Microsoft’s Role in Growing UAE’s Sovereign Cloud Infrastructure

Microsoft is going to establish a partnership with G42. G42 is a technological holding firm that is owned by a high-ranking security officer in the UAE. The goal of this partnership is to build out G42’s autonomous cloud infrastructure and jump-start that company’s artificial intelligence (AI) expertise.

Microsoft will work on a variety of distinct individual initiatives on behalf of G42. G42 has ties to the government of the UAE, including the fact that it is controlled by Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the son of the UAE’s founder and the country’s national security advisor. Microsoft will assist G42 with a number of various projects.

According to a statement released by Microsoft, the company’s sovereign cloud technology will serve as a platform for the UAE public sector as well as its highly regulated industries. This will enable users to protect sensitive information, gain access to “the latest cloud and AI features available on Azure public cloud,” and more easily comply with the laws of the country governing data sovereignty.

As part of the agreement, Microsoft will also extend its data center footprint in the UAE. This will be accomplished through further cooperation with Khazna Data Centers, which is a hosting provider supported by the UAE government.

According to Judson Althoff, executive vice president and chief commercial officer at Microsoft, the partnership will assist both the public and private sectors of the country in taking advantage of the newest technologies to find solutions to societal issues.

With data privacy, security, and compliance as our core priorities, we have a unique opportunity to help organizations responsibly innovate for the benefit of citizens and residents across the UAE, Judson Althoff said.

In the statement, it was also said that more information about how G42 and Microsoft will work together in the coming months would be made public. As of this writing, Microsoft has not responded to requests for more information.

Microsoft’s cooperation with the public sector in the UAE is not the company’s first participation with such projects anywhere else in the Middle East. This year alone, the firm has announced intentions to build out additional Azure cloud regions in Saudi Arabia. Additionally, the corporation provides a variety of services to the government of Qatar, including some that are based on Azure and OpenAI.

Middle Eastern enterprises are modernizing systems such as ERP, and in the wake of the pandemic, they are becoming more lenient on remote work policies. As a result, Microsoft’s competitors have been developing massive data centers in the Middle East at an increasing rate to accommodate the demand sparked by the adoption of cloud computing.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced in August that it planned to invest $7.2 billion in Israel by the year 2037 and created a cloud region in Tel Aviv at that time. Oracle announced back in February that it planned to make an investment of $1.5 billion in Saudi Arabia to enhance its cloud capacity.

Given worries about human rights violations in the area, some of these agreements have garnered condemnation from human rights advocacy groups. Human Rights Watch, for instance, cautioned in April that Microsoft’s organized deployments of cloud services in Saudi Arabia run at the potential of deteriorating privacy conditions in that country. This would enable data protection and anti-cybercrime laws give government officials easy access to private information and present many possibilities for abuse.

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