Doha, Qatar: Qatar is advancing in its digital transformation journey as recent developments in the country’s digital infrastructure highlight the growing importance of sovereign cloud solutions that meet stringent data sovereignty and regulatory requirements.
In an interview with The Peninsula on the sidelines of the recently held Web Summit Qatar 2026 Faisal Darras, Partner at Deloitte Middle East said, the Web Summit in Doha has been fantastic this year. The amount of excitement and energy across the various areas is remarkable. This can be seen across the innovations, around the startups, and the big enterprise announcements.
It’s an event that we at Deloitte are very keen on attending. This year, we have been able to also announce to the market the strong collaboration we have with Ooredoo and Oracle in terms of driving the in-country private cloud proposition called Alloy,” Darras noted.
Deloitte participated this year bringing its expertise in in-country private cloud, emerging technology governance and enterprise AI to the forefront of Qatar’s digital transformation agenda.
Through its participation at Web Summit Qatar 2026, Deloitte continues to support governments and enterprises in navigating complex technology transitions, turning innovation into trusted, scalable and impact-driven transformation.
He also made a reference to the announcement by H E the Prime Minister regarding the major expansion of Qatar’s support for startups and venture capital, revealing the extension of the Fund of Funds programme launched by the Qatar Investment Authority. Building on the initial $1bn commitment which has already anchored 12 major venture capital firms in Doha-the programme will be expanded by an additional $2bn.
Darras said, “I was honoured to be in the opening ceremony when the Fund of Funds expansion by $2bn was announced, can you imagine the implications of how much more access to funds there will be accelerating some real innovations.”
“One of the great things that Doha has done well in the innovation space is the ability for any global creative team to find access to funds and also find a market to do the proof of concepts,” he added.
He further said, “I think the region for the past two years have been complementing one another in terms of focus on investments, infrastructure and the ecosystems required for that innovation. One of the things I personally see and hope for is our region starting to export innovation globally. I think we have the agility and the leadership vision to be able to do that.”
Highlighting the public-private collaboration in the cloud and AI adoption in local market, Darras pointed out “I think the private-public partnership is critical, and we look at it in two dimensions. One is to be able to have private enterprises take up the investments done directly or indirectly by the government so that there’s a proof that those sovereign cloud capabilities and the cloud solutions and the AI that is cloud native does work.
“The other dimension is we also need to be able to encourage a lot of talent and innovation that sometimes comes from extremely small private sector that is individuals. And as long as we can couple both of these, some great things will happen in Doha and for the region,” he added.
Commenting regarding how Deloitte is helping in the advancement of the region and locally in Qatar, Darras noted that Deloitte announced a few weeks ago the center of excellence for cloud adoption. “We are noticing nearly 30% of the success of AI and agentic AI is driven by the availability of reliable in private or sovereign cloud.
