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The Spring 2019 issue of the Middle East Point of View magazine puts technology in the spotlight, with topics such as machine learning in security of oilfield service businesses, cloud services, and trade sanctions, to workers’ welfare, immigration systems and regional co-working.

In their article on the security of Cloud services, Tamer Charife, Partner and Mohamad El Nems, Manager, Risk Advisory, Deloitte Middle East mention that cloud services can offer many benefits to organizations but that these organizations should have a full understanding on the subject in order to mitigate the risks associated with these services.

“Despite the benefits that adoption of Cloud services can offer (cost effectiveness, reliability or flexibility), organizations need to be aware of the associated risks and work on mitigating, or reducing them to an acceptable level commensurate with the overall risk appetite of the organization,” say the authors.

Adnan Fazli, Director, Energy, Resources and Industrials Leader for Financial Advisory, and Niraj Bachani, Manager, Financial Advisory, Deloitte Middle East, write that Middle East national oil companies (NOCs) have expressed their intention to invest in upstream capacity. Doing business with Middle East NOCs will require suppliers and service providers to demonstrate compliance with the in-country value addition requirements that have been introduced by Aramco (IKTVA), ADNOC (ICV) and Oman’s Ministry of Oil and Gas (ICV), with Kuwait and other producer nations likely to follow suit.

“The outlook for the energy sector in the Middle East is looking strong which changing dynamics designed to create value for the region. Oilfield service businesses that have successfully weathered the downturn are well placed to capitalize on this positive outlook if they have their fundamentals sorted,” say the authors.

In his article on the risks associated with delegating to third parties, Ethical fallout, Collin Keeney, Director, Financial Advisory, Deloitte Middle East states that understanding what is at stake when an organization works with third parties is important if that company is to avoid serious penalties and sanctions due, not their own, but to a third party’s fault.

In his article on the future of immigration and government interfacing, Automatic for the people, Amir Mayo, Senior Manager, International Tax, Deloitte Middle East, argues that an “automated immigration system will certainly expedite a laborious process” but that in some cases, when an algorithm or automated process alone simple cannot determine the “panoramic context” of a given situation, a human touch is still necessary.

In their article on workers’ welfare, Hisham Zeitouny, Partner and Dina Fakih, Principal, Risk Advisory, Deloitte Middle East, they argue that “welfare measures in an organization are one of the factors for the workers to stay and to work towards its success” and that businesses would do well to see implementing welfare measures as an investment rather than a cost.

In his article Not just (co)working 9 to 5, Oliver Morgan, Director, Financial Advisory, Deloitte Middle East, says that while in the Middle East “flexible office space occupies less than one percent of the region’s office stock”, a shift in key regulations could be the catalyst for major growth of this sector during 2019.