The Maldives can take on very different personlities depending on where the journey leads. Iru Fushi and Sun Siyam World offer two distinct interpretations of island living, one shaped by slower beach days, dining and wellness, and the other by discovery, activity and an almost endless choice of experiences. Together, the two properties create a combination that demonstrates how differently luxury, relaxation and adventure can exist within the same destination.

At Iru Fushi, the experience begins with the setting itself. The water villas offer an incredibly scenic perspective of the island, with private infinity pools seemingly flowing directly into the ocean. It is the kind of setting that makes the familiar picture of the Maldives feel remarkably real — stepping outside in the morning to an uninterrupted view of the water.

The property’s dining experiences add another dimension. An extensive breakfast spread and a wide variety of dinner options provide plenty of choice, while the Maldivian chicken curry deserves particular mention. It is the kind of local dish that can easily become one of the most memorable parts of a stay.

Wellness brings a slower rhythm to the experience. The traditional Maldivian Bondithaan Kurun massage offers a restorative pause after a day of exploring, while Flavours creates one of those distinctive Maldives dining moments, with reef sharks swimming below as guests enjoy their meal. There is something particularly memorable about watching marine life move through the waters below while dining above it. Reflection Pool Bar adds another visual dimension, with a setting and atmosphere that feel particularly suited to the island surroundings.

Hospitality remains central to the experience. At Iru Fushi, ambassador Jinaan brings an attentive and genuinely welcoming presence, with the kind of care that makes guests feel looked after rather than simply accommodated.

If Iru Fushi embraces a more relaxed interpretation of island life, Siyam World introduces an entirely different rhythm. There is a sense of movement and discovery across the resort, where another beach, activity, restaurant, pool or quiet corner can become the next part of the day.

For visitors with a list of experiences they have always wanted to try, the resort offers plenty of opportunity to work through it. Horse riding along the beach, go-karting, time spent between pools and beaches, exploring different restaurants or simply finding a quiet spot to do absolutely nothing all become part of the experience. It is a combination that can create a different kind of attachment to the island — the sort that can make saying goodbye feel slightly premature.

The dining and social spaces continue that sense of variety. Mint Beach Bar combines atmosphere with a beautiful setting, while Jungali Pool brings a lush, vibrant energy. Together Beach Bar offers a more relaxed place to enjoy a drink and the island atmosphere, while Wahoo Grill, Andalucia and Arigato each provide a distinctly different dining experience.

Among the experiences, Cinema by Moonlight stands out as one of the resort’s most memorable concepts. Watching a film beside the ocean with mulled wine, surrounded by the shores and night sky, turns a familiar activity into something considerably more memorable. It is the kind of detail that makes an experience feel carefully considered rather than simply added to an itinerary.

Yet beyond the activities and amenities, it is the people and culture that add another layer to Siyam World. The Maldivian welcome is reflected in the warmth of the team, with Ausy, Sara, Affan, Sony and others creating an atmosphere where guests can feel less like visitors and more like they have arrived somewhere familiar — almost like being welcomed home by friends.

Ausy, in particular, goes beyond simply arranging an itinerary. His attention to detail allows guests to experience different sides of the resort, from activities and dining to a spa session, with every part of the itinerary thoughtfully balanced to make room for both discovery and relaxation. Benish, the resort ambassador, similarly plays an important role in helping guests make the most of their time, planning the itinerary and ensuring they are looked after throughout the stay.

A behind-the-scenes tour with Ausy reveals yet another side of Sun Siyam World — one that exists beyond the guest experience. Seeing these elements up close offers a different perspective on what goes into creating the resort experience, from its care for staff to its sustainability initiatives.

The Herbitory is particularly revealing. Under the guidance of Dr. Dee Dee, the resort organically grows herbs and fruits including lemongrass, watermelon, different varieties of mustard seeds, chilli, aloe vera, basil and dragon fruit. A closer look at the Herbitory reveals just how much exists beyond the visible resort experience, with working projects and systems that quietly contribute to what guests eventually experience on the surface. Even the local scroopan fruit ice cream offers a small taste of the island’s produce and the property’s connection to its surroundings.

The experience extends into Maldivian culture through food as well. The Maldivian cooking class is more than a lesson in preparing dishes; it offers a window into local food, traditions and culture. Chef Prashanth and his team, Hammal and Rajesh, bring warmth, passion and patience to the experience, turning the class into something that feels as much about connection as it is about cooking.

