Exclusive Interview | Sivaprakash V S: Autonomous IT Is Shaping the Next Phase of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 Journey

From Copilots to Agentic AI: How ManageEngine Is Shaping the Future of Enterprise IT Sivaprakash V S, Technical Evangelist at ManageEngine

Artificial intelligence is rapidly redefining the future of enterprise IT, shifting the focus from technology adoption to intelligent, autonomous, and resilient operations. In Saudi Arabia, where organizations are accelerating innovation in line with Vision 2030, businesses are increasingly seeking integrated platforms that simplify IT complexity, strengthen cybersecurity, and enable AI-driven decision-making.

In this exclusive interview with Gulf Tech News, Sivaprakash V S, Technical Evangelist at ManageEngine, discusses the evolution of Autonomous IT and Agentic AI, the growing importance of governance and data sovereignty, and how organizations can build AI-ready IT environments that balance automation with security, compliance, and human oversight. He also outlines ManageEngine’s strategic priorities for Saudi Arabia and explains how the company is helping enterprises prepare for the next generation of AI-powered IT operations.

Saudi Arabia is witnessing unprecedented investments in digital transformation and artificial intelligence. From your perspective, how is this changing the competitive IT landscape, and where does ManageEngine position itself within this fast-evolving ecosystem?

Saudi Arabia’s digital transformation is accelerating beyond technology adoption to building secure, AI-enabled, and resilient digital enterprises aligned with Vision 2030. As organizations embrace AI and hybrid IT, they are also navigating greater operational complexity, evolving cyber threats, and increasing regulatory expectations. At ManageEngine, we help organizations to simplify that complexity through an integrated platform for IT operations, cybersecurity, identity, endpoint management, and observability.

Rather than managing multiple painpoint solutions, customers gain unified visibility and control across their IT environment. We are also embedding practical AI capabilities across our portfolio to automate routine tasks, improve operational efficiency, and accelerate incident response while ensuring responsible human oversight. Combined with our strong regional presence and partner ecosystem, we remain committed to helping organizations in Saudi Arabia build secure, resilient, and future-ready digital operations.

What do you perceive as the primary challenges still facing Saudi organizations in their digital transformation journey—particularly around data governance, cybersecurity, and operational resilience? How can ManageEngine’s intelligent solutions help address these challenges while supporting Vision 2030?

Saudi organizations have made remarkable progress in their digital transformation journey, but the next challenge lies in managing growing IT complexity while ensuring security, compliance, and operational resilience. As AI adoption, cloud migration, and connected digital services expand, organizations need unified visibility across increasingly distributed environments, stronger identity and access controls, faster threat detection, and the ability to recover quickly from disruptions. At ManageEngine, we look to address these challenges through our integrated platform of IT solutions that specifically caters to customer needs and requisites under each IT niche.

Our solutions support organizations in meeting evolving governance and regulatory requirements while reducing operational overhead. By combining automation with practical AI capabilities, we help organizations streamline operations, strengthen security, accelerate incident response, and improve decision-making through actionable insights. As Saudi Arabia advances its Vision 2030 ambitions, our goal is to enable organizations to build secure, resilient, and intelligent digital ecosystems that can innovate confidently while maintaining business continuity.

How do you assess the maturity and readiness of Saudi enterprises to embrace Autonomous IT, and what factors determine whether an organization is truly ready for this transition?

Saudi enterprises are demonstrating strong momentum toward autonomous IT, driven by large-scale digital transformation initiatives, cloud adoption, and growing investments in AI. However, autonomous IT requires a strong operational foundation before thinking about deploying it. Organizations need high-quality data, integrated IT management platforms, standardized processes, and robust governance to ensure AI-driven automation delivers reliable outcomes.

Operational readiness is determined by an organization’s ability to unify visibility across its IT environment, automate repetitive workflows, enforce strong security and identity controls, and maintain human oversight for critical decisions. At ManageEngine, we believe the most successful approach is a phased one, where AI augments IT teams rather than replace them. By embedding intelligent automation across IT operations, security, and service management, we help organizations gradually build the maturity needed for autonomous IT while improving efficiency, resilience, and service delivery in line with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 objectives.

Many Saudi enterprises still operate with legacy systems and fragmented data environments. What practical steps should organizations take before introducing Autonomous IT capabilities, and how can ManageEngine support that transformation?

In the age of autonomous AI, Agentic AI and AI in general, organizations can derive the best value out of these emerging technologies by investing and building on a modern, well-governed IT foundation. For organizations operating with legacy systems and fragmented environments, the first step is to gain unified visibility across their IT infrastructure, eliminate operational silos, standardize processes, and establish strong data governance and security controls. Modernizing identity management, endpoint management, and IT service management is equally important to ensure AI has access to accurate and reliable operational data.

ManageEngine helps organizations take this journey incrementally rather than through large-scale disruption. Our integrated platform enables customers to consolidate IT operations, security, observability, and service management while leveraging automation to reduce manual effort and improve operational consistency. As organizations mature, they can progressively adopt AI-driven capabilities for predictive insights, intelligent automation, and faster incident response.

ManageEngine has been actively driving the shift from “Copilots” to “Agentic AI.” What does this evolution mean in practical terms for enterprises in Saudi Arabia, and how will it reshape day-to-day IT operations?

The shift from copilots to Agentic AI represents a move from AI that simply assists users to AI that can autonomously execute routine tasks, coordinate workflows across systems, and proactively recommend or initiate actions within defined governance boundaries. For Saudi enterprises, this means IT teams can spend less time on repetitive operational work and more time driving innovation and business outcomes.

