His Excellency Omar Al Olama: “My office has partnered with GITEX to ensure that we’re not just showcasing technology, but inventing and developing technology”

Dubai will transform into the ultimate digital epicentre of the world next month, as the UAE hosts the world’s largest tech show, converging the most advanced companies and best minds to deep dive into the making of the Web 3.0 economy.

From 10-14 October 2022 at the Dubai World Trade Centre, GITEX GLOBAL returns, its largest ever edition featuring 5,000 companies spanning 26 halls and two million sq. ft of exhibition space, at an extraordinary 25 percent year-on-year increase, pushing its capacity limit at the venue.

Scale of GITEX GLOBAL 2022 reflects digital ambitions of UAE and the region

The five-day event’s record size and continued expansion mirrors the ambitions of the UAE and region’s digital transformation movement, as government initiatives such as the National Program for Coders, the Dubai Metaverse Strategy, and Next GenFDI propels the UAE to the forefront of the global digital economy.

This is amplified by new GITEX GLOBAL 2022 launches of X-VERSE sponsored by TMRW Foundation in collaboration with Decentraland, one of the world’s most immersive metaverse journeys featuring 28 experiential brands; and Global DevSlam, the Middle East’s largest ever coder and developer meetup, both of which sold-out to a global audience within two months.

UAE companies also held the lion’s share of a record-breaking US$2.6 billion in start-up funding across the Middle East and North Africa in 2021, figures that underscore an additional hall and 30 percent increase to 1,000 exhibitors at GITEX GLOBAL’s start-up event, North Star.

His Excellency Omar Al Olama, Minister of State for AI, Digital Economy & Remote Work Applications, who delivered the welcome note at the official GITEX GLOBAL 2022 press conference today, said: “GITEX this year is bigger than ever. It spans two million sq. ft. with over 5,000 exhibitors from more than 90 countries, which makes this truly the biggest tech show in the world. This year, my office has partnered with GITEX to ensure that we’re not just showcasing technology, but inventing and developing technology.”

Global interest accelerates UAE and region as a rising tech hub of the world:

GITEX GLOBAL 2022 will welcome an unprecedented 52 percent new exhibitors this year choosing the show and the UAE as the first-choice partner in their market access strategies.

Influential UAE entities inspire R&D in transformative technologies:

UAE companies are shaking up the global tech scene with their bold undertakings and commitments in tech R&D and inventions, including Technology Innovation Institute (TII) a leading global scientific institution and the applied research pillar of Abu Dhabi’s Advanced Technology Research Council.

World’s largest Public-Private Partnership creation platform:

GITEX unifies the participation of 250 government entities leading strategic digital projects and public-private partnerships, with Digital Dubai Authority and Abu Dhabi Digital Authority among the UAE government bodies advancing smart city and digital projects.

H.E. Tariq Al Janahi, Acting CEO, Digital Dubai Authority, said: “Following the vision of H.H. Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Prime Minister and Vice President of the UAE, and Ruler of Dubai, to digitalize life in the city, this year Digital Dubai’s participation at GITEX GLOBAL 2022, in partnership with 32 government and seven private sector partners, will showcase the latest digitalization solutions built by Dubai Government, also displaying future plans to build a holistic city-wide digital ecosystem ensuring Dubai becomes a global benchmark for building digital economies.”

H.E. Mansoor Al Marzooqi, Executive Director, Strategy & Innovation Sector, at Abu Dhabi Digital Authority, pointed out that the Abu Dhabi Government Pavilion at GITEX will be an advanced digital technology platform bringing together more than 30 government and academic entities, showcasing more than 100 innovative projects that highlight the Abu Dhabi government’s key achievements in the field of digital transformation.

“GITEX Global 2022 is a global tech platform that gives the Abu Dhabi government the opportunity to showcase new digital initiatives in government services, digital government solutions, data and artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and digital enablement, all of which have been carefully developed to further strengthen Abu Dhabi’s digital capabilities, enabling, supporting and delivering a digital government that is proactive, personalized, collaborative and secure,” said H.E Al Marzooqi.