After days filled with activities and exploration, Thalgo Spa provides another form of balance. Its massage and hydrotherapy offer a restorative pause, the kind of reset that feels particularly welcome after a day spent discovering the island.

At the heart of both properties is a different understanding of what a Maldivian escape can be. Iru Fushi offers the slower rhythm of beach life, dining and wellness, while Siyam World brings together activity, discovery, culture and an expansive variety of experiences.

The two properties are distinctly different in their vibe, sense of luxury and overall concept, and that difference is precisely what makes them work so well together. Rather than offering the same interpretation of the Maldives, Iru Fushi and Siyam World allow guests to experience two sides of the destination, from the quiet beauty of an island escape to the feeling that there is always something more to discover, and perhaps a little more time worth staying for.

Priced at AED 200 per child, tickets can be purchased online [HERE]. The two-hour workshop includes all ingredients, equipment, and guidance throughout the session. Each child will also receive a complimentary kids’ meal and drink, while one accompanying parent will receive a complimentary coffee. With only 10 children per session, the workshops offer a small and interactive setting where every little baker can get involved from start to finish.

As the holidays come to an end, the workshops offer one more chance for kids to have fun, get creative, and make the most of their final days before school starts again. Whether they’re making their first batch of cookies or decorating their very own cake, children will have the freedom to get creative and make something they can proudly take home. It’s hands-on, a little messy, and designed to let kids have fun while learning something new.

Located in JLT, Splendour Fields is a neighbourhood café and deli where families can come together over good food and coffee. The workshops bring that same spirit into the kitchen, giving parents and children a reason to spend an afternoon together while escaping the summer heat.

With limited spaces available, parents can book their little bakers in for one session, or join both for two sweet afternoons of baking, creating, and getting a little messy.

Launching on 23 August, The Guild introduces Only on Sundaes, a new family experience designed to give parents something they rarely get: a chance to enjoy a proper meal while the kids are happily entertained. Transforming The Aviary into a Nitro Sundae Bar and dedicated space for play, creativity, and discovery, the experience runs every Sunday from 9:00 AM to 7:00 PM, with free entry for children booked either for breakfast or Sunday roast. Guests only pay for any additional food and beverage consumed during their visit.

For parents, it is about having a little more time to themselves. Sit down for breakfast, enjoy a coffee, catch up with friends, or take your time over the Sunday Roast while the kids explore, play, and make new friends nearby. For children, it is a full Sunday of things to discover, with dedicated spaces designed around different ages and interests. It is an easy way to make the most of the final weeks of the school holidays before the routine starts again.

For younger children aged 1–5, the Little Explorers area offers a safe and supervised space filled with soft play equipment, building blocks, face painting, a ball pool, a play kitchen, and sensory activities. Older children and teens have their own dedicated zone, The Arcade Club, with arcade games, air hockey, PlayStation stations and board games. There is plenty to keep them busy, whether they want to play, get creative, or simply hang out.

From 12pm onwards, children can also enjoy an interactive nitrogen ice cream activation, adding a playful twist to a classic favourite. It is one more reason for kids to look forward to Sundays, while parents can enjoy a little extra time to relax.

With the new school year just around the corner, Only on Sundaes is made for that last stretch of summer. At The Guild, Sundays are becoming a time for everyone to enjoy, just in very different ways.

BY: Owais Mohammed, Regional Lead & Sales Director at WD for the Middle East, Africa, Turkey, and the Indian Subcontinent

The UAE’s ambition to become a global AI powerhouse is well established. Government investment is flowing, infrastructure is scaling, and organisations across every sector are accelerating their AI programs. But beneath the strategic announcements and the technology deployments, a fundamental question goes unanswered: is the data storage infrastructure underpinning all this built for what comes next?

For many organisations, the honest answer is: not yet. Storage is rarely the first conversation in an AI strategy discussion. It tends to be treated as a commodity decision made late in the planning cycle, long after the headline architecture choices like GPUs/CPUs have been made. That approach made sense in simpler times, but not in today’s data-driven AI economy.

The scale of what is coming

To understand why, organisations need to understand the sheer data volume that is coming their way. Global data creation is forecast to rise to 718.5 Zettabytes (ZB) through 2030 (IDC source: Market Forecast: IDC Global DataSphere Forecast, 2026-2030, June 2026, Doc #US53425426), more than tripling in five years.