At ManageEngine, we see Agentic AI as an evolution of intelligent IT management and not as a replacement for human expertise. Our AI-powered capabilities are designed to automate incident triage, accelerate root cause analysis, optimize service delivery, strengthen security operations, and enable proactive infrastructure management, while keeping humans in control of critical decisions. As organizations progress on their AI journey, Agentic AI capabilities will help them build more agile, resilient, and efficient IT operations, supporting Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 through greater productivity, faster decision-making, and improved digital service delivery.

As AI systems become increasingly autonomous, how does ManageEngine help organizations maintain transparency, explainability, governance, and human oversight while building trust in AI-driven operations?

As AI becomes more autonomous, trust must evolve alongside it. At ManageEngine, we believe AI should enhance human decision-making, not replace it. Organizations need AI systems that operate within clearly defined governance frameworks, provide transparency into how decisions are made, and allow IT teams to retain oversight over critical actions.

Our approach is to embed AI responsibly across our solutions by ensuring that automation is explainable, auditable, and aligned with organizational policies and security requirements. Human intervention remains central for high-impact decisions, while AI handles repetitive tasks, surfaces actionable insights, and recommends the best course of action. We also help organizations strengthen governance through unified visibility, robust identity and access controls, and comprehensive monitoring across their IT environment. This enables enterprises to adopt AI confidently by improving operational efficiency while maintaining accountability, compliance, and the trust that is essential for long-term AI-driven transformation.

Data sovereignty is becoming a top priority for organizations across Saudi Arabia. How is ManageEngine helping customers embrace AI while ensuring compliance with local regulations and data privacy requirements?

Data sovereignty has become a strategic priority for organizations in Saudi Arabia, particularly as they accelerate AI adoption while navigating evolving regulatory and privacy requirements. To unlock AI’s full potential, organizations must ensure that data remains secure, well-governed, and managed in accordance with local compliance obligations.

At ManageEngine, we help customers build AI-ready IT environments without compromising on security or governance. Our solutions provide comprehensive visibility, strong identity and access management, data protection, and security monitoring to help organizations safeguard sensitive information and maintain compliance. We also offer flexible deployment options, including on-premises and cloud, enabling customers to align with their data residency and operational requirements. As enterprises embrace AI, our focus is on helping them innovate responsibly, ensuring that AI-powered operations are built on a foundation of security, privacy, governance, and trust while supporting Saudi Arabia’s broader digital transformation and Vision 2030 objectives.

How can autonomous AI agents help organizations respond faster to cybersecurity threats while ensuring that critical decisions remain under appropriate human oversight?

Autonomous AI agents can significantly improve cybersecurity response by detecting patterns faster, correlating alerts across systems, prioritizing threats, and initiating predefined response actions before incidents escalate. For organizations managing complex hybrid environments, this can reduce alert fatigue, shorten investigation time, and help security teams focus on the most critical risks.

At ManageEngine, we believe autonomy must be balanced with accountability. AI agents should operate within clear governance frameworks, with role-based access, audit trails, policy-driven workflows, and escalation mechanisms for high-impact decisions. Routine actions such as alert enrichment, ticket creation, and initial containment can be automated, while critical decisions such as isolating business-critical systems or enforcing major remediation actions remain under human review. This approach enables organizations to strengthen cyber resilience, accelerate response, and improve operational efficiency while ensuring that security teams retain control, transparency, and trust in AI-driven operations.

As autonomous AI continues to take on more operational responsibilities, how do you see the role of IT professionals evolving over the next few years? What new skills and career opportunities do you expect to emerge in AI-driven enterprises?

As autonomous AI becomes more capable, the role of IT professionals will evolve from managing routine operations to orchestrating intelligent systems, driving strategic initiatives, and ensuring AI operates securely and responsibly. Rather than replacing IT teams, AI will augment their capabilities by automating repetitive tasks, enabling professionals to focus on innovation, resilience, governance, and business outcomes.

We expect growing demand for skills in AI governance, cybersecurity, data management, automation engineering, observability, and AI-assisted IT operations. Professionals who can combine technical expertise with an understanding of risk, compliance, and business strategy will be particularly valuable. New roles such as AI operations specialists, automation architects, and AI governance leads are likely to become increasingly common.

• Looking ahead to the second half of 2026, what are ManageEngine’s primary strategic objectives in the Saudi market? Are there particular industries or sectors that you see as key growth opportunities?

Looking ahead to the second half of 2026, ManageEngine’s primary objective in Saudi Arabia is to continue supporting customers with a customer-centric approach, helping them address their current IT priorities while preparing for the next phase of digital transformation. As organizations accelerate AI adoption, our focus will be on strengthening cybersecurity, simplifying IT complexity, and enabling integrated IT platforms that can support future AI-powered infrastructure.

We see strong growth opportunities across government, finance, healthcare, energy, education, and large enterprises that are modernizing operations in line with Vision 2030. These sectors require secure, resilient, and scalable IT environments to deliver reliable digital services. ManageEngine aims to work closely with customers and partners to understand their evolving needs, provide practical solutions, and help them build intelligent, secure, and future-ready IT ecosystems.

As LEAP 2026 approaches, will ManageEngine be participating in the event? What will be the key highlights of your participation, and which new AI-driven solutions or innovations do you plan to showcase?

LEAP 2026 will be an exciting platform for everyone involved to understand the current scenario of digital progress and the regional needs and demands of enterprise IT users. ManageEngine will be participating at LEAP 2026 and we will be showcasing our latest updates to our enterprise IT management portfolio and how our latest updates will tackle and address our customers’ present challenges and how it can be customized to their specific use cases.