Tamer Elhamy of Microsoft Middle East and Africa and Mena Migelly of Veeam EMEA East on the Kingdom’s incoming data centre, the shift to agentic deployments, and why so many enterprises misread who owns their data.
Microsoft’s Saudi Arabia data centre goes live in November 2026, delivering three availability zones and plugging the Kingdom into a global network spanning more than 70 regions across 33 countries. Tamer Elhamy, who leads software partners and global ISVs for Microsoft Middle East and Africa, calls it a long-awaited decision now coming to life — and a significant step toward in-country data residency. The launch brings Azure, Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365 into the Kingdom, alongside security services and partners such as Veeam.
The framing has shifted, both executives argue. Mena Migelly, Regional Vice President for Veeam EMEA East, describes a move away from cloud as a digital transformation project toward cloud as a business transformation — less about adding AI than about extracting value from data and expanding how organisations reach customers, residents and citizens.
Elhamy makes the sequencing clear: enterprises now start with an AI transformation project, and cloud follows. Without secure data and high resilience, the whole solution fails — and he has watched customers migrate, find the platform inadequate, and return.
Demand spans sectors, led by the public sector and financial services, with retail, hospitality and education following. But it is critical national infrastructure — locked out for years — that stands to gain most, particularly as agentic deployments take hold. Saudi references including Gedea and ACWA Power point to the need to govern agent identity, actions and rollback.
That surfaces the gap Migelly keeps returning to. Resilience is treated as an afterthought on platforms like Microsoft 365, on the assumption that Microsoft handles it. Microsoft secures the infrastructure and the SLA; the customer remains accountable for data, identities and configuration.
