Focus on 'Big Picture and Bottom Line' key for CIOs in the Middle East

Chief Information Officers (CIOs), executives responsible for IT strategy in Middle East organizations, must increasingly take a holistic approach to supplying both staff and enterprises with the IT tools they need to gain competitive advantage, according to technology leaders set to meet in Dubai next month.

The more than 120 people participating in the IDC CIO Summit recognize that they must look beyond IT to its effects on productivity, competitiveness, and overall corporate costs.

As recently as five to 10 years ago, IT solutions in the region tended to be desktop-based applications or network management systems that facilitated long-established methods and outputs. Today's networked office coupled with the rapid expansion of memory and processing power has resulted in the increasing implementation of power-hungry solutions and appliances that are reshaping business processes. Moreover, back-end EAS systems, customer-facing interfaces, and the upsurge in worker mobility have created an enormously complex IT ecosystem that has introduced serious management challenges.

The numbers tell part of the story. For instance, complexity is driving demand for solutions that can help CIOs and managers handle IT's rapid evolution. According to IDC, the global market for application lifecycle management services alone passed $45.3bn in 2006.

Future demand will be partially fueled by technology that shifts the business paradigm, like Web 2.0, SOA, composite applications, and increasing mobility and VoIP deployments. The uptake of outsourcing IT security, storage, and key business functions with large IT components have added additional layers to IT management in the rapidly evolving Middle East.

However many of the region's enterprises have yet to connect the surge in complexity to issues like productivity, overhead costs, employee alienation, and paradigm shifts in approaching IT - something CIOs must consider when designing a top-down IT strategy.

"Given how IT affects employee relations and overall costs means CIOs should be one of the key players in determining the basic shape of an organization as it grows its business," says Jyoti Lalchandani, Vice President and Regional Managing Director of IDC MEA. "For instance, an IT deployment may be passively rejected by staff that retreat to the familiarity of old methods or actively rejected through open refusal to use the new system. Moreover, total cost assessments often leave out operational costs related to facilities management and energy use and lost productivity from training time."

With Dubai Internet City working as its technology partner, and with support and speakers from Cisco, Dell, Etisalat, Intel, Nokia, SAP, Symantec, Injazat Data Systems, Alcatel Lucent, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, ITS2, McAfee, APC-MGE, Trend Micro, IBM, and Blackberry, the event is set to be one of the largest and most prestigious invitation-only IT networking events ever held in the region.

Carsten Hasselbalch, Director, Global Outbound Marketing at Dell, which is joining Intel in a co-partnership at the CIO Summit, flags complexity as a primary issue facing CIOs in the region. He says: "IT has become too complex, putting unneeded strain on companies and hindering growth. Dell has taken a stand against complexity and is forging a new path to simplify IT by reducing the cost and complexity, enabling organizations to reclaim the time, money, and personnel needed to drive true innovation in daily business processes."

A major theme at IDC's CIO summit will be the challenges stemming from larger user and business contexts beyond the immediate technology - like long-term costs.

Peter Hannaford, Vice President for Business Development, APC-MGE - EMEA/LAM, a CIO Summit Partner, points out that in many of the region's organizations, the cost of using IT can exceed the original price of the equipment. He says: "In most enterprises, energy expenses have traditionally been included in the budgets for facilities, operations, or another division. Leaps in processing power and the enlarged IT footprint within organizations have dramatically changed this - especially with regards to datacenters, adding new lines to IT balance sheets and potentially pulling funds away from human and technical resources. APC-MGE is dedicated to developing strategies for implementing data centers that keep costs low and which help ensure that CIOs have the resources they need to take their firms forward."

Designed to help overworked CIOs tackle the challenges of managing, planning, and matching technology to business goals, the summit will take place on March 16-17 at Dubai's Grand Hyatt. The two-day event will focus on the big-picture trends shaping the ICT industry and business practices.

The Region's First IDC CIO Summit

IDC thought leaders and ICT industry experts will also be on hand at IDC's CIO Summit to provide an in-depth understanding of the new role of the CIO, covering such topics as:

• The Role of the CIO in a Region of Change
• What Keeps CIOs up at Night: Governance, Risk, Compliance?
• Datacenter Transformation and Enhancement of Business Strategy
• Transformation of ICT Societies
• Enterprise Mobility
• Simplifying Technology for Business Transformation
• Operational Excellence and Business Agility
• IT Services Outsourcing as Business Enabler
• The Dynamic Datacenter
• Green IT and Energy-effective ICT
• Managing, Motivating, and Retaining Staff
• The Future of IT and Communications Markets and Their Impact on Business

IDC's groundbreaking CIO Summit is expected to involve an elite group of 100 CIOs.