Qatar and the UAE have new sovereign cloud services following separate launches this week from Ooredoo and du that promise a local alternative to international cloud service providers.
On Tuesday, Ooredoo launched sovereign AI cloud services built on the latest Nvidia Hopper GPUs and hosted in its local data centres.
Ooredoo said that as a an Nvidia Cloud Partner (NCP), its cloud service offers customers access to Nvidia’s GPU technology and its full software suite for AI development, including the Nvidia AI Enterprise platform.
Ooredoo said the offering enables local teams to use global-grade tools, deployed securely in Ooredoo’s data centres, for use cases ranging from developing AI-powered chatbots and optimising supply chains to analysing financial patterns in real time.
Moreover, Ooredoo said its AI cloud service will accelerate AI adoption in Qatar across key sectors, including energy, finance, logistics, healthcare, and smart city development, by delivering high-performance computing infrastructure locally, rather than relying on international providers.
A sovereign AI cloud gives customers faster access to computing power, the ability to handle massive datasets securely, and deploying AI solutions under national data policies, all with the low latency and reliability of in-country infrastructure, the telco said Ooredoo Qatar CEO Sheikh Ali Bin Jabor Al-Thani.
“Our collaboration with Nvidia paves the way for a new generation of innovation, empowering everyone from startups to government entities to benefit from the full potential of artificial intelligence, securely and efficiently,” he said in a statement.
Du launches “National Hypercloud” on Oracle Alloy
Over in the UAE on the same day, du expanded its cloud services portfolio with the launch of its sovereign cloud platform, the "du Tech National Hypercloud”, in partnership with Oracle.
Available in Dubai and Northern Emirates, the du Tech National Hypercloud runs on the Oracle Alloy cloud infrastructure platform in du's data centres and features a suite of over 150 Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) services spanning infrastructure, platform and applications with embedded AI capabilities.
Du chief ICT officer Jasim AlAwadi said the new hypercloud service supports rapid innovation within a sovereign AI environment at scale, and can meet the specific needs of UAE governments and large organizations seeking the agility of the public cloud and the assurance of data sovereignty and tailored security.
“Our infrastructure serves as a bastion of sovereignty and security, while also enabling financial savviness and technological advancement necessary for the UAE's pursuit of becoming a pioneering AI-utilizing nation,” he said in a statement.
“Governments want to leverage the benefits of cloud and innovate with AI at scale, within a sovereign environment. Achieving this requires flexible deployment models”, said Miguel Vega, senior VP of database platform and cloud infrastructure for the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa region at Oracle. “With the deployment of Oracle Alloy, du has introduced National Hypercloud, a capability that will help meet the sovereign requirements of government organisations in the UAE whilst supporting alignment with the local regulatory requirements.”
