Saudi Minister of Communications and Information Technology Abdullah Al-Swaha, and Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian inaugurated the Google Cloud region in Dammam on Wednesday. The search engine giant’s move makes Saudi Arabia part of its 39 Google Cloud regions around the world. This will enhance innovation, accelerate transformation, and support the growth of the Saudi digital economy through cloud computing services. The ministry said that the Google Cloud region in the Kingdom will help businesses accelerate digital transformation and build the future, as it will work to provide its services to public sector institutions and large companies, all the way to small and medium-sized companies and startups in the Kingdom and the Middle East region. Speaking on the occasion, Al-Swaha stressed the importance of Google Cloud’s investment in the new region, which represents an important strategic move in the process of achieving the Kingdom’s goals and ambitions to become a leading regional center for advanced computing technologies. It will contribute to supporting promising digital business initiatives and accelerating the wheel of innovation in artificial intelligence applications and various business models in the public and private sectors,” he said. In his speech, Thomas Kurian highlighted how Google has worked hard to comply with Saudi Arabia’s regulatory and security requirements. “Today is the culmination of work from so many people. We are proud to introduce our cloud technology to the Kingdom, to all the companies, to people who want to learn about cloud computing, to startups and the youth,” he said and added: “We wanted to take all the technology that Google was inventing and make it available to all organizations.” Kurian described this move as one of the most important technological transformations in contemporary history, as artificial intelligence supports organizations’ efforts to develop the best solutions to various challenges they face, and improve their ability to communicate and interact with customers, in addition to enhancing levels of efficiency and productivity. For his part, Bader Almadi, country general manager for Saudi Arabia’s Google Cloud, expressed his aspiration to support digital transformation and empowerment efforts for various businesses and individuals in the Kingdom. “Our cloud will open the horizon for new digital transformation opportunities and it will position the Kingdom to be the hub of the region. Our cloud meets the sovereignty, privacy needs of the region in terms of regulation,” he added. The new cloud region in Dammam is part of the global Google Cloud network, which consists of 39 cloud regions and 118 regions that provide cloud services to more than 200 countries and regions around the world. Organizations in the region will benefit from the main controls that allow them to maintain the highest levels of security and availability of local data storage space, and adherence to compliance standards, including specific requirements for data storage. Launched in 2008, Google Cloud offers computing services, data storage, data analytics, machine learning and management tool offerings.