At LEAP 2026 in Riyadh, CXO Insight Middle East's managing editor Adelle Geronimo interviewed Martin Man, Global Channel Manager at Tiger Technology, about what Saudi Arabia's AI build-out is doing to enterprise storage requirements, and what it means for the partners selling into it.
Two requirements at once, not one
The shift Martin described is that the conversation has moved from storage capacity to where data is allowed to reside. Saudi sovereignty rules mean data cannot sit in a cloud located outside the country, so enterprises adopting AI face two requirements simultaneously: fast access to data for training, and demonstrable compliance with those rules. Meeting one at the expense of the other is not an option, which makes it an architecture question rather than a storage one.
Why that raises the bar for partners
On the channel side, his point was that this separates two kinds of partner. Any partner can quote storage. Far fewer can sit with a customer and explain how to keep data fully compliant while still delivering the performance an AI workload needs. That second conversation is service-led: data assessments, data management, architecture design. It puts those partners in a different tier.
Depth over volume
Asked what Tiger Technology wants from partners in Saudi Arabia and the wider GCC, Martin's answer was depth over volume: five partners who genuinely understand the technology and the customer's problem, rather than fifty signed up. He described the region as moving faster than almost anywhere else, driven by giga-projects, government digitalisation and large-scale AI adoption. He also noted that because Tiger Technology is not headquartered in the region, events like LEAP are how the company verifies what the market actually needs rather than assuming.
Watch the full interview on the CXO Insight Middle East YouTube channel.