UAE companies rapidly adopting cloud and increasing AI investment, new SAP survey shows

Poll says businesses plan significant investment in AI within the next 15 months

Marwan Zeineddine, Managing Director, SAP UAE

UAE companies are adopting cloud computing at a high rate and plan significant investment in AI within the next 15 months, a YouGov survey commissioned by SAP shows. The survey examined several key factors for effective AI implementation including whether companies are operating their core business functions on the cloud, the extent of existing AI use, the quality of business data available, and the AI expertise of staff.

Of the UAE enterprises surveyed, 67 per cent are already hosting their core business processes on the cloud, with a further 22 per cent planning to do so within the next 15 months. Hosting enterprise resource planning solutions on the cloud maximises the effectiveness of AI thanks to real-time data access, scalable computing power and the ability to integrate advanced AI models seamlessly into business processes.

Most companies were already leveraging some form of AI, mostly in business functions such as marketing and communications (42 per cent), customer service (40 per cent), sales (38 per cent), and accounting and finance (38 per cent), but less so in areas such as supply chain and logistics (27 per cent) and product or services development (27 per cent).

“While it is very encouraging that almost 90 per cent of businesses believe they will be running on cloud within the next 15 months, it is clear that they are not yet leveraging AI for a full range of business processes,” said Marwan Zeineddine, managing director of SAP UAE. “SAP infuses AI across our enterprise cloud portfolio, enabling our customers to benefit immediately from AI-driven insights and enhancements to elevate all areas of operations, from finance to HR to supply chains.”

Mr Zeineddine said, however, that the survey had identified a lack of certainty over data quality: “Having accessible, high-quality data is important as AI systems rely on data to learn patterns, make decisions, and generate reliable and actionable insights. We found only 65 per cent of respondents described themselves as highly confident in the quality of the data, but this proportion should increase significantly when the remaining companies move their core operations to the cloud.

“Data quality is enabled through implementing solutions such as SAP S/4HANA for enterprise resource planning. This enables clean, organised data that allows AI algorithms to forecast demand accurately, streamline supply chains, and enable AI models to be fair and unbiased, among other things,” Mr Zeineddine explained.

Improving AI accessibility

Among the major challenges businesses faced in AI implementation, the most reported were integration with existing systems and lack of skilled personnel, both identified by 43 per cent of respondents, followed by privacy and security concerns, and associated costs, both identified by 40 per cent.

In discussing these challenges, Mr Zeineddine highlighted how embedded AI solutions are helping to make the power of AI accessible to everyone, as well as SAP’s role in delivering training in Business AI. In addition, SAP’s co-pilot Joule is making SAP solutions and insights ever more powerful and accessible. Joule streamlines tasks and delivers quick, tailored insights and content on demand, while enabling users to maintain full control over decision-making and data privacy. SAP is also infusing Joule with AI agents to transform productivity and the way teams work. Joule’s agents collaborate across supply chain, procurement, finance, and more to perform multi-step cross-functional workflows.

The growing importance of SAP’s Business AI was reflected on a global level in the company’s impressive Q3 2024 earnings results. SAP said that 30 per cent of customer deals signed in that quarter included AI use cases based on SAP’s Business AI offerings.

Mr Zeineddine believes this will increasingly be the case in the UAE, too, pointing out that customers do not have to invest in an extensive arsenal of discrete Business AI products that need to be integrated into SAP solutions. Instead, SAP has embedded Business AI capabilities across its portfolio and also co-innovates with partners and customers to create solutions for industry-specific needs.

As for the challenge of the growing demand for AI experts, Mr Zeineddine said SAP was addressing this through training initiatives such as the SAP Dual Study Programme and the SAP Young Professionals Programme, which empower young people with skills and hands-on experience using the latest AI-infused SAP solutions.