AI is both a driver and a consumer of this growth. Every model trained, every inference run, every data pipeline operating continuously across a distributed architecture is generating and demanding access to data at a scale that earlier generations of infrastructure were not designed to support.

Businesses that will absorb this growth successfully are not those with the fastest individual components. They are those with architectures designed to handle volume, variety, and velocity simultaneously, at a cost that remains economically sustainable as scale increases. That is the storage strategy challenge that needs to be addressed upfront and not as an afterthought.

Why a single technology cannot solve it

A common mistake is to frame the storage decision as a technology choice: SSDs versus HDDs, flash versus spinning disk, performance versus capacity. The world’s most sophisticated storage operators, including hyperscalers and major cloud service providers, have already moved past this framing. They do not choose one technology. They deploy multiple of them, in a tiered architecture that places data on the medium best suited to its requirements.

The logic is straightforward. SSDs deliver the high IOPS and low latency that real-time, performance-critical applications demand. HDDs provide the massive capacity and cost efficiency required for the vast middle tier of active and warm data, and currently continue to represent approximately 63% of worldwide installed storage capacity through 2030. Tape generally handles archival, regulatory, and compliance workloads where retrieval times of hours or days are acceptable, representing just under 8% of worldwide installed cloud storage capacity in 2025.

These are not competing technologies. They are complementary ones, each serving a distinct purpose within a coherent architecture. The question is how each is deployed where it delivers the greatest value.

Making tiered architectures work in practice

Knowing that tiered storage is the right model and implementing it effectively are two different things. At the scale hyperscalers operate, where storage volumes are measured in hundreds of exabytes, manual allocation of data across tiers is neither practical nor efficient.  Nor can all data live on cost prohibitive flash. The mechanism that makes tiered architecture manageable is software-defined storage (SDS), which pools resources centrally and provisions capacity dynamically based on demand. Rather than pre-allocating fixed capacity to individual applications, SDS responds to where data needs to be, improving overall utilisation and reducing waste.

Together, tiered architecture and SDS provide the flexibility and economic efficiency that hyperscale environments depend on. But this model is not the exclusive preserve of the world’s largest operators. For emerging infrastructure providers, including Neoclouds that are expanding rapidly across the region, the same principles apply. Architecture decisions made today will determine whether future growth is economically sustainable or structurally constrained. The window to get this right is earlier than many organisations assume.

Innovation at the storage level

Architectural thinking also changes how storage technology itself must evolve. An organisation that understands its workloads, plans for data growth, and builds tiered infrastructure will eventually reach the limits of what current storage innovations can deliver. That is why, manufacturers like WD are approaching HDDs not only as a mature, reliable product but as a technology with significant headroom remaining to help increase capacity, lower power and cost effectively scale AI data. They are advancing recording technologies, exploring novel materials, and embedding intelligence at the drive level. The aim is not incremental improvement. It is expanding the boundary of what high-capacity storage can deliver for the architectures customers are building today and the workloads they will run tomorrow.

The leadership dimension

The organisations that navigate the AI era most effectively will not be those that simply procure the latest hardware. It will be those that understand the architectural decisions that determine long-term performance, cost and scale, ask better questions earlier in the planning process, and treat storage infrastructure strategy as a source of competitive advantage rather than a procurement exercise.

Storage sits at the foundation of every AI workload, every data pipeline, and every digital service an organisation delivers. Getting the architecture right is not a technical detail. It is a leadership decision. And in a market moving as quickly as the UAE’s, it is one that deserves to be made with the same rigour and strategic intent as any other.

By Salah Sardouk, Founder of Apex Atlas Global

The GCC has become one of the world’s fastest-growing tourism and hospitality destinations. From iconic luxury hotels and integrated resorts to entertainment districts and giga projects, the region is redefining what world-class hospitality looks like. Governments across the UAE and Saudi Arabia have placed tourism at the centre of their economic diversification strategies, while developers continue to invest billions of dollars in creating destinations that attract visitors from every corner of the world.

As competition intensifies, however, luxury is being redefined. Exceptional architecture, premium amenities, and personalized experiences remain essential, but they are no longer enough on their own. Today’s travellers expect something more fundamental: confidence that the environments they choose are safe, resilient, and prepared for an increasingly complex world.