GITEX unveils world’s first public flight of eVTOL flying car X2:

XPENG, a leading tech company and EV manufacturer that designs, develops, manufactures and markets intelligent mobility solutions, has chosen GITEX GLOBAL 2022 to host an exclusive world’s first public flight of its pioneering eVTOL flying car X2 with the support of official partner, the Dubai Chamber of Commerce.

The avantgarde two-seater eVTOL flying car X2 is equipped with an intelligent flight control system and autonomous flight capabilities and is the latest generation of flying cars developed independently by XPENG’s affiliate XPENG AEROHT.

Dr. Brian Gu, Vice Chairman and President of XPENG, said the X2 produces zero carbon dioxide emissions during flight, and is designed with low-altitude city capabilities in mind, reaching a maximum flight speed of 130kms per hour.

The GITEX 3.0 edition features seven tech themes: North Star Dubai start-ups, Ai Everything, Future Blockchain Summit in association with VARA, Fintech Surge, Marketing Mania and two sell-out new launches of GLOBAL DevSlam and X-VERSE.

“2022 is associated with many transformative trends like Metaverse and third generation web technologies that are unknown, amorphous and bourgeoning,” added LohMirmand.  “These and other frontier techs can only finally impact our societies when there’s large scale expert discourses, collaborations and experimentations by protagonists and detractors. This is GITEX 3.0, where the decentralisation of the economy puts the power in the hands of every delegate in GITEX to participate in the shaping of our urban future.

Formalized through a memorandum of understanding, the 2117 Metaverse project will involve close collaboration between MBRSC and BEDU. Through a series of workshops and strategy sessions, BEDU will contribute its expertise to the development of the 2117 Metaverse, which will include exciting virtual experiences that capture the sensations of being in space and setting foot on the Red Planet, as well as create awareness around the challenges of exploration and colonization.

Commenting on the collaboration and announcement, Adnan Al Rais, Mars 2117 Programme Manager, at the MBRSC, commented, “As we set our sights on ever more challenging destinations for exploration with humans and robots, innovative ideas and future thinking will be critical to helping us reach new milestones. Concepts like this will be supported by MBRSC as we believe this will help us expand our scope of bigger possibilities.”

MBRSC will work closely with BEDU experts to guide and influence its development. This will include providing advisory, sharing data and information on Space and Mars as well as forming a steering committee to monitor the progress of the partnership. Both organizations will also collaborate on ideation, creative development, and visualization of the 2117 metaverse elements.

As experts in the Metaverse space, BEDU will provide MBRSC with consultancy and advisory services in areas such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs), Web3, and the Metaverse.

“The UAE is known throughout the world as a pioneer,” said Amin Al Zarouni, Chief Executive Officer of Bedu. “As it takes its place as a frontrunner in the race to put the first humans on another world, we congratulate Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre for its recent successes and the bold scope of its planned future endeavors. We are excited to partner with MBRSC and are honored to capture this spellbinding adventure to the stars using the power of the latest and greatest technologies here on Earth. With 2117 we aspire to deliver a fully experience-driven Metaverse that focuses on creating endless opportunities for both, individuals, and organizations.”

From virtual meetings to immersive 3D customer experiences or even property tours, the Metaverse will transform the way that companies operate. Gartner predicts that by 2026, a quarter of us will spend at least one hour a day in the Metaverse for work, shopping, education, social media, and/or entertainment. Some brands are already there today, such as Nike and Coca-Cola, who are using them to drive brand awareness and the purchase of physical products. With so much buzz around the Metaverse, it’s easy to see why more and more companies will start to do business there. But are they thinking about the risks? We will certainly need a different approach to security in a virtual world compared to the physical, but what will that entail? Let’s take a look at what the risks are and how to start getting prepared (because you do need to start now).

Ram Narayanan, Country Manager – ME, Check Point

The biggest hurdle to the Metaverse being a secure environment is in its foundations. The Metaverse is built on blockchain technology and we have already seen serious security gaps in NFT marketplaces and blockchain platforms such as OpenSea, Rarible, and Everscale. Due to the sheer amount of malicious activity that we already see exploiting services based on the blockchain, we believe it won’t be long before we start to see initial attacks in the Metaverse too. It will likely be based on authorization, and user accounts will get hijacked, so we expect that identity and authentication will sit at the heart of everything we want to do.

