Young guns ready for the IT revolution

dubai — Emerging technologies are here to stay and are continuously becoming part of society. The biggest challenge, though, is the availability of talent when it comes to such innovations, which are high in demand across the globe.

“There is a competition on talent between companies, between countries and I think that will be the differentiator of success on the longer term,” Sayed Hashish, regional general manager at Microsoft Gulf, told Khaleej Times in an interview during Gitex Technology Week 2018.

“So, the ability to find qualified talent is the area that keeps me awake at night.”

However, one segment seems to have an advantage.

“We are in a young region that has youth, who have great potential,” he said, pointing to the fact that government of entities like the Ministry of Artificial Intelligence is helping more students understand AI more and raise their skills through summer camps and other activities — like the One Million Arab Coders — that they’ve been working on.

“All these will breed talent that will be useful for everyone.”

Technologies that are of interest for quite a while now are the cloud, AI and the Internet of Things — but this has changed a lot in such a short period of time. Figures from the International Data Corporation

show that spending on public cloud services in the UAE will almost quadruple over the next five years, increasing from Dh439.04 million in 2017 to Dh1.51 billion in 2022.

IT spending in the UAE, in turn, is expected to total dh35.92 billion in 2022, by which time IT employment in the country will have surpassed 206,000. “Today, a lot of those technologies have matured in the past 12 months; when we were talking about AI a year ago, we were talking about the abstract form of AI,” Hashish pointed out.

“Today, we’re talking about AI in every industry and how to address their specific needs.”

It’s not just for flair: new technologies are also there to help alleviate concerns when performing certain tasks — and this is not limited to business itself, per se. For example, Hashish said, the use if AI and drone technology in predictive maintenance — especially in big infrastructure projects, like a bridge — you can visually inspect the bridge and identify if there is a safety hazard on one of the edges. “The return of those scenarios is huge,” he stressed. “Both from a safety perspective, and a cost and efficiency perspective.”

“The leading technology today exists to help leading companies become way more competitive and address the customers expectation in a more efficient way that will also drive customers’ happiness.”

“While doing this, the goal is also to reduce the cost for them… democratising AI and infusing it in services will benefit all, enabling them to tap into these resources made available to them.”

Also at the event on Monday, Microsoft announced that Dubai Airports has migrated to the former’s Azure Cloud platform as part of the global hub’s digital transformation.

Dubai Airports has received some 90 million passengers each year, expected to increase to 120 million by 2025. The move is in line with the company’s continuing efforts to ensure that each passenger’s experience is enjoyable and hassle-free.

We are in a young region that has youth, who have great potential

Sayed Hashish, regional general manager at Microsoft Gulf