technology should support how the business performs, not distract from it.

The post WHAT RUNNING AN AI-ENABLED CAMPAIGN TAUGHT US ABOUT MARKETING IN A REAL CITY LIKE DUBAI appeared first on The Integrator.

In the GCC, organisations are under pressure to scale faster, maintain service continuity, and improve cost discipline without adding unnecessary operational complexity. Digital Dubai recently launched the AI Workforce Transformation Program (AI+) to help train 50,000 government employees for an AI-ready workforce.

Shaffra, an AI research and applications company building autonomous AI teams for enterprises and governments, is already deploying this model across the region. The company highlights five business functions where AI is actively executing work inside organisations.

1. Customer service

One of the first functions to absorb AI as a workforce layer is customer service due to high-volume, time-sensitive, process-intensive requests every day. Autonomous AI Teams can handle routine queries across chat, email, WhatsApp, voice, and ticketing platforms while classifying urgency, routing cases, escalating exceptions, and updating records in real time. They can also pull customer history and identify recurring patterns linked to churn, complaints, or policy friction. Customer service teams have handled up to five times more queries through autonomous execution. This shifts customer service from a reactive support function into a continuously operating system that can absorb demand without linear increases in headcount.

2. Revenue operations

A more meaningful transformation is now happening in the commercial engine. Autonomous AI Teams can continuously monitor pipelines, detect stalled deals, flag procurement delays, identify pricing sensitivity, and improve forecast quality using live activity signals rather than backwards-looking updates. They can also support CRM hygiene, proposal workflows, approval chains, and internal coordination between multiple departments around account progression. PwC’s 2026 findings show that 45% of UAE CEOs are already using AI in demand generation across sales, marketing, and customer service. Leadership gets a clearer view of where revenue is genuinely at risk, where process friction is slowing conversion, and where intervention is needed before exposure turns into loss.

3. Human resources

In HR, recurring administrative work, policy enforcement, documentation, and employee support often follow structured paths that can be executed better when properly designed. Autonomous AI Teams can screen applicants, coordinate interviews, manage onboarding steps, answer routine employee questions, and flag missing approvals or documentation before delays compound. They can also support review cycles, workforce planning, and identify bottlenecks and process gaps early. Recruitment timelines are reduced from weeks to hours, while HR leaders review high-impact decisions.

4. Finance and accounting

In the financial department, AI needs to operate reliably within structured processes without compromising strict governance. Autonomous AI Teams can process invoices, support AP and AR workflows, follow up on missing information, review expenses against policy, and coordinate reconciliation and month-end close activities. They can also surface anomalies, identify unusual transaction patterns, and flag control exceptions for review. AI helps increase throughput while preserving auditability, approval discipline, and visibility across the finance operation. This allows finance teams to increase processing capacity without compromising control, shifting their role to oversight from execution.

5. Business operations

The most strategic application sits in business operations – where delivery, dependencies, handoffs, service levels, and internal performance come together. McKinsey’s finding that 84% of GCC organisations have adopted AI in at least one business function suggests the region is already moving into broader integration. Within operations, Autonomous AI Teams track workflows across systems, detect bottlenecks, monitor KPIs and SLAs, identify resource overload, and trigger interventions before issues become delivery failures. They can also support oversight by summarising status, escalating likely delays, and coordinating cross-functional execution in real time. Across Shaffra deployments in the Gulf, organisations have reported up to 80% reductions in operational costs and more than 2 million manual work hours saved monthly.

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