KPMG Lower Gulf Limited (KPMG LG) has entered into a strategic teaming relationship with Alibaba Cloud in the UAE to share technological capabilities and facilitate digital transformation across multiple industries in the UAE.

Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group, offers strong cloud computing and artificial intelligence capabilities. 

This relationship between KPMG LG and Alibaba Cloud is in line with the UAE’s growing focus on digital technologies – including harnessing the power of cloud and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to drive transformation across a number of sectors. 

According to the IMD World Digital Competitiveness Ranking 2018, the UAE is one of the most advanced digital economies in the world. The UAE also moved up in the overall list to the 17th place, ahead of many developed economies including Germany, New Zealand, Ireland, France and Japan. 

This relationship between KPMG LG and Alibaba Cloud will leverage KPMG’s enterprise solutions and Alibaba’s strong digital capabilities to help organizations, including small and medium-sized enterprises, establish a robust ecosystem with cloud services infrastructure. 

Nader Haffar, CEO of KPMG LG, said: “KPMG is at the forefront of digital evolution and has adopted business-wide changes that align with the UAE’s vision for a digital future. We believe that this strategic relationship with Alibaba Cloud may help achieving the aim that digital transformation across the private and public sector in the UAE is not a one-off program; rather a continuous process of integrating high volumes of data to address the ever-growing needs of high performance and secure cloud infrastructure. Our goal is to leverage our combined digital strengths and provide better experiences for consumers, customers, employees and citizens.”

As part of its global digital agenda, KPMG International also teamed up with Alibaba Cloud in September to form a joint strategy team to develop cloud infrastructure solutions for clients to expand into new markets, with a focus on data security, regulatory compliance and seamless integration.