GenAI promises to generate significant benefits for the organizations in the GCC. However, to fully realize its economic potential, enterprises and governments will need to overhaul their digital infrastructure.
GenAI is making waves worldwide, and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries are no exception. According to research from McKinsey, GenAI could generate an annual economic value of between $21 billion and $35 billion in the GCC. This represents nearly 3% percent of annual non-oil GDP.
According to the McKinsey survey, almost three-quarters of GCC organizations were already using GenAI in at least one business function, and well over half were spending 5% or more of their digital budgets on GenAI. The most popular functions for GenAI investment were in marketing and sales (26%), software engineering (25%) and service operations (19%). These areas were chosen because they had proven use cases – think of chatbots, code generation and bug detection.
However, despite early project successes, McKinsey warns that “many might struggle to scale and capture value from them unless they undertake a fundamental rewiring of the organization.” One of the key barriers is the limitations of legacy technology and digital infrastructure. Organizations need to ensure that their infrastructure is flexible enough to cope with increased demands from GenAI applications as they scale, without compromising the performance of other business-critical applications.
Network upgrades
A survey carried out by Global Data for Orange Business, found that 43% of enterprises had concerns that their network infrastructure would hold back their GenAI plans. They needed access to more bandwidth and reduced latency networks for GenAI applications to be usable in production settings.
Part of the issue is that the traffic generated by GenAI is quite different from traditional web applications. For example, response times can vary dramatically based on the type of prompt or the volume of data. GenAI also introduces new traffic patterns to networks, with more uploads than downloads and no caching mechanisms due to the unique response outputs.
Deploying GenAI on-premises or at the edge is also popular in certain applications as companies seek to improve performance, increase privacy, and ensure regulatory compliance. Current networks lack the flexibility and adaptability needed for this level of distributed processing and new traffic patterns.
Meeting security concerns
Security is another key infrastructure concern that organizations need to address when scaling GenAI projects. Almost all organizations in the Global Data survey were re-evaluating their cybersecurity strategy because of their use or planned use of GenAI. A lack of expertise, restricted budgets, and data management are all presenting challenges, while priorities include deploying secure access service edge (SASE), revisiting policies, and upgrading cloud security.
Cloud is also critical to enabling GenAI at scale, and 81% of enterprises in the Global Data survey either have or are re-evaluating their cloud strategy in light of their GenAI use. To support multi-model GenAI environments, cloud implementations and their connectivity must be efficient, secure, properly provisioned, and cost effective.
Flexible digital infrastructure
We are still at a relatively early stage in GenAI deployment, and the market is moving very quickly. New GenAI models are appearing, such as the Chinese DeepSeek, making it difficult to accurately predict future infrastructure requirements. In addition, rapid development in technology and software, is making the digital infrastructure ecosystem extremely complex. The key to long-term success is to have a flexible digital infrastructure with no risk of vendor lock-in.
Orange Business is addressing these challenges head-on with Evolution Platform – our network-as-a-service solution. It provides scalable on-demand connectivity with integrated security and is designed to support multi-cloud environments and edge computing. It gives you the flexibility to support the scaling up of Gen AI proof-of-concept projects all the way through to industrialization.
Evolution Platform provides dynamic resource allocation to support high-performance GenAI tasks with a cloud-like consumption model. It allows organizations to buy infrastructure and services on-demand, so that they can ramp up bandwidth and compute resources to meet current and future requirements. Orange Business can manage the solution from end-to-end, freeing up your IT team to support your core business.
Software from multiple vendors
Evolution Platform combines multiple networking services from a wide range of vendors, including SASE, cloud connectivity and remote access, through virtualization and automation. Its integrated security features, which uses a Zero Trust model, protects data in transit and at rest. By providing a wide range of different technologies and software via the platform we can find the best solution for your business requirements.
According to the 2025 Magic Quadrant for Global WAN services from Gartner, which places Orange Business in the leader quadrant: “Evolution Platform enables on-demand delivery of a broader catalog of VNFs, service automation and as-a-service commercial models. This includes down-to-the-hour options and digital service front ends (portals and APIs). Automation and AI in the vendor’s service delivery remain above average among the providers in this Magic Quadrant. It includes demonstrated use cases in order creation, management of changes and incidents, field operations, and capacity management.” (!)
Digital demands
In addition, Evolution Platform provides end-to-end visibility across the network, GenAI applications, and user devices. It helps ensure that the GenAI application is offering the performance required and is not degrading the experience of other applications.
Evolution Platform is already being adopted in the region to meet growing digital demands. For example, a prominent retail group in MEA that operates across various markets required a more scalable, secure, and cost-efficient network to support its digital initiatives, while maintaining seamless operations across multiple geographies.
By choosing Evolution Platform, GCC organizations will get the flexibility to scale their Gen AI projects, while ensuring performance and security. Our experienced consultants will work with you to ensure that you have the right mix of technologies to meet your current and future requirements.
Sahem Azzam is President - Indirect, Middle East & Africa, and Inner Asia at Orange Business. Based at the Dubai Innovation Hub and regional headquarters, he leads Orange Business teams across 60+ countries and oversees the company’s Indirect business channel via its global airline partner. His expertise spans infrastructure services, IoT, Big Data, Smart Cities, Blockchain, and IT service management, driving digital transformation across these diverse markets.