International Data Corporation (IDC) has formally announced the latest installment of its cutting-edge IDC Saudi Arabia CIO Summit, confirming that the event will take place on September 8–9 at the Four Seasons Hotel in Riyadh.
This year’s edition will run under the theme ‘Where IT Meets Business’ and will drive home the importance of closely aligning IT and business functions at a time when organisations across the region are faced with the challenge of implementing emerging products and services while simultaneously trying to improve operational efficiency.
The event will attract more than 200 of the Kingdom’s most influential CIOs, technology decision makers, and government advisors from across a broad vertical spectrum. “The annual IDC Saudi Arabia CIO Summit continues to grow from strength to strength and plays an important role in both shaping and reflecting opinion across the region’s constantly evolving ICT sector,” says Abdulaziz Al-Helayyil, IDC’s regional director for Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Bahrain.
“IDC recognises that the ability to rapidly correlate IT project spending with critical business priorities is essential, with CIOs increasingly required to demonstrate the business value of their projects and embrace the strategic benefits their businesses are striving to achieve. Against this backdrop, the IDC Saudi Arabia CIO Summit 2015 will explore the need for IT plans to include strong business justifications alongside the well-worn IT metrics that typically examine application delivery in isolation.” The exclusive, invitation-only event will also see the official launch of IDC’s IT Executive Programs in Saudi Arabia, and to mark this occasion IDC will be hosting a series of informative workshops on the first afternoon of the Summit. Presented by some of IDC’s most senior global thought leaders, the workshops will help today’s time-constrained IT executives make more effective business decisions, with the following themes all on the agenda:
• ‘Cloud Transition Strategies’ – Erik Beggren, Vice President for Research, IDC
• ‘Enterprise IT Transformation: Creating and Implementing Your Mobility Strategy’ – Stephen Elliot, Vice President for Research, IDC
• ‘Government Digital Transformation: The New Era of Citizen Experience’ – Massimiliano Claps, Research Director for EMEA, IDC Government Insights
• ‘Enterprise Architecture: Optimising 3rd Platform Opportunities’ – Mike Rosen, Vice President for Research, IDC
• ‘IT Talent Management: Achieving Critical Priorities to Support Business Transformation’ – Serge Findling, Vice President for Research, IDC
• ‘Beyond Cost Consolidation: Adopting Shared Services to Drive Service Excellence and Business Agility’ – Olivier Schaller, Associate Vice President, IDC
“Designed with the needs of IT leaders, enterprise architects, and line-of-business heads in mind, our IT Executive Programs comprise a unique family of bespoke research and advisory options and offer unprecedented peer group access to IDC’s exclusive Technology Advisory Council,” says Jyoti Lalchandani, vice president and managing director, IDC Middle East, Africa, and Turkey.
“This year’s CIO Summit is running under the theme of ‘IT Meets Business’, a concept that is very much reflected in the makeup of the event’s agenda. And while the Summit has long attracted the Kingdom’s foremost technology leaders, this latest installment will host a much more diverse range of corporate strategists, with representatives in attendance from the fields of marketing, finance, accounting, operations, and HR, to name just a few.”
The Summit will launch vertical-focused tracks, with the spotlight shining on the region’s government, banking and finance, and energy sectors. And with the event representing the largest social gathering of CIOs in Saudi Arabia, numerous local ICT vendors will join a host of major global giants to present their unique insights into the latest trends shaping tech adoption across the wider region, while a variety of senior line-of-business executives will also be on hand to offer that all-important non-IT perspective.
To ensure the very latest technologies will be covered at the Summit, IDC has already partnered with some of the world’s foremost ICT players, including: EMC, Wareef, and HP in partnership with Intel as Summit Partners; F5 Networks, Oracle in partnership with Intel, BlackBerry, AEC, VMware, and Schneider Electric as Platinum Partners; Infoblox, Cognizant, Vision Solutions, Informatica, Juniper in partnership with Salec, Fortinet, Symantec and Veeam Software as Gold Partners; Lenovo and iLead as Vertical Partners; and Global Knowledge, Innovative Solutions, and Integrated Telecom Company as Lunch Partners.
For more information about IDC’s Saudi Arabia CIO Summit 2015 and to learn about the range of flexible partnership opportunities on offer, please contact Abdulaziz Al-Helayyil, IDC’s regional director for Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Bahrain, on +966 11 263 2962 or at [email protected]. You can also tweet about the Summit using the hashtag #IDCSAUDICIO or visit the dedicated event website at www.idcciosummitksa.com.
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