Safety has evolved beyond regulatory compliance. It has become an integral part of the guest experience and one of the hospitality industry’s most valuable differentiators. The properties that will define the next generation of luxury are those that seamlessly combine exceptional design with secure, future-ready infrastructure that protects both guests and business continuity.

This shift reflects broader changes in traveller expectations. Guests are more informed than ever before, with instant access to information about destinations, hotels, and global events. They are increasingly conscious of health, security, digital privacy, and operational resilience when making travel decisions. Whether travelling for business or leisure, they expect hospitality providers to anticipate risks before they become disruptions.

For hospitality developers across the GCC, this represents both a challenge and an opportunity. Building guest confidence is no longer achieved solely through outstanding service. It begins much earlier, during the planning, engineering, and construction of every hospitality asset.

Behind every luxury hotel lies an extensive network of systems that most guests never notice. Fire protection, intelligent building management, access control, surveillance technologies, emergency communications, resilient utilities, and secure operational facilities all work together to create an environment where visitors feel protected without ever feeling restricted.

The most successful hospitality developments are those where security is virtually invisible yet consistently effective. Guests should never feel surrounded by security measures, but they should always experience the confidence that comes from a property designed to perform under any circumstance.

Achieving this balance requires safety to be embedded into the development process from the very beginning. Too often, security is viewed as something that can be added after a building has been designed. In reality, resilient infrastructure starts with the earliest planning decisions. Site layouts, circulation routes, building systems, operational workflows, and technology integration all influence how effectively a property can respond to emergencies while maintaining an exceptional guest experience.

This integrated approach is becoming increasingly important as hospitality developments across the GCC grow larger and more complex. Mixed-use destinations now combine hotels, residences, retail, entertainment venues, conference facilities, wellness centres, and public spaces within a single development. Managing these interconnected environments requires infrastructure that supports seamless operations while maintaining the highest standards of safety and resilience.

Technology is also reshaping how hospitality assets are managed. Artificial intelligence, predictive maintenance, Internet of Things solutions, and smart building platforms are enabling operators to identify issues before they affect guests. Intelligent systems can monitor equipment performance, optimize energy consumption, detect operational anomalies, automate maintenance schedules, and improve emergency response times.

The result is a shift from reactive management to proactive operations. Instead of responding to failures after they occur, hospitality operators can increasingly predict and prevent them. This not only enhances operational efficiency but also strengthens guest confidence by ensuring consistent service delivery.

Digital infrastructure has become equally important. Modern travellers expect mobile check in, digital room keys, contactless payments, personalized digital services, and seamless connectivity throughout their stay. While these technologies improve convenience, they also introduce new security considerations. Protecting guest information and securing operational systems have become essential components of hospitality resilience. Cybersecurity is no longer solely an IT responsibility; it is now part of the overall guest experience and a critical element of maintaining trust.

The GCC is particularly well positioned to lead this transformation. Across the region, governments are investing in smart cities, digital infrastructure, and sustainable urban development while introducing increasingly sophisticated building standards. Hospitality developers have an opportunity to integrate these advancements into projects from day one, creating destinations that are not only visually impressive but also operationally resilient.

This is especially relevant as the UAE continues to strengthen its position as a global tourism hub. Visitors choose the country not only for its attractions and luxury offerings but also because it consistently demonstrates high standards of safety, organization, and infrastructure. Maintaining this reputation requires continuous investment in facilities that are capable of adapting to evolving risks while supporting uninterrupted operations.

From my experience delivering specialized infrastructure, secure facilities, and complex construction projects across the UAE and GCC, one lesson has remained consistent: the strongest projects are never defined solely by what guests can see. Their long-term success depends on the quality of the systems operating behind the scenes. Infrastructure that prioritizes resilience, operational efficiency, and security ultimately creates better experiences for everyone who uses the space.

This philosophy extends beyond physical security. Sustainable infrastructure, resilient utilities, efficient building systems, and integrated operational planning all contribute to creating hospitality assets that perform reliably over decades rather than years. Developers who make these investments early benefit from lower lifecycle costs, improved operational efficiency, and stronger long-term asset value.

