Evaluating Cloud Platforms for Middle East

Provide a protective analysis regarding privacy, with Amazon saying there is "no automated access to information," and specifying that it has actually not disclosed the material of government/institutional clients saved outside the United States to the U.S.

Around 35% of cloud service centers in the region belong area American companies, totaling 31 centers, while Chinese-owned centers account for about 8%, with 7. Iran, meanwhile, relies entirely on four domestic companies, providing it 100% regional cloud facilities. In general, 42% of the region's cloud services are supplied by local or different international companies.

In general, every Gulf country has a U.S. cloud presence. Israel relies 100% on American service providers, including Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Oracle. Iran: The cloud ecosystem is efficiently localized. The research study plainly discovered that the Iranian state has, over the years, constructed an infrastructure that keeps critical services operating locally even if international connectivity is cut off through the National Information Network (NIN).

ANSR July GCC PRs 50DR+

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More than half of the cloud implementations in the region (51%) were launched after 2020, with 46 centers out of a total of 89 developed throughout that period. Other nations save their data in regional government information centers or regional telecom-company data centers, which fall within the second and 3rd tiers of the categories.

In cases of dispute or sanctionsas in Syria and Yemenbarriers increase since of compliance restrictions and damage to infrastructure. Cloud computing services are a design that makes it possible for "on-demand" access to shared computing resources (networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be quickly provisioned and launched with very little administrative effort.

numerous separate sites/data centers within the area, designed to minimize single points of failure, with separation in power, cooling, physical security, and low-latency network connectivity. There are also layers of cloud services or service shipment models (IaaS/PaaS/SaaS) and deployment and use designs (public/private/hybrid/ neighborhood), which are an important part of understanding and assessing risks and sovereignty over cloud service centers in the countries that host them.

ANSR July GCC PRs 50DR+

Information analytics and expert system: cloud centers offer huge computing and storage capability to run data analytics for states and federal governments, device learning, and AI workloads that need specialized and large-scale hardware. This, for instance, is one factor behind the race by data centers and AI to establish a presence in the Gulf and provide services there.

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This is the logic behind developing availability zones within an area, or across numerous areas when laws permit. The kind of cloud service utilize depends upon each country's policy and its information classification, but the most common patterns in the general public sector include: individual data, documents, residency records. taxes, customs, and government procurement.

the Internet of Things, noticing, traffic, energy/water. frequently heavily restricted and separated, or special/sovereign environments are constructed for it depending on classification level of sensitivity. This is where the value of implementation designs (private/hybrid cloud)becomes clear: numerous governments tend toward a hybrid approachpartly on a public cloud for less sensitive work, and partly on a private/sovereign cloud for more sensitive ones. The RUSI research institute states that the targeting of information centers in the Gulf on March 1, 2026 created global doubts about the strength, sovereignty, security, and fragility of these centers, noting that data centers might be treated as tactical properties and "important facilities,"particularly if they are believed to support defense/intelligence capabilities along with civilian services. The danger is not just"losing files,"however digitally disabling and immobilizing states. It can be summed up in five points: Vital service failures (Accessibility Shock): If banks, payments, civil service platforms, or significant business depend upon the affected region, the disturbance quickly impacts the general public and the economy. RUSI pointed to wider disturbance to financial and consumer services after the Gulf strikes. Fragility in the face of non-cloud bottlenecks: Even if information centers are not bombed, submarine cables and internationalconnectivity can trigger extreme congestion/degradation in cloud services. Example: cuts to cables in the Red Sea affected Azure routes and increased latency in South Asia and the Gulf. The cloud services industry represents a huge global market, and costs on it is steadily increasing year after year with the advancement and growth of expert system services. Regionally, Gartner, the research study, consulting, and details technology firm, expects IT costs in the Middle East and North Africa to reach 169 billion dollars in 2026, and states that" data center systems"are the fastest-growing market, approximated at 12.984 billion dollars in 2026. McKinsey, meanwhile, explains public cloud centers in the Middle East as a"multibillion-dollar chance" connected to digital transformation and onethat is highly scalable. This is either because they vary consumption-based contracts, framework agreements, or part of wider procurement portfolios (digital transformation)that are not openly detailed. The following can be recognized: According to a news report released by Arab News in 2015, the worth of federal government contracts in the ICT(Details and Communications Technology)sector reached SAR 38 billion in 2024(roughly US$ 10.13 billion), with a focus on cloud computing and expert system as concerns. In 2024, Amazon announced the construction of 2 cloud regions in Saudi Arabia at a cost exceeding US$ 5.3 billion. In the very same year, Oracle likewise revealed the launch of a second public cloud region in Saudi Arabia to "enhance the AI economy,"with an investment of US$ 1.5 billion. In March 2025, the Abu Dhabi government revealed its objective of automating 100 %of federal government operations, supported by an investment of up to AED 13 billion(US$ 3.54 billion)in digital facilities under the Digital Technique 20252027, together with sovereign cloud contracts with Microsoft and Core42. In November 2025, the state-owned company qnbn revealed the finalizing of a multi-year agreement with Microsoft to supply cloud computing services targeted at"speeding up digital change and expert system,"though the agreement's worth was not revealed.