At the eleventh edition of its annual Middle East CIO Summit, IDC showcased innovative insights from respected industry experts and visionaries. His Excellency Wesam Lootah, CEO of Smart Dubai Government Establishment and founding member of IDC’s new CIO Advisory Council for the Gulf region, opened the event’s proceedings by delivering the Summit’s honorary keynote address. The event will conclude today with the announcement of IDC CIO Excellence Awards 2018 during a dedicated ceremony.
Jyoti Lalchandani, IDC’s group Vice President and Regional Managing Director – META said, “The emergence and widespread adoption of technologies like cloud and big data analytics, as well as highly disruptive innovation accelerators such as the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence/cognitive systems, robotics, augmented/virtual reality, 3D printing, and Blockchain will transform the ICT landscape as we know it. As such, IDC expects the next two to three years in the Middle East to be dynamic, disruptive, and laced with previously unimaginable levels of innovation.”
Day 1 saw a series of senior global and regional IDC analysts host 22 individually themed focus groups that enabled attendees to tailor the Summit experience to meet their own unique needs. These roundtable sessions offered advice on a broad range of technology issues such as accelerating digital transformation with private cloud, developing a cyber-resilience strategy, ensuring availability for the always-on enterprise, implementing hyperconverged infrastructure, and leveraging the intelligent capabilities of cognitive systems.
Today, delegates are set to hear from Pepper, the first social humanoid robot capable of understanding and reacting to human emotions, who will be exploring the role of robots in digital innovation. There will also be a series of dedicated country-focused sessions exploring the latest ICT developments in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Oman, with exclusive insights provided by respected end-user ICT visionaries.
IDC’s CIO Advisory Council will be on hand to distribute the awards, with winners being announced in the following categories: Best Customer Experience Transformation; Best Business Operations Transformation; Best Information Transformation; Best IT Service Transformation; and CIO of the Year.
