As organisations across the Middle East navigate growing cyberthreats, regulatory pressures and AI adoption, the conversation around data protection is shifting rapidly. Resilience is becoming a business-critical priority, driven by the need for speed, simplicity and complete control over data across increasingly complex, hybrid environments. Jawad Moghnieh, General Manager, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, Veeam, talks through his strategy for cyber-resilience in the Middle East and how Veeam can support organisations in the region.
What are customers across the Middle East most focused on right now when it comes to protecting their data, and how is Veeam responding to those needs?
What we’re seeing very clearly across the region is a mindset shift. Customers are no longer asking whether they need stronger resilience; they’re asking how quickly can we implement solutions without adding any complexity.
For organisations in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, there is a growing demand to store an external copy of their data outside the country, while still maintaining full control and visibility. This is where Veeam Data Cloud and Veeam Vault play a critical role. Veeam Vault allows organisations to store an immutable backup copy in any geographical location, while also making sure that there’s an added level of protection against any ransomware or regional disruption.
This is designed to work seamlessly with environments such as Microsoft or AWS. The focus is giving organisations a choice over where data is protected, how it is recovered and how resilience aligns with the business risk and compliance requirement.
As cyber-resilience and ransomware recovery remain top priorities, how does the Veeam Data Platform help organisations stay operational and move forward?
Veeam Data Platform is designed to improve data resilience across organisations. When the global environment becomes more volatile – whether through geopolitical tensions, cyber-escalations or even economical uncertainties – resilience stops being a technical discussion and becomes a business imperative.
What organisations need most is the ability to build trust through proven resilience. Confidence to get their business up and running no matter what happens. Veeam Data Platform is designed around rapid and reliable recovery across on-premise, cloud or hybrid environments; with capabilities such as instant recovery, immutability and pre-storing – where organisations scan their files before a restore job, keeping their data clean, safe and secure.
But resilience does not end at recovery. Customers can also use the platform to assess readiness, identify gaps and continuously strengthen their security posture. The goal is simple: minimise disruptions, protect data integrity and ensure that the business can move forward when conditions are unpredictable.
Many enterprises are scaling AI while tightening controls in response to global instability. How is Veeam enabling safe AI at scale?
Safe AI at a scale starts with trusted data. If organisations can’t guarantee the availability, integrity and governance of their data, AI becomes a liability rather than an advantage. This is why data resilience is foundational in what we do every day, ensuring that data is protected, safely secured and recoverable wherever it resides.
Today, the infrastructure to deploy AI exists. The infrastructure to trust it doesn’t. Veeam is building that missing layer.
There’s a huge risk with AI if there is no control and visibility. Leaders today want insights on how data is used, how AI systems behave together and how risk is controlled. Our role is to provide organisations the right visibility so that they can scale AI and make sure that they have full control without introducing any blind spots.
Following the acquisition of Securiti AI, how is Veeam strengthening its approach to governance, privacy and AI risk?
The AI Trust gap is the missing foundation that ensures AI is safe, secure and compliant. Without it, organisations face growing risks across governance, privacy and AI operations.
By acquiring Securiti AI, Veeam is closing this critical gap. By combining Veeam’s market-leading Data Resilience with Securiti AI’s expertise in Data and AI Security, we have created the industry’s first unified Data and AI Trust layer.
Our Veeam DataAI Command platform brings together Security, Governance, Compliance, Privacy and Resilience into one seamless solution. This unified approach breaks down complexity and provides businesses with a clear, trusted view to manage AI risk confidently.
This bold step strengthens how enterprises protect data, uphold privacy and govern AI – accelerating trust and safe adoption of AI at scale.
Veeam is known for its strong partner ecosystem. How does this support customers in the Middle East?
Veeam is a 100% channel driven company, and partners have always been a vehicle to success. One important point is to translate strategy into execution. We work with our partner ecosystem to ensure that our customers have the right skill set, best practices and experiences in place. With extended support from our partner ecosystem, we will be able to articulate our value proposition and execute the right strategies that improve data resilience.
This is also extended to our alliance ecosystem with Microsoft, AWS, Google, Red Hat, Nutanix, and many more, who can make our customer experience so much more beneficial. They have technology alliance ecosystems that work together to make sure that their data, the lifeblood of their organisation, is always protected.
What trends are you seeing in Veeam Data Cloud adoption across the region?
SaaS applications are the heart of what organisations are demanding every day. We hear from our customers about demand for Backup as-a-Service, Disaster Recovery as-a-Service or even Archive as-a-Service. Veeam Data Cloud (VDC) is perfectly architected to address such needs, ensuring an organisations’ data is managed without worrying about storage or implementation complexity. The service is protecting organisational data end-to-end, whether that’s on cloud, on-premise or in their hybrid environments.
Veeam’s presence across the Middle East, Saudi and Bahrain is ever present and growing. But with major events such as LEAP being postponed, how is that conversation evolving?
LEAP is an important event for us and the region. We have been participating since the beginning, and we’re still coming strong. Since LEAP has been postponed, Veeam Software is also going to sponsor an executive lounge. This helps us spread the right awareness and knowledge of Veeam capabilities. We’re a multinational organisation that wants to ensure that every company in Saudi Arabia has full trust and reliability on our technologies.
At the event in August, we will have more than 35 ‘Veeamers’ in place to help our customers, partners and the entire community understand what Veeam data resilience is all about.
What differentiates Veeam in today’s evolving IT landscape?
Worldwide, it’s the speed of innovation and our audacious plans. In Saudi Arabia, it’s our expansion and our operations that align with Vision 2030.
We have more than 1000 active customers in Saudi Arabia and more than 250 customers in Bahrain. We have a strong partner ecosystem. We have the right engineers that are Veeam certified. Additionally, we’ve recently published the Veeam User Group – a certified community to equip engineers across multiple organisations with a Veeam know-how.
We work with multiple stakeholders at the same organisation – the infrastructure team, the security team or the data privacy team. Our software today has changed the game for much more than backup or recovery. It’s all about ensuring that data and the life cycle of this data is purely protected with full control and visibility.
Veeam has always been a leader in data resilience and that remains central to our strategy. But with the rapid rise of AI and autonomous agents, the way organisations secure and govern data is evolving. Protecting data is no longer just about resilience – it’s about building trust across security, governance, privacy and compliance.
Through the acquisition of Securiti AI, Veeam is bringing these critical elements together into a single, unified platform. This expanded vision combines data resilience with advanced security and governance capabilities to close the AI Trust gap.
Our platform empowers organisations with complete visibility, control and confidence over their data – both in production and backup – delivering a seamless foundation where resilience is an essential part of a larger ecosystem that drives safe, trusted AI at scale.
