Saudi organisations have increased their investments in artificial intelligence by nearly 160 percent year-on-year, positioning the Kingdom among the most advanced AI markets globally, according to a new study by Riverbed ahead of GITEX Global 2025.
The report titled, The Future of IT Operations in the AI Era, shows that more than a quarter of Saudi enterprises invested over $50 million in AI initiatives last year, compared with 18 percent across other surveyed markets.
The study also found that 36 percent of Saudi organisations are already fully prepared to implement AI strategies, with 78 percent expecting full readiness within three years, in line with Vision 2030. More than half of the respondents said their return on investment from AIOps projects had exceeded expectations, while 38 percent reported meeting their original goals.
Data management has emerged as a critical success factor. Around 63 percent of Saudi organisations are now developing enterprise-wide data strategies to support AI. Cloud adoption continues to rise as major providers such as Microsoft, AWS, Google, and Oracle expand their presence in the Kingdom. Currently, 31 percent of AI-related data is hosted in public clouds, 27 percent on-premises, and 25 percent in private clouds. Over the next three years, a shift toward edge processing is expected as organisations enable faster, more intelligent operations across branch and industrial sites.
The study shows that observability and performance management are becoming vital to scaling AI. Saudi firms use an average of 13 observability tools from nine vendors, though 98 percent plan to consolidate these systems to simplify operations. Nearly all respondents agreed that a unified observability platform would improve issue detection and resolution.
Productivity has overtaken cost reduction as a key driver of AI adoption, highlighting a shift toward performance-led transformation. Unified communications tools are central to daily operations, with IT leaders spending almost half their work week using them. Seventeen percent of IT support tickets relate to UC systems, each taking around 40 minutes to resolve, prompting greater reliance on advanced monitoring solutions.
“Saudi Arabia is one of the most exciting AI markets in the world, with bold government initiatives and record investments driving rapid transformation,” said Moueen Zahreddine, Senior Regional Director, GCC at Riverbed. “To fully capitalise on this momentum, enterprises must overcome the challenge of scaling AI projects,” he said.
