KHALED AL KHAWALDEH (ABU DHABI)
Google made a bid to private and public sector players to partner with the global tech giant's growing cloud services and AI business at a flagship finance summit held on Abu Dhabi's Yas Island on Thursday.
Speaking to Aletihad on the sidelines of the Google Finance and Technology Summit (GtFT24), Mark Rydquist, Managing Director for Financial Services at Google Cloud, said the firm saw enormous potential in the region, which, he noted, unlike other markets like Europe, was not bogged down by legacy systems and was ripe for transformation.
"Western Europe has got a lot of analogue systems that need to be modernised because they've been there for hundreds of years. In the Middle East, we see net new investment where there is no legacy. So actually, the ability to build really competitive, brand new experiences for customers that are digital based, and the investment that's coming into the region is hugely exciting," he said.
"There is no legacy to tidy up, to reprogramme, to digitise. It's about building new. There's rich investment, and it's also the ambition that we see from the Emirates, the intention to continue to invest and build these new digital services, digital experiences across all industries, in particular financial services, that's really interesting to us," Rydquist added.
The first of its kind event brings together industry leaders from the financial services sector within the UAE and broader region for two days of talks and events discussing use cases for AI and cloud services. This included cases around vendor enablement, marketing automation as well as customer service augmentation.
Already worth around $9 billion, Google's Cloud Services is a growing part of Alphabet's portfolio. Rydquist said that the company was hoping to inspire and attract more partners in what it saw as a key region for its future operations.
"We certainly want to focus our efforts on growing our business in MENA. And when I say doing business, of course, we have great technology assets that anybody and everybody can buy, but being closer to the government and enterprise here and having a closer relationship with them, we understand how they get value from those technologies. This is why we were investing in these events," he said.
"It's about having a closer relationship with the government and enterprise in the region, so we can understand how best to use our technology to drive value. And then, of course, that means you get benefit, and we get benefit because you understand where our technology delivers value, and we understand how to serve you better."
The two-day summit concludes on Friday.