Ultimately, safety should not be viewed as a cost or a regulatory obligation. It is an investment in reputation. Every uninterrupted guest experience, every efficiently managed facility, and every well-prepared response to an unexpected event reinforces trust in the brand. In an industry where reputation influences every booking decision, that trust becomes one of the most valuable assets a hospitality business can possess.

As tourism across the GCC continues its remarkable growth, hospitality developers have an opportunity to redefine luxury for a new generation of travellers. The industry’s future will not be shaped solely by iconic architecture or exceptional service, but by destinations that provide confidence through intelligent design, resilient infrastructure, and operational excellence.

The most memorable guest experiences are often created by what never happens. Guests may never notice the sophisticated fire engineering, secure operational systems, resilient digital infrastructure, or integrated emergency planning that protect their stay. What they do notice is the confidence those systems create. They notice how smoothly a property operates, how prepared staff are, and how effortlessly every aspect of the experience comes together.

In the years ahead, safety will no longer remain an invisible operational function working quietly in the background. It will become one of the defining characteristics of premium hospitality. In a region leading the world in ambitious tourism development, building secure, future-ready infrastructure will be just as important as creating extraordinary destinations. Because today, the greatest luxury any hotel or resort can offer is not simply comfort or exclusivity, but the confidence that every detail has been designed with guests’ safety and wellbeing in mind.

Resilience is not only about cash reserves, backup servers or alternative suppliers. It also depends on whether a company’s legal rights and permissions still work when the business is under pressure.

By: Maroun Abou Harb, Associate at BSA LAW

Resilience is discussed as an operational or financial discipline. Businesses test liquidity, back up systems and diversify supply chains. Yet every continuity plan rests on legal infrastructure: licenses, delegated authorities, contracts, data permissions, employment arrangements, security rights and evidence.

That infrastructure can fail when needed most. The replacement supplier cannot be appointed without third-party consent. Customer data cannot lawfully be moved to the backup provider. An insurance claim is compromized by late notification. A guarantee was signed incorrectly. The company owns a platform, but not all of its intellectual property.

The most dangerous legal risk is not the missing clause. It is the right management assumes the business has, but cannot use.

In the UAE, the Central Bank’s 2026 Operational Risk Management Regulation now requires licensed financial institutions to implement a comprehensive operational risk and resilience proecedure. The principle is valuable for every company: identify what must continue, locate the legal points of failure and test them before disruption does.

1. Can the business lawfully act?

Start with corporate authority, check that licenses match actual activities, constitutional documents reflect the ownership and governance structure, and beneficial-owner, shareholder and director records are accurate. Review reserved matters, signing matrices, powers of attorney and banking mandates.

A deal, borrowing or emergency payment can stall because the authorized signatory is unavailable, a power has expired or an approval threshold was misunderstood. Group companies should confirm which entity employs people, owns assets, contracts with customers and receives revenue.

Run this scenario: if the chief executive and chief financial officer were unreachable tomorrow, who could bind the company, access its accounts and appoint an alternative supplier? If the answer is uncertain, the business has a legal single point of failure.

• Which contracts become dangerous under stress?

Most contract reviews examine value and liability. A resilience review asks a different question: what happens when performance is interrupted?

Build a heat map of critical customer and supplier contracts, ranked by operational importance and consequence of failure. For each, test termination and suspension rights, force majeure and change-in-law provisions, service levels, price-adjustment mechanisms, liability caps, indemnities, insurance, governing law and dispute forum, subcontracting, assignment and change-of-control restrictions. Check notice methods and cure periods; a valuable right can disappear if a notice is sent late or to the wrong address.

Then examine optionality, can the company use a replacement supplier, obtain transition assistance, retrieve its data in a usable format and continue using essential intellectual property? Is there a source-code escrow or step-in mechanism where appropriate?

The aim is not to renegotiate every contract. It is to know which five contracts could stop the business and to fix those first.

• Can technology fail without the legal part failing too?

A technical recovery plan is incomplete if the contracts do not support it. Cloud, payment, telecommunications and managed-service arrangements should align promised recovery times with the company’s tolerance for disruption. Audit rights, incident cooperation, subcontractor controls, data-location commitments and exit assistance should be tested.

The incident playbook must allocate legal decisions. Who determines whether regulators, customers, insurers or affected individuals must be notified? Who preserves evidence and engages external advisers? How will legal privilege or professional confidentiality be preserved? A cyber incident moves quickly; ambiguity over decision-making wastes the hours that matter most.

