They are moving fast. Too fast for the pipes underneath them.
A new survey by Cisco and research firm Foundry says the digital backbone of Saudi Arabia and the UAE is nearing a breaking point. They asked 200 IT leaders in each country. The answer is pretty consistent: we are running out of space.
In Saudi Arabia, 86% of organizations say they have already hit network capacity limits—or will do so within the next 24 months. It’s even worse in terms of pure speed. Agentic AI is driving the bus. These aren’t human users scrolling emails. These are automated agents firing dozens of API calls and database queries every single second. They create dense traffic. Legacy networks didn’t account for that. They certainly didn’t budget for it.
Over the next three years, AI-driven network traffic is expected to more than triple.
Agentic AI workloads alone are projected to increase traffic by 116% in Saudi Arabia.
The UAE is just a step behind but no less committed to the rush. 81% expect to hit their campus and branch capacity ceilings within three years. Agentic AI here is projected to boost traffic by 126%, making it the heaviest load any single workload has carried recently.
What’s the problem? It’s that agentic AI behaves unlike anything else. Humans pause. They click. Agents don’t. They swarm. And the infrastructure isn’t built to swarm back.
Wi-Fi and Security Are Failing
The weakest link isn’t always the main server room. For 50% of UAE respondents and 46% in Saudi Arabia, it’s Wi-Fi. It’s the primary bottleneck right now. The air itself is getting too crowded with requests.
Then there’s security. Or rather, the lack of it. It’s getting harder to tell what’s legitimate traffic and what isn’t. 93% of Saudi respondents struggle with AI-related security challenges. So does 91% of those in the UAE. Even more telling, nearly 90% in both regions say AI is already causing actual damage.
You can’t protect what you can’t see. That’s the next hurdle. Over half of IT leaders—58% in Saudi and 54% in the UAE—say they don’t have enough visibility into where this AI traffic is flowing. They’re flying blind while the engines scream.
Budgets vs. Ambition
Here’s the tension. The ambition is sky-high. The wallets are tight.
More than 40% of Saudi organizations have already rolled out enterprise-wide AI agents. That beats the global average of 33%. The UAE isn’t far off with 34%, though nearly 99% there expect agentic AI to grow significantly in the next two years.
But paying for the network upgrades to support it? That’s where things stall. 42% of UAE IT leaders say budgets limit their ability to modernize “to a great extent.” That’s above the global average of 31%. In Saudi, it’s 34%.
Despite the crumbling road ahead, confidence remains stubbornly high. 74% of Saudi leaders and 76% of UAE leaders trust their AI strategy more than they trust their network’s ability to execute it.
It’s a bit of a paradox, isn’t it? Building a race car engine for a bicycle.
The Global Context
This isn’t just a local issue, but it is an early-warning system for the rest of the world. Cisco and Foundry surveyed over 3,400 decision-makers across 15 countries. The trend is clear: campus and branch network traffic from AI grew 36% in the last 12 months alone.
They expect another 96% jump in the coming year.
Only 15% of organizations globally say their networks are flexible enough for the scale required. Most are sitting on a timer. Three years out, the global expectation is triple the traffic. The Gulf is just experiencing it first. And harder.
