Gitex Conference 2007 discusses enterprise ICT strategies for regional CIOs and IT professionals

Delivering the keynote speech was Mr. Zaki Sabbagh, CIO of Zamil Industrial Investment Co, based in Saudi Arabia. Mr. Zaki has 13 years experience in IT Service Management and has been awarded in 2004 as the "IT Manager of the Year" and "Middle East CIO of the Year". He based his presentation on the topic "CIO's Master Plan for Building Core ICT System to Serve GCC Mega Projects" and shared his experiences in terms of business & technological challenges of ZIIC for new projects.

Continuing on the same theme, Mr. Adam Hughes, Head of Indian Operations of PA Consulting Group UK, provided insight-based approach to success in CRM programs that focuses on business result rather that on the technology solution which places customer value at the centre of business design and change implementation. His topic "Capturing Customer Value" highlighted the primary reasons for the failure of CRM programs and the strategy needed from a crucial to successful CRM implementation.

Mr. Yasar Yilmaz, Sr. Manager for Business Consulting, Financial Services of Oracle Middle East & Africa threw light on the importance of integration of various business application on a standardized way from IT and business perspectives. During his presentation, Mr. Yilmaz highlighted the most common pitfalls and recommendations to avoid this upfront.

Dr. Christine Hansen, President of Le Ciel, Inc. a nonprofit corporation in USA based his discussion on "Forecasting Government (User) Market in Open Source Technology". She has been working with Unites Nations on the Digital Reading Portal, an initiative to provide internet access to all people of the world in their native languages, active in eGovernance projects whereby emerging governments are presented with open source options for their IT needs. Explaining the same, she said, "any technology purchased by governments must have full connectivity, high availability and transparency".

Prof. Basie Von Solms, President-Elect of International Federation for Information Processing and Chairman of the Academy for Information Technology of the University of Johannesburg, South Africa presented on the "Relationship Between Corporate Governance, Information Governance & Information Security Governance'', and discussed the Basic Framework for Information Security Governance. Professor provided the implementation approach to create an Information Security Governance (ISG) Environment.