Conduct an exercise with management, technology, legal, communications and finance. Introduce a realistic vendor outage or data breach and follow the contracts: who calls whom, what must be notified, and what can actually be recovered?

• Does the company know what data and technology it is using?

Across the GCC, privacy and cybersecurity regimes increasingly regulate how data is collected, processed, retained, transferred and protected. A company cannot comply, or recover confidently, without knowing where its data goes.

Create a data map covering customers, employees, vendors and website users. Record the purpose and legal basis for processing, storage location, access rights, retention period, cross-border transfers and third-party processors.

The same exercise should include artificial intelligence, by identifying public and embedded AI tools, the information supplied to them, the outputs relied upon and the human review applied. Confidential information, personal data and third-party intellectual property should not enter a tool because an employee can access it. An approved-use policy, procurement review and output-verification process are proportionate safeguards.

• Can the company protect value when conditions deteriorate?

Management should monitor covenant breaches, unpaid taxes, overdue receivables, expiring insurance, threatened claims and counterparties showing signs of insolvency. The legal team should know which rights permit suspension, security enforcement, contract termination or protective court relief, and whether exercising them could create risk.

People and intellectual property also require continuity planning. Confirm that employment and consultancy terms contain appropriate confidentiality, invention-assignment and post-termination protections, tailored to the governing law. Identify key-person dependencies, succession gaps and access held by departing staff. Register intellectual property where appropriate and maintain evidence of creation and ownership.

Business needs also to review insurance as a contract, not a certificate. Map material risks to coverage, exclusions, deductibles, notification deadlines and consent requirements. The policy is only useful if the company knows how to activate it.

In brief, the output should be that for every critical risk, record the business service affected, relevant entity and contract, responsible owner, required action, deadline and escalation threshold.

Report the highest exposures to the board and repeat the exercise after major acquisitions, restructurings, regulatory changes or technology deployments.

A focused review can produce four useful assets:

1. an authority and obligations calendar;
2. a critical-contract heat map;
3. a data and AI inventory; and
4. a tested incident playbook.

No company can remove disruption. It can, however, remove the uncertainty surrounding who may act, what must be done and which rights remain available.

By Joe David, CEO of Nephos Group

“Move to Dubai for tax.”

I hear this constantly. From founders, investors, crypto-native operators – people building real businesses who reduce one of the biggest decisions of their professional lives to a single line on a spreadsheet.

And honestly, it is the wrong way to think about it.

Tax should rarely be the sole reason to relocate. When it is, it is usually where things go wrong. The corporate structure is not set up correctly. The banking relationships are not in place. The founder leaves within 18 months because the deeper rationale was never really there. I have seen this pattern play out dozens of times over the past decade, and it almost always traces back to the same root cause: a decision built on a tax rate rather than a strategy.

The tax-first trap

Dubai’s zero per cent personal income tax rate is real, and it is significant. But leading with tax creates a narrow frame that obscures the fuller picture. Founders who relocate purely for a rate often fail to consider the operational realities of building in a new jurisdiction. They underestimate the compliance infrastructure required to make the move defensible. They overlook the substance requirements that tax authorities in their home countries will scrutinise. When the expected savings do not materialise cleanly, because the structure was an afterthought, disillusionment sets in fast.

This does Dubai a disservice. It reduces a genuinely world-class business environment to a line in a tax planning brochure. The city deserves better than that, and so do the founders making life-altering decisions based on incomplete thinking.

What the successful ones actually optimise for

The founders and investors who get the most out of Dubai are not chasing a tax rate. They are making a broader strategic move.

Jurisdictional access is a major factor. Dubai sits at the crossroads of Europe, Africa and Asia, offering time zone coverage and travel connectivity that few cities can match. For businesses operating across multiple markets, particularly in digital assets, fintech and professional services, that geographic positioning is a genuine competitive edge.

Then there is the capital environment. Dubai has become a magnet for institutional and private capital, with fund structures, family offices and venture vehicles establishing a permanent presence. The banking infrastructure, while still maturing in certain areas, has improved significantly. For crypto-native businesses in particular, the regulatory clarity offered by frameworks like the Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) provides something that many Western jurisdictions still cannot: a clear, codified path to operating legally with digital assets.