Redefining Reality

Another key security challenge is in the safe spaces needed to conduct business. Imagine you’re on a Zoom or Teams call. It’s a private meeting space, right? But what will that be like in the Metaverse? How do we know that a chair someone is sitting on isn’t an avatar and we have an impostor in our midst? You may think that can’t possibly happen, but it’s a virtual world. Of course, it can. We need to be able to discern between what’s real and what’s fake, and having a safe space to meet and transact will be crucial.

When the Internet first came out, threat actors exploited the average human’s unfamiliarity with the tech by creating malicious sites that impersonated banks to obtain financial details. Phishing scams like this still occur, albeit we now see more sophisticated forms of social engineering. The Metaverse is like a whole new Internet, and you can guarantee that people’s unfamiliarity with it, both businesses and consumers, will be exploited.

Cyberattacks Via Vulnerable AR/VR Devices

Other cybersecurity risks within the Metaverse abound such as cyberattacks via the use of vulnerable AR/VR devices, as an entryway for evolving malware and data breaches. These devices inherently collect large amounts of user data and information such as biometrics, making them attractive to hackers. Concerns around data privacy are also a growing voice amongst Metaverse skeptics, with additional data being collected through avenues like Second Life, potentially violating user privacy.

Organizations will need to be much more reliant on their partners around the world to help mitigate risk, as this is very much a global phenomenon. But there will always be some risk and for those that take them and get it right, there will be huge rewards. At the end of the day though, businesses won’t be able to do it themselves, it will take a great deal of partnering with organizations that work within that space. The Metaverse will hit everyone, and there’s no denying that mistakes will be made, similar to those that were made in the early days of the Internet.

According to a recent study by Gartner, 25% of people will spend at least one hour per day in the Metaverse for work, shopping, education, social and/or entertainment reasons, and 30% of organizations in the world will have products and services ready for the Metaverse by 2026. Interoperability is one of the key issues in the early stages of the Metaverse industry and tech giants hope the Metaverse Standards Forum will push the growth and evolution of the Metaverse.

“The Metaverse is where humans from diverse cultures interact through immersive experiences in a virtual world. To realize its full potential, the Metaverse must be built on open standards with interoperability and consistency to bring various domains together,” said CJ Chang, CEO of D-Link Corporation. “As a global leader in networking and connectivity solutions, D-Link is proud to join the Metaverse Standards Forum at the early stages of its establishment. We intend to collaborate with partners from many industries to make the Metaverse a better experience for all through standardization.”

To cooperate on the Metaverse, a partnership agreement has been made with Shamrock Inc., headquartered in Italy, the parent company of MetaCosmos. The MetaCosmos system is a set of open protocols for the underlying standard of the Metaverse, where users can build their own independent economic, social, and entertainment Metaverse systems.

FTFT Capital is also strategically cooperating with the company, ByTrade, a licensed digital asset exchange headquartered in Lithuania, to develop the Asian market jointly. The digital asset exchange company is known for its ease of use and high safety factor. It has more than 1.5 million registered users globally.

The company hopes that these alliances will further FTFT Capital’s unit FTFTX operating the new platform for aggregate trading information expansion in the Metaverse and within its current capabilities.

“Each of these organizations complements our extensive expertise and we believe in their potential to develop creative global solutions. The partnerships reflect our shared commitment to the growth of the Metaverse and digital assets,” said Ola Lind, Chief Strategy Officer of FTFT Group, CEO, and Director of FTFT Capital.

“I work from a desire to see fantastic spaces come to life that echoes a modern, clean aesthetic,” Christodoulou said. “Bedu is out in front in the Metaverse race, and I can’t wait to join the expedition to the Web frontier. Through the 2117 project, we have an opportunity to write the next chapter in humankind’s digital saga.”

As a self-taught 3D artist, Christodoulou has spent the past 12 years building a collection of works focused on imaginary architecture.

Christodoulou’s explorations have drawn the attention of brands around the world and his works regularly sell out on prestigious NFT platforms. In 2021, he opened a studio in Amsterdam, Netherlands, under the name Color C Design Studio, and he has been featured in prestigious design-focused publications such as Wallpaper, Ignant, Dezeen, Nowness, and Architectural Digest.

