RIYADH: A newly launched platform will allow Saudi companies to align their data regulations with national AI policies, supporting local talent, according to the company’s co-founder.
Governata enables companies to coordinate with the Kingdom’s National Data Management Office, or NDMO, and Saudi Data and AI Authority, or SDAIA, guidelines.
All data remains hosted domestically to ensure compliance and cost control.
Governata co-founder, Djamel Mohand, spoke to Arab News about the company’s localization strategy.
Mohand emphasized three advantages for Saudi businesses.
First, on talent development: “They can leverage local talents better,” he said, through locally built software that used government initiatives such as MISK and SDAIA. This enabled “thousands of homegrown data engineers, data specialists and other experts to be involved in improvement of these technologies, not only distribute global tech.”
Second, on organizational adoption: “The localization aspect enables businesses to use this technology across the whole organization,” which Mohand said required a high level of cultural understanding to engage multiple business owners for full impact.
Third, addressing data sovereignty, Mohand said the “local closed-loop setup protects standard solutions, as hosting the data on-premises or in the local cloud has become the norm. However, this is not enough if local businesses want to ensure full data protection.”
Mohand added that the Kingdom was leading in AI through big investments in GPU imports, local data centers and computing power capabilities.
However, he warned: “A bottleneck to enablement will occur if data infrastructure and company management are not aligned.”
Governata claims to address this challenge. Mohand said: “Our mission is to prepare Saudi organizations to leverage all this AI power being created by the country’s leadership.
“As we elevate organizational maturity in data management, we elevate local talent,” he added.
Mohand said that the platform activated “thousands of data scientists, software engineers, integration specialists, domain experts and business managers from Saudi Arabia’s outstanding talent pool” while developing skills internally.
