Kingdom's leading ICT decision makers and thought leaders gather at Jeddah Hilton for IDC CIO Summit

Held at Jeddah's Hilton Hotel and running under the theme of 'Driving the Agenda for Business Success', the two-day conference offers a fascinating insight into the emerging ICT trends and technologies of today and tomorrow, as well as an unrivalled opportunity to network with industry leaders and CIOs.

Senior international IDC analysts and leading regional thought leaders from some of the world's most influential ICT vendors are on hand to deliver a series of pioneering presentations to the assembled CIOs, who hailed from all corners of Saudi Arabia. This much-anticipated gathering of the Kingdom's most dynamic IT decision makers comprises representatives of some of the biggest organizations operating in Saudi Arabia today, covering a diverse range of vertical sectors that includes government, banking and finance, aviation, oil and gas, telecommunications, construction and real estate, education, manufacturing, and group organizations.

IDC's senior vice president of research for EMEA and managing director for CEMA, Steven Frantzen, and vice president and managing director for the Middle East, Africa, and Turkey, Jyoti Lalchandani, got the event underway this morning by describing the global ICT industry as being in the midst of the sort of technology shift that takes place only "once every 20-25 years". The four forces that characterize this shift, they argued, are cloud, mobile, social, and big data analytics, and they predicted an explosion of new solutions built on this new platform, along with rapidly expanding consumption of all of the above in Saudi Arabia.

Against this backdrop, senior executives from Intel, Saudi Telecommunications Company (STC), and IBM, delved deeper into the impact of these emerging technologies on enterprise ICT strategies. Intel's general manager of IT, Abdulaziz Al Noghaither, analyzed the key trends shaping the future of enterprise IT and their impact, describing Intel's own internal IT strategy for the new technology paradigms, Hajar Al Badrany, the general manager for infrastructure at STC, then offered advice on developing a comprehensive services strategy that incorporates the benefits of emerging models such as datacenter-based services, managed services, and cloud, while Dr. Montassar BenMrad, an executive partner at IBM Global Business Services, acknowledged that CEOs are now looking beyond the benefits of connected supply chains and more integrated back-office systems by shifting their focus to the power and potential of recent advances in social media and analytics.

The delegates were then split into two individually themed parallel sessions that were specially designed to enhance the relevance of the topics under discussion for each CIO. Hosted by IDC's Ranjit Rajan and featuring speakers from Kaspersky Lab, First Information Security, Fortinet, and McAfee, the first track focused on the future of security and the evolving role that CIOs will have to play, and included discussions on the business and strategic impact of cybercrime, the critical importance of effective governance, risk management, and compliance functions, the implementation of network security consolidation strategies, and the need to ensure visibility of security and its management across all key business and operational processes.

With a focus on enhancing communication and collaboration, improving sourcing, achieving value chain efficiencies, enriching customer relationships, and optimizing resource utilization, the second session was themed 'The Innovative CIO: Technology and Process Innovations to Manage Costs and Drive Business Value'. Industry experts from Cognizant, Riverbed, Hitachi Data Systems, and Citrix joined IDC's Mark Walker to discuss cutting-edge strategies that enable organizations to connect and collaborate in real time, leverage the very latest technology solutions to simplify data access and management, embrace mobile work styles while enhancing IT control, and implement virtualization, consolidation, cloud computing, and disaster recovery without fear of compromising performance.