Matti Zinder, Co-Founder and President of Bedu said, “we were struck by the hopeful aesthetic of Alexis’ architectural forms, such as his gardens and landscapes, and we cannot wait to see his endless creativity unleashed on our 2117 project.

What sorts of impacts Metaverse technologies could create in the business world?

The metaverse will evolve across three overlapping phases: emerging, advanced, and mature. Each of these phases will be defined by distinctive influences across technology, market, and product or service characteristics.

Gartner defines the metaverse as “a collective virtual shared space, created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical and digital reality. The metaverse is persistent; providing enhanced immersive experiences.”

Metaverse will displace many device-dependent interactions while creating new types of interactions and business models across multiple applications. Metaverse will also have a direct impact on multiple industries such as communications and media, retail, electronics, semiconductors, manufacturing, engineering, education, and banking. It will also have a direct impact on product and service marketing, branding, and sales roles in the organization, as the metaverse is the next frontier for online interaction.

Anushree Verma, Director Analyst, Gartner

Mature metaverse solutions will enable new markets and economic models. The initial business models we expect to see as the metaverse evolves will be analogous to current ideas (e.g., “do what you know”). Examples include building businesses around artificial scarcity with virtual possessions, nonfungible tokens (NFTs), and virtual real estate. Despite this, the new features and functionalities enabled by the metaverse will require and inspire new ways to not only compete and monetize virtual products and services but also acquire physical (real-world) goods. Adding elements such as persistence, collaboration and interoperability will enable new efficiencies to share digitally anchored information across organizations and individuals and open a degree of procedural transparency. For example, using AR for the frontline workforce.

What merits the business leaders can foresee towards the adoption of Metaverse?

Business leaders need to augment their digital transformation strategy by exploring virtual world product development, brand placement, customer engagement, and financial flows. Business leaders understand that this is the tip of a very big monetization iceberg. As programmable digital technology drives fundamental shifts in the way economic activity is conducted and the type of monies used, the involvement of machines to facilitate, augment and transform consumption will grow.

Gartner predicts the phased evolution of Metaverse until 2030. How do you think enterprises or businesses, that aspire to adopt Metaverse, leaders deal with these stages?

The way to deal with each stage is going to differ. For example, in the emerging stage, they would focus on high-value use cases such as gaming, wayfinding, AR VR experiences etc. For the next stage, we do have consortia to work with standards and form protocol groups since no single organization will build the Metaverse. Enabling persistent, collaborative, decentralized, and interoperable content is also expected to transform current business models. Mature solutions will be an iterative process and create innovative solutions based on a diverse set of trends and technologies (such as spatial computing, AR and VR experiences, AI, blockchain, and IoT).

Speak on the different aspects of user acceptance for the emerging Metaverse technologies

There is a lot of hype around Metaverse and those that are “meta-aware” mostly have no opinion or are concerned about what the metaverse might evolve into. There are a few high-value cases right now as mentioned above. This is in the very early stages of development, and there is a need to maintain a cohesive society as a basis for consensus governance that must be embedded while developing the metaverse. Otherwise, it could be detrimental to society.

“Every industry in the region has felt the full force of the digital transformation, as enterprises have had to adopt drastically different strategies to keep their organizations secure and stable, requiring them to be technologically flexible,” said Naim Yazbeck, Regional Director, Enterprise and Partner Group (EPG), Microsoft UAE.

This year’s three major areas of focus:

Metaverse: A comprehensive set of resources designed to power metaverses through IoT capabilities that enable customers to create “digital twins” of physical objects in the cloud and use AI-powered resources to create natural interactions through speech and vision machine learning models.

AI: The Azure OpenAI Service will give customers access to Microsoft’s partner OpenAI’s

Digital Ecosystems: Microsoft is building the identity system of the future, one that claims to connect and enable people, organizations, apps, and smart devices to make real-time access decisions safely and securely. The Azure Active Directory (AD) extends beyond securing and managing access to now assisting customer processes across external collaboration methods.