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I4 Solutions and Cisco Systems showcase the future of AI-Driven IT at Web Summit Qatar 2025

I4 Solutions and Cisco Systems showcase the future of AI-Driven IT at Web Summit Qatar 2025

Zawya25-02-2025

Doha, Qatar – i4 Solutions, a leader in digital transformation and a Cisco Gold Partner, is redefining enterprise technology with AI-driven automation and advanced networking. This strategic partnership underscores their unwavering commitment to empowering Qatari organizations with intelligent, secure, and scalable technology that drives operational efficiency and fosters innovation.
As businesses across Qatar and the region accelerate their digital transformation journey, the demand for AI-powered solutions that optimize IT operations, enhance security, and enable seamless scalability has never been greater. At Web Summit Qatar, i4 Solutions and Cisco will showcase cutting-edge innovations that integrate AI, automation, and advanced networking, bridging the gap between emerging technology and real-world business applications. By leveraging these solutions, enterprises of all sizes and across all industries can adapt, scale, and thrive in an increasingly complex digital landscape.
Speaking on the sidelines of the event, Boutros El Haddad, General Manager of i4 Solutions, said: 'We believe that AI and automation are the driving forces behind the future of technology. Our collaboration with Cisco at this year's Web Summit Qatar represents a shared commitment to delivering intelligent, secure, and scalable solutions that empower businesses to innovate, grow, and stay ahead in an ever-evolving digital landscape.' He also expressed their pride in participating for the second consecutive year, and reiterated their continued support for this pivotal global event in Qatar.
i4 Solutions and Cisco's long-standing collaboration is built around their shared objective of empowering businesses to achieve greater efficiency, agility, and competitiveness, aligning with Qatar National Vision 2030's goals to establish the nation as a leading hub for innovation and digital transformation.
By combining Cisco's industry-leading networking and security solutions with i4 Solutions' AI-driven innovation, businesses can experience enhanced operational efficiency through smarter automation and optimized workflows, significantly reducing operational costs. Additionally, organizations can ensure their digital assets remain protected against evolving threats with Cisco's robust cybersecurity infrastructure. With seamless scalability and future-readiness through AI-driven insights and cloud-native architectures, companies can maintain a competitive edge in the market. This powerful synergy unlocks new revenue opportunities and drives innovation across industries.
With a focus on enabling scalable growth, accelerating innovation, and strengthening business agility, i4 Solutions continues to push the boundaries of what's possible in enterprise IT.
About i4 Solutions
i4 Solutions is a leading provider of advanced technology solutions in Qatar, part of the Mideast Data Systems - Qatar group. As a Cisco Gold Partner for over 20 years, i4 Solutions upholds the highest standards of service excellence.
With a strong focus on customer success, i4 Solutions delivers tailored solutions, combining global expertise with local insight to help businesses in Qatar gain a competitive edge.

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To put the challenge into perspective, there are around 4 million cybersecurity professionals needed urgently to plug the talent gap, so that's gives you an indication on the scale of the problem at hand,' said Younes. 87% of those surveyed in the Cisco Cybersecurity Readiness Index identified the shortage of skilled cybersecurity professionals as a major headache for their organisation. Younes outlined that it wasn't just Cisco's customers feeling the pinch, and that their entire ecosystem of partners and system integrators are dealing with the same issue. Younes said that in the long-term their Networking Academy will continue to upskill and train millions of people, but in the short term they are focused on leveraging their technologies to support overstretched SecOps teams. 'In the long term the Cisco Networking Academy will train and upskills millions of cybersecurity professionals across the Middle East and Africa region, but more immediately, we're using technology to reduce the pressure on already stretched SecOps teams. As I referred to earlier, Cisco is embedding AI across our entire cyber security portfolio with AI systems, and the objective of that is to simplify the ops team and reducing their work cycles. Most recently at the RSA conference last month, we announced a new innovation around our Cisco XDR offering, which is the extended detection and response solution that is now leveraging Agentic AI, to handle many of the time-consuming repetitive tasks and that used to require deep expertise,' said Younes. Younes highlighted how their attack storyboard, a visual representation of a cyberattack within their Cisco XDR, or Cisco SecureX platforms was saving SecOps teams weeks in terms of generating reports. Features like, instant attack verification, automated forensics, and attack storyboard. 'The attack storyboard is very interesting because it demonstrates what exactly happened in chronological order after a cyberattack has occurred in a matter of seconds. They can generate a very detailed report that could have taken the SecOps team weeks to generate Yeah. Ultimately, this will help analysts regardless of their experience level to move quickly from alert to action with confidence, and that not only improves efficiency, but it makes security operations much more accessible. So, while we can continue to close the skills gaps through the networking academy, we can also help address the issue now through our XDR and SecureX platforms,' said Younes. 'The study measures security readiness against five key pillars that are critical for securing the modern organisations against evolving cyber threats.' The pendulum of the conversation swung back towards the Cisco Cybersecurity Readiness Index. A comprehensive survey, now in its 3rd year, consisting of 8,000 businesses across 30 global markets. As Younes explained the index accesses the deployment and maturity of cybersecurity solutions across these global markets. The survey is broken down into four categories of readiness, which are beginner, formative, progressive and mature. In terms of the UAE, 30% of organisations have reached a progressive or mature state. Younes believes that is a healthy figure, but stressed that those numbers are not likely to increase hugely, due to the volatile and dynamic nature of the cybersecurity industry. 'The study measures security readiness against the following key pillars that are critical for securing the modern organisations against evolving cyber threats. The five pillars are identity intelligence, machine trustworthiness, network resilience, cloud reinforcement, and AI fortification. Last year, if we compare the results, and I'm not talking just about the UAE only, but globally. If you compare the results in terms of maturity this year versus last year, then you will see that at the same time, they're investing ad they're consolidating. They're doing the right things, but at the same time, it's not progressing rapidly. You're not going to jump by 10%. Because whist organisations are investing in those new technologies, there are new threats popping up all the time. And this year, in particular, with AI coming into the picture it has made the picture even blurrier,' said Younes. Younes explained the newest pillar of the Index is the AI fortification layer. 'The AI fortification pillar wasn't there a few years ago, and that's now the fifth pillar. I'll go through each pillar quickly. The identity security framework prioritises identity visibility, adopts a zero trust architecture, and utilises password-less, or multifactor authentication bolstered by AI-driven detections. The second pillar is machine trustworthiness, but it's also promoting the concept of a zero-trust model. And this is where we need to have that model deployed, to diligently verify all users, but also devices. So, the posture of your device, not only your identity is critical, before granting access to networks, and serving as a critical mechanism for ensuring trusted access. The third one is network resilience, and organisations are actually recommended to urgently enhance their network resilience, advancing beyond partial security, implementations to adequately prepare for the challenges posed by the AI era,' said Younes. Younes stressed the importance of correlating what is happening across all your domains rather than adopting a siloed approach to cybersecurity. He concluded a brilliant conversation, by touching on the importance of unified cloud security. 'The fourth pillar is unified cloud security, and this is transitioning from the fragmented, to cohesive security strategies that are proactive and AI enhanced, allowing for more efficient management of security across cloud environment. So, this is all about giving the security teams more visibility and control, across the multi-cloud environment, wherever the workloads applications are. The objective has to be the production of a consistent policy across all workloads, regardless of where they reside, be it AWS, or Azure. Finally, the last one is the AI security strategy, and this is about developing a comprehensive security approach that focuses on and secures both the deployment of AI technologies and the underlying models, ensuring reliability and integrity,' said Younes.

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