My First Year in the Middle East
At the beginning of 2022, my partner and I took the opportunity to move to Dubai. Moving abroad was something we had always spoken about, not specifically Dubai, but it worked out for us both that we could stay with our existing companies while moving here. So we packed our bags and left the UK. With this post, I wanted to take the opportunity to reflect on my first year and share what I’ve experienced working for SAS, supporting the Middle East as part of my global regions.
In the UK at least, there’s a bit of a stereotype that Dubai is only flashy living, brands and losing touch with reality. This isn’t helped with programmes like Dubai Bling or Dubai: Playground of the Rich. However, I was pleasantly surprised that Dubai has so much more to offer. This surprise carried over to my working life, as maybe naively, I thought some of the trends I had experienced in my four years at SAS supporting Europe would carry over. Let me explain with three summarised learnings:
1. Cloud Computing Isn’t The Go-To
2. Focus On The Data
3. Analytics Will Keep Dubai A Global Hub For Tourism
Cloud Computing isn’t the go-to
The first thing that I was quickly able to understand is the Middle East isn’t as willing to jump on the Public Cloud Computing wave as much as organisations in Europe are. But why?
There are cultural and regulatory limitations that make public cloud computing less appealing to some businesses in Dubai. Organizations aren’t as willing to move their data to the public cloud of a third-party provider as they were in Europe. One reason for this is because of the perceived loss of control and what-if scenarios for their data. As well as regulations not allowing data to leave the boarders of a country for any reason, which provides some complexities for technical operations like Disaster Recovery. However, this may just be because of the timeframe of adoption the region is in and could shift in the coming years.
This sentiment towards public cloud has led to the rise of private cloud providers like G42 in the UAE. This is because a private cloud environment can provide all the benefits of cloud computing, with the additional peace of mind that all data centres are located in and the entire business is run end to end in region. There is an argument private providers’ innovation won’t be as high as some of the global public cloud providers, but this is something organizations seem to be willing to accept at the moment. One interesting development that may change this sentiment is Saudi Aramco’s partnership with Google Cloud, bringing a Google datacentre to the Kingdom. However, a date is still to be set for this. Therefore, time for projects to be implemented, go live and the value to be realised will have to take place before the majority of local organizations could be convinced on the move.
Overall, this trend raises an interesting point. When we say or hear cloud in Europe, I and I’m sure others, default to thinking of public cloud. But cloud computing has many delivery methods we should investigate before automatically taking the public cloud route. Understanding the pros and cons of these methods allows me, and others in the software industry, to have a balanced conversation with organizations to help inform their decision on how they want to deploy software.
Focus on the data
A lot of my time since moving to Dubai has been spent in conversations about the data organizations have collected. Discussing how they can enrich and benefit from these data stores through global changes to their enterprise data strategies. Their focus on the data sounds logical, but a lot of the time in Europe we would work backwards from the desire to perform an analytical use case, to the specific changes needed to the data if it wasn’t fit for purpose. I believe this is because of the age of organizations I worked with in Europe were much older when compared to the Middle East. Which makes sense, when considering Dubai itself has only been around for 51 years. As a result, organizations in Europe suffer from the legacy of technology and processes they have in place and would have to move away from. This is in contrast to the agility afforded to the newer organizations in Dubai, who can take choices now to reduce their future technical debt and make enterprise changes to their data and analytics strategies.
As a result, it seems to be a more accepted idea that the foundations of any analytics venture need to be built on an enterprise store of high quality, governed and understood data. This is not to say there are no plans for analytical use cases, merely all data related use cases want to be understood first. One example of this is data monetization. This can be through business to business or business to client channels and can become a repeatable revenue stream for any organization. Being able to create a data marketplace where data can be bought or traded within government, financial services or other industries is something that frequently receives interest. Another example, is many organizations in the Middle East are interested in how they can utilise frameworks like DataOps to be able to provide high quality, use case specific data in an agile way to end users now and in the future.
Analytics will keep Dubai a global hub for tourism
Finally, it’s clear the impact analytics is having and can increasingly have on the service and tourism industries of Dubai; which are central to the city’s ability to draw in the over 7 million annual visitors. The city is fuelled by tourism and being able to provide world record service in a city that holds 339 world records, is going to be integral to its sustained success. I’ve highlighted these impacts in three examples below.
Healthcare is readily adopting analytics. Being able to predict inpatient cases from the emergency room for hospital bed optimisation or no-show appointments to allow more efficient physician time planning and reduce waiting times are two examples of this. Both resulting in a more streamlined experience for patients and family members increases their satisfaction when being treated in Dubai. This is only going to further increase with innovative treatments and diagnostic techniques in the future.
Tech start-ups use analytics to improve Dubai’s leading service industry. Companies like Noon, who were founded in 2016, showcase how analytics can be used for supply chain management, delivery route optimisation and next best offer which all result in an exceptional customer experience to help raise the enjoyment people experience from shopping in Dubai. This can then be enhanced by providing customer support through the customer’s channel of choice and by providing answers to customers queries based on all the other queries the company has had.
Tourism is and will benefit from analytics. For example, Dubai can now use sentiment analysis on social media data to understand what people are enjoying about their visit and provide more of that, or what they aren’t and make the appropriate changes. Another example of a specific analytical use case is dynamic pricing. Dubai can alter their pricing for attractions such as the Burk Khalifa, Ski Dubai or The View at the Palm depending on factors like time of year or predicted visibility. Thus helping raise revenue from these tourist hotspots. As a larger use of analytics, Dubai has begun and can continue to become a Smart City, which we can see through initiatives like Dubai 2040. Helping provide urban development and technology enabled infrastructure to maintain Dubai’s draw as a tourism global hub.
Overall, my first year in Dubai has been an incredibly enjoyable one, both personally and professionally meeting a variety of engaging and experienced people and taking onboard the local culture and business. As I’ve been told is the case with many others, our initial 2-year plan to stay in Dubai has been extended!
Thanks for getting to the end of this post. If any of these topics have sparked your interest, or you have an opinion to share, please connect with me, it would be great to have a conversation!
