AVEVA World headed to Milan this year — and it brought lots of big announcements. With more than 4,000 customers and partners from around the world in attendance, and a huge Demo Innovation Zone showcasing the latest advancements in product capabilities, it was THE event of the year for the industrial sector!

The Shift AVEVA Is Making — and Why It Matters

AVEVA CEO Caspar Herzberg was clear in his keynote: no single company can move fast enough alone. The industrial world is changing at a pace that requires collaboration, co-innovation, and an open ecosystem of technology partners working around a common data foundation.

That strategy is already visible in the partnerships AVEVA announced at this year’s event:

• Esri — the leading GIS provider — is now working with AVEVA to explore how geographically distributed asset data can power digital twin solutions. For organizations managing infrastructure or utilities across large geographic footprints in the GCC, this is particularly relevant.
• ServiceNow and Snowflake join Databricks as strategic data partners, with a shared objective: making OT data more accessible and ready for combination with IT data to support analytics, AI, and predictive applications.
• AVEVA CONNECT is now available on Amazon Web Services (AWS) — giving customers the flexibility to use CONNECT within their existing cloud infrastructure strategy, whether that is Microsoft Azure or AWS.

Together, these moves signal that AVEVA is building the industrial data ecosystem that advanced analytics and AI applications need to deliver real value — not just in capability, but in practice.

The GCC-Specific Announcement That Changes the Conversation

Of all the announcements from AVEVA World, one carries particular significance for customers in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar.

“One of the major challenges in deploying CONNECT as an OT cloud solution has been concerns around data sovereignty and cybersecurity. AVEVA has listened to customer concerns and is making CONNECT available in a way that helps address those requirements.” — Abdallah Abdallah, CEO at AITS

AVEVA has announced that CONNECT will be deployable on private cloud environments. This is a major strategic shift.

For GCC industrial organizations — particularly those operating in critical infrastructure — the hesitancy around cloud-hosted OT data has been well-founded. Data sovereignty requirements and cybersecurity policies have made full SaaS adoption difficult in markets like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, where regulations around where data is stored and who can access it are taken seriously.

Private cloud deployment means that CONNECT services — including CONNECT Data Acquisition, CONNECT Visualization, and Advanced Analytics — can now be deployed within a customer’s own private cloud environment or through a local cloud provider. The business value of cloud-hosted industrial software no longer requires compromise on data sovereignty.

As Abdallah noted: organizations operating in this region already have valid, well-reasoned concerns. This announcement provides a credible path forward.

New Partnership: TimeSeer.ai — Because Data Quality Is Not Optional

AVEVA Select Gulf also announced a new strategic partnership with TimeSeer.ai. The purpose is straightforward, and it addresses one of the most overlooked problems in industrial analytics: bad data.

Most industrial organizations have millions of data points stored in PI System and other historians. Before that data is used to train AI models, feed analytics platforms, or inform operational decisions, TimeSeer identifies and corrects bad sensor data, removing noise, flagging anomalies, and structuring the data so that downstream applications are working with accurate information.

“It is not about having lots of data. It is about having the right data. Garbage in, garbage out.” Abdallah Abdallah, CEO at AITS

This matters because the credibility of any predictive or AI-driven analytics capability depends entirely on the quality of the data on which it is built. Customers who have invested in solutions such as AVEVA Historian and PI System now have a clear pathway to ensuring their data is fit for purpose before it powers decisions.

TimeSeer is a strategic capability addition — not a standalone tool, but part of an integrated approach to making OT data genuinely useful.

What Is Happening with the Core Product Portfolio

One message from AVEVA World deserves to be heard clearly: AVEVA is not abandoning its existing product portfolio in favour of cloud and AI.

AVEVA InTouch remains the world’s leading HMI. PI System continues to receive significant investment. AVEVA System Platform is actively evolving. There are also significant developments underway in Unified Operations Center (UOC) and Unified Engineering — areas that matter greatly to engineering and operations teams across the GCC.

The important message for existing customers is this: your current investments are protected. AVEVA is modernizing and extending the platform, not replacing it.

What GCC Organizations Should Do Now

If your organization has been holding back on cloud adoption because of data sovereignty or cybersecurity concerns, private cloud deployment of AVEVA CONNECT changes the calculation. Now is the right time to begin the conversation about where CONNECT could fit within your cloud strategy.

The value of connected, cloud-accessible OT data is already proven. Organizations that have adopted SaaS-based industrial software are making faster, better-informed operational decisions. The question for GCC organizations is no longer whether cloud industrial software delivers value; it is how to deploy it in a way that meets your security and regulatory requirements.

Private cloud deployment answers that question.