Top CIOs gather at Google Cloud Leaders Forum in Qatar

Google Cloud hosted the second edition of the Qatar Leaders Forum, a flagship event that brings together CIOs and CTOs from Qatar’s public and private sectors to discuss how businesses can build a digital transformation strategy enabled by technologies that leverage AI and machine learning and foster an innovation culture.

During the forum, Google Cloud speakers shared their expertise on the path to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning for businesses, as well as modern solutions that help businesses understand their data, consumer behavior, and solve their most difficult challenges using AI. Industry experts, such as Norbert Liki, Head of Data Science at Aliz, and Adam Hammond, Applied AI practice lead at Quantiphi, spoke about successful AI project implementations in a variety of industries, including manufacturing, retail, and digital natives, at the forum.

An all-women panel moderated by Dina Amin, Head of Marketing, Middle East, Turkey, and Africa at Google Cloud, which discussed accelerating diversity and inclusion through technology, was a highlight of the forum. Munera Al Dosari, CEO of Starlink ME, Dr. Noora Fetais, Associate Professor at Qatar University, and Mengwei Luo, Associate Partner at Mckinsey and Company were among the panelists for this session.

Ghassan Kosta, Qatar Country Manager, Google Cloud said: “Since Google Cloud has established a presence in Qatar, we have been working closely with our partners and customers to drive the conversation on digital transformation, and share our expertise to support businesses locally. The Qatar Leaders Forum is becoming synonymous with bringing industry leaders together to discuss the latest tech trends, which will have a big impact on Qatar’s transformation as a digital economy in the coming years. This edition of the forum focuses on showcasing how AI and machine learning can help businesses become more efficient, and we look forward to discussing more Google Cloud differentiators in the upcoming editions of the event”.

Munera Al Dosari, CEO of Starlink Middle East added: “As more and more businesses in Qatar experience how digital transformation streamlines operations and drives significant growth, the market is going to experience a surge in digitization. We are thrilled that we have global technology leaders like Google Cloud present in Qatar, to share their vast expertise and decades worth of knowledge and best practices with businesses in the country. Companies can collaborate with Google Cloud to create a digital transformation strategy and roadmap, using some of the most innovative solutions in the market well known for being reliable, fast and highly secure”.    

Google Cloud is present in Qatar to support businesses across various industries in their digital transformation journey, and also share industry expertise, knowledge and use cases to help businesses succeed and grow. In 2021, Google Cloud partnered with the Qatar Free Zones Authority (QFZA) and the Ministry of Transport and Communications (MOTC) to set up a new Center of Excellence training facility, which aims to enhance and develop cloud skills in the country by training up to 2,000 people annually. This followed earlier announcements about the opening of a Google Cloud region in Qatar allowing new and existing customers to run their cloud workloads locally.

According to a recent Gartner study, cloud-based AI is expected to grow fivefold from 2019 to 2023, making AI one of the top workload categories in the cloud. One of Google Cloud’s distinct differentiators is that it provides businesses with high-quality AI and Machine Learning, as well as data solutions that enable better decision-making. Google Cloud was also named a leader in Gartner’s 2021 Magic Quadrant for Cloud AI Developer Services report.