Cloudflare opens office in Dubai, Bashar Bashaireh joins as MD

Cloudflare, Inc., a security, performance, and reliability company that is helping to build a better Internet, has announced the opening of its first Middle East office in Dubai, UAE, to support its expanding EMEA activities.

Following the company’s EMEA headquarters in London and offices in Munich, Paris, and Lisbon, Dubai marks a growing Cloudflare team presence in the Middle East and Turkey.

The Dubai-based Cloudflare team will assist the company in increasing brand awareness, acquiring and supporting customers, and recruiting new talent. 

Bashar Bashaireh, a seasoned regional leader with more than 25 years of industry expertise in software and technology, will oversee Cloudflare’s new office and team, as part of the announcement.

“The UAE is home to one of the largest economies in the Middle East and an innovation hub for the region, and worldwide. This has always been an important region for us with an emerging, young population hungry for content delivered at high Internet bandwidth, and Dubai is home to one of our 27 data centers located in the Middle East and Turkey,” said Andy Lockhart, Head of Europe, Middle East and Africa Sales at Cloudflare. “After an extensive search, we are delighted to welcome Bashar to lead and grow the team. With an office and a team based in Dubai, we’re committed to this growing business landscape, being closer to our customers as well as expanding our business in the region.” 

Cloudflare started to invest in the region by expanding its network into the Middle East and Turkey in 2015. Now with data centers spanning more than 270 cities in over 100 countries worldwide, the company continues to grow its presence to be even closer to Internet-connected users everywhere. In the MET region Cloudflare has 27 data centers located in Bahrain, Iraq, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, Sultanate of Oman, Qatar, Turkey, and  United Arab Emirates.

Cloudflare’s customers in the EMEA region represent a diverse range of industries and scales, with millions of customers worldwide. 

Cloudflare released its first annual Impact Report in December 2021, demonstrating its commitment to helping develop a more principled, accessible, and sustainable Internet. The company concentrated on creating a blueprint for a zero-emissions Internet, increasing the efficiency of its worldwide network, which is already powered entirely by renewable energy, and releasing new tools to assist other businesses in incorporating sustainability into their apps.

Cloudflare introduced Project Fair Shot in February 2021, a program that provided our Waiting Room product free of charge to any government, municipality, private/public business, or anybody in charge of the scheduling and/or dissemination of the COVID-19 vaccination.

Cloudflare’s first managing director of Middle East and Turkey, Bashar Bashaireh, will oversee and lead the company’s business and overall team in the region. “With digital transformation and increased cloud adoption, organizations are in need for a fast, secure and reliable Internet, more than ever, to optimally serve and secure their customers, partners, and employees, and Cloudflare is leading this transition.” said Bashar Bashaireh “I have been impressed by what Cloudflare has built and I’m thrilled to help to promote such an innovative technology in the region to help to build a better Internet, and to support the development of the regional digital economies.”

Cloudflare’s EMEA team has increased by more than 100% in the previous two years, with about 700 workers. Launching new data centers, boosting market share through partnerships, and expanding our customer base and local staff to cope with company development to better serve our clients are among the first functions prioritized for the Middle East and Turkey. San Francisco, CA, Austin, TX, Champaign, IL, Seattle, WA, New York, NY, San Jose, CA, Washington, D.C., Lisbon, London, Munich, Paris, Beijing, Singapore, Sydney, and Tokyo will join Cloudflare’s existing global operations.