The business ecosystem itself is another draw. The speed at which you can incorporate, hire, open accounts and begin operating is remarkable compared to legacy jurisdictions. Free zones offer tailored licensing, and the government’s responsiveness to emerging sectors – AI, blockchain, tokenised finance – signals a jurisdiction that is building forward rather than regulating backward.

And then, yes, there is the lifestyle. Climate, safety, connectivity, quality of infrastructure. These are not trivial considerations when you are asking a founding team to commit to a base for the next five to ten years.

Tax is often the outcome of all of this. It is not the strategy itself.

The compliance landscape is shifting

There is another reason the tax-first mindset is increasingly risky. The global compliance environment is tightening rapidly. The Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF), developed by the OECD, will require automatic exchange of information on crypto transactions between jurisdictions. The EU’s DAC8 directive introduces similar obligations across member states. The days of relocating and assuming your home country’s tax authority will not follow are numbered.

This means that substance, genuine economic activity, real operational presence, defensible corporate structures, matters more than ever. A Dubai relocation that is purely cosmetic will not survive scrutiny. One that is built on genuine strategic foundations, with proper advisory support and compliant structures, will.

The conversation worth having

None of this is an argument against moving to Dubai. Quite the opposite. For the right founder, with the right business, at the right stage, it can be a transformative decision. But that decision needs to be grounded in strategy, not arithmetic.

Before you start calculating your tax savings, ask the harder questions. Does your business model benefit from being in this jurisdiction? Can you build genuine substance here? Are your corporate structures defensible under international reporting frameworks? Do you have the advisory infrastructure to get this right from day one?

That distinction – between tax as a tactic and strategy as a foundation – matters more than most people realise. And it is a conversation worth having before you make any decisions.

By: Avi Pardo, Co-Founder & CBO, LeapXpert

Financial firms globally have similar playbooks for off-channel communications: ban the channel, run a training, and send attestations for signing. Yet, the conversations are still happening on personal phones. Calling that playbook ‘good enough’ only hides how little has changed.

More than 100 organisations have faced charges under the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s off-channel communications initiative, while other regulators have pursued similar failures. Yet the response is still another rule, another warning, another ban.

The missing piece is the psychology behind banning. Until firms understand what drives employees towards off-channel apps, even banned ones, the next record-keeping failure is already on its way.

Why employees find workarounds

These channels are already part of the client relationship. A banker may be chasing a decision, dealing with a concern or replying to a question that has come through on Signal, WeChat or WhatsApp. In that moment, getting back to the client takes priority.

If replying through the approved channel takes too long, creates operational friction, or disrupts the conversation flow, the employee is likely to answer somewhere else. The message gets sent, but the firm may never see the full exchange.

Psychologists have studied this response to bans for decades. Jack Brehm’s work on psychological reactance shows people can push back when they feel their freedom of choice has been restricted. Research into imposed workplace change points to the same response: people who feel pushed into a new way of working may quietly find another route. Someone reads the policy, completes the training and then uses a personal phone when a client needs an answer.

Daniel Wegner’s work on ironic rebound also helps explain why bans can misfire. Tell people often enough to avoid something and it can make it more appealing. The channel remains on the phone, the client is waiting and the approved route takes longer.

Once the conversation moves to a personal phone, the firm may never recover the full exchange. Employers also face legal limits on how far they can inspect a private device.

Governance beats the workaround

Governance should redirect behaviour instead of trying to suppress it. Employees need an approved route that works while the client conversation is happening, or the workaround will keep winning.

Financial firms still need clear rules and a complete record of business conversations. Regulators expect those messages to be kept, whether they were sent by email, text, WhatsApp or another service.

The problem usually shows up during an ordinary working day: between meetings, on a journey or while a client is waiting for an answer. If the approved channel holds things up, few people will pause the conversation to sort out the process. They will reply another way.

Businesses are losing valuable conversation data

Regulatory risk is obvious when messages go missing: a firm cannot supervise what it cannot see or produce records that were never captured.

Client conversations carry information a business would want to know: a concern raised weeks before a relationship starts to slip, pricing pushback that never reaches the CRM or a salesperson handling a difficult exchange in a way others could learn from. Repeated questions may also point to problems with onboarding, service or product design.

Governed communication creates a record the organisation can learn from. Applied responsibly, conversation data can support supervision, client service, dispute resolution, coaching and a clearer view of relationship risk.
That information is already being generated every day. The difference is whether it remains scattered across personal devices or becomes something the organisation can understand and act on.

Bring the conversation back into view

Plenty of companies have the basics in place: a policy, training and an approved tool. What is often missing is a setup that matches how people work and talk to clients.

The existence of a policy says very little about whether it works. ‘Good enough’ governance can leave a business with all the right paperwork while the same behaviour carries on underneath it.

A quick exchange can soon include a shared document, a follow-up question and another colleague joining the conversation. Messages, files, participants and timing all form part of the record, which needs to stay within the firm without someone rebuilding the exchange later.

If senior leaders use the same channels they have banned for everyone else, the policy is a sham. Employees follow what leaders do, rather than what the compliance manual says. Training can help, particularly when people understand the reason behind it. But explanations only go so far if the approved route slows down a live client conversation. Technology can capture the record, but leadership decides whether people take the rules seriously. No system can rescue a policy that senior figures ignore.

Keeping those exchanges within view gives the business more than a record for compliance. It can also pick up concerns, repeated questions and early signs that a client relationship is beginning to change.

More rules have not stopped the conversations. They have pushed them onto personal phones and out of sight. Calling that ‘good enough’ is no longer credible.

This progress has not happened by chance. It is the result of a national vision that has consistently placed women’s empowerment at the heart of the UAE’s development, widely regarded as the driving force behind the advancement of Emirati women. Together, these efforts have built an ecosystem of mentorship, opportunity and structural support that allows Emirati women to move beyond simply having a seat at the table to actively influencing the direction of entire industries.

This Emirati Women’s Day, we spoke to three Emirati women who are doing exactly that, each carving out space in fields as varied as AI infrastructure, entrepreneurship and industrial sustainability. Their stories reflect not only how far the journey has come, but also a shared sense of responsibility: to keep the doors open, and to inspire the next generation of Emirati women to walk through them with confidence.

Amal Almaamari, Program Director at Core42, (a G42 Company)

The UAE has created an environment where women are encouraged to pursue ambitious careers, take on meaningful responsibilities and contribute to sectors that are shaping the country’s future. As an Emirati woman working in AI, I see this opportunity firsthand. At Core42, I am able to contribute to the infrastructure and capabilities helping organizations adopt AI securely, at scale and with greater control over their data and technology.

What is particularly inspiring is seeing Emirati women increasingly take on roles across engineering, product development, strategy and leadership. The opportunities available today allow us not only to participate in the technology sector, but to build expertise, influence decisions and contribute to the UAE’s ambitions in AI and advanced technology.

Emirati Women’s Day is a celebration of that progress and the confidence the UAE continues to place in its women. It also reminds us of our responsibility to build on these opportunities and inspire the next generation of Emirati women to see technology as a field where they can grow, lead and make a lasting impact.

Amreen Iqbal, Founder and Creative Director of Piece of You

What stands out to me about building a business here is how much the UAE actively invests in women being part of its growth story. From mentorship networks to platforms that put Emirati entrepreneurs in front of the right audiences, the opportunities aren’t hypothetical, they’re structural. Piece of You exists because I had the confidence and support to take an idea and turn it into something real. On Emirati Women’s Day, I think about how many doors have opened for women in my generation that weren’t open before, and how many more are opening for the next one.

Hamda Al Shamsi, Admin Assistant at Geocycle Waste Recycling UAE at Holcim UAE

The UAE has created an environment where women are empowered to pursue their ambitions, develop their skills, and contribute meaningfully across every sector. Today, Emirati women are building careers in fields ranging from technology and engineering to sustainability, manufacturing, energy, and leadership.

As an Emirati woman and the only woman currently working at Geocycle UAE, I have personally experienced the importance of having the opportunity to step into a technical and industrial field and prove that there is a place for women in every sector.

For me, Emirati Women’s Day is a celebration of how far we have come, but also a reminder of the opportunities ahead. The support and vision of the UAE leadership, together with the efforts of Her Highness Sheikha Fatima bint Mubarak, have helped create a generation of Emirati women who are confident to pursue their goals and make a difference. I believe the next step is to continue encouraging young Emirati women to explore fields they may not traditionally consider. When women are given the opportunity to learn, lead, and contribute, they do not only build successful careers — they help build a stronger and more sustainable future for the UAE.

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.