Regional Chief Information Officers hosted by Oracle discuss service-oriented architecture, business intelligence, and enterprise security

These areas were among the pressing concerns discussed with IT management in a series of CIO roundtables that were hosted by Oracle. The region's largest banks, oil companies, trading conglomerates, and government departments participated in these roundtables, held in Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Dammam, Dubai, Jeddah, Kuwait, Qatar and Riyadh. A similar CIO roundtable will be held in Oman during the month of December.

"Our feedback from the technology managers within the Middle East organizations is that these managers are being given a very real opportunity to influence the success of their respective businesses through better decision-making tools and access to crucial information not only about finances but also about corporate performance management. At the same time, the regional CIOs are facing pressure to manage and protect vast stores of corporate data, migrate key applications, and run their IT environments as a utility, providing a highly available service just like water or power,"

said Ayman Abouseif, managing director of Oracle Gulf States.

One of the core areas of discussion during the Oracle CIO roundtables was the increased deployment of middleware by organizations in the region that are looking to either migrate and modernize older business applications or create more mobility through web-enabled applications. During the events, Oracle middleware experts highlighted how a large number of customers in the Middle East region had already leveraged middleware technologies to boost the agility of their businesses.

"Developing a service-oriented architecture is another initiative being considered by Oracle customers in the Middle East, and the CIO roundtables gave attendees a better understanding of how SOA can be employed to improve the process flows and decision-making capabilities of businesses. Customers are telling us that they want technology infrastructures that help them manage their companies based on the most up-to-date facts about sales, product availability, finances, and other key factors," Abouseif added.

Oracle's CIO roundtable series is the latest in a comprehensive schedule of events aimed at keeping customers all over the Middle East apprized of new technology developments. Recent Oracle events included roundtables for chief financial officers and human resources manager as well as informational events designed to inform developers in the region about the latest advances in the areas of integration, Java development tools, and IT architectures.