Day: March 5, 2026

Iranian Attacks on GCC Data Centers Put Tech Infrastructure Investment Risks into Sharp Focus

by Ismail Patel, posted in Big Data
A person with a beard speaking into a microphone at a conference, with an audience in the background.
I. Patel

Summary Bullets:

• Military strikes by Iran damaged AWS data centers in the UAE and Bahrain, highlighting vulnerability of the region’s data centers.

• Foreign investors, local tech decision makers, and insurance firms are now revisiting the calculus of risk in the data center boom.

Earlier this week, AWS data centers – two Availability Zones (AZ) in the UAE and another in Bahrain, all part of the AWS ME-Central-1 Region – suffered physical damage in escalatory strikes by Iran. The attacks disrupted 73 core services in the Bahrain AZ; at the time of writing, as per information shared by the AWS Health Dashboard, AWS stated that only 33 services were resolved. In the UAE, of the 112 impacted AWS services, only three have been resolved while others still face severe disruption or degradation. AWS strongly advised customers to enact disaster recovery plans and migrate workloads to unaffected AWS Regions in Europe, APAC, and the US.

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RingCentral Strengthens Two Contact Center Offers, Courtesy of OpenAI

by Gregg Willsky, posted in Big Data
A smiling man with glasses, wearing a light-colored shirt, with a warm expression.
G. Willsky

Summary Bullets:

• The infusion of OpenAI Frontier models into AIR and AVA marks a meaningful step for RingCentral in the contact center space.

• The announcement suffers some blemishes despite the positives. RingCentral should deliver functionality faster and provide adequate supporting detail.

RingCentral is infusing OpenAI Frontier models including GPT-5.2 into two voice-centric contact center offers: RingCentral AI Receptionist (AIR) and RingCentral AI Virtual Assistant (AVA). OpenAI Frontier is an enterprise platform introduced in February 2026 that enables organizations to build, deploy, and manage AI agents that access internal systems, share context, and execute inter-departmental workflows.

Continue reading “RingCentral Strengthens Two Contact Center Offers, Courtesy of OpenAI” →