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UAE organisations are moving beyond AI experimentation, but building the right infrastructure, security and data controls will be critical as adoption expands, according to SUSE executive Shady Khattab.
Speaking at AI Everything Abu Dhabi, Khattab, Director of AI Sales, Architecture and Solutions at SUSE, said the UAE’s push towards sovereign cloud and locally controlled data infrastructure creates an opportunity for enterprises and government organisations to adopt AI while retaining greater control over their technology.
Khattab said SUSE’s participation at the event is focused on working with government and other organisations around open-source technology, which he said provides greater freedom to innovate and adapt systems as requirements change.
The UAE is particularly important in this area, he said, pointing to the country’s ambition to become an AI-native government by 2027 and its investment in sovereign cloud and data-centre infrastructure.
He said the combination of open source and sovereign infrastructure can allow organisations to retain control while continuing to adopt new AI technologies. A key challenge for businesses, according to Khattab, is the speed at which AI is developing.
He argued that organisations have often moved quickly to build AI applications without spending enough time considering how those systems will be secured, governed and monitored once they enter production. The issue, he said, is not whether AI development should slow down, but whether organisations are building the architecture needed to use it safely.
“Control doesn’t mean by default to slow down, but it means to secure and to give the trust to that AI.”
Khattab said businesses can continue innovating while putting regulations, policies and technical safeguards around AI systems. He also stressed the importance of monitoring how AI applications behave and how they consume resources. SUSE is showcasing a sovereign AI solution at the event, developed in partnership with NVIDIA, including an agentic AI demonstration designed to show how organisations can combine newer AI capabilities with security and control. For companies concerned about placing sensitive information with cloud providers, Khattab said the answer depends on the type of data and the requirements attached to it.
Organisations should first determine whether data needs to remain within the country or meet specific regulatory requirements before deciding whether a system should run on-premises or in the cloud.
“If this data is sensitive and require locality, then that’s when you will think about building on your location.” He added that using a cloud provider with infrastructure located within the UAE can also provide data locality where appropriate.
Khattab described digital sovereignty as having three main elements: compliance with regulations, control over where data is stored and the freedom to move between technologies or models. He said open-source technology can support the third element by reducing dependence on a single vendor or technology stack.
This flexibility could become increasingly important as AI models and technologies continue to change, allowing organisations to adapt without having to rebuild their entire infrastructure. As AI adoption increases, Khattab expects cyber threats to evolve alongside it. He pointed to risks including identity theft, data injection and unauthorised access to organisational systems, arguing that security needs to be considered across the entire technology environment.
That includes physical infrastructure and data centres, networks, applications and the code running those applications. He said organisations also need visibility into how AI systems are operating so they can identify and respond to unexpected behaviour. With governments and companies investing heavily in AI, Khattab said some projects can struggle because organisations focus on developing a solution before establishing the underlying architecture. He said businesses should consider sovereignty, security, data locality and the ability to change technologies when designing AI projects.
For UAE enterprises, the shift towards locally available cloud and data-centre infrastructure could help support that approach, while open-source technology can provide additional flexibility as AI systems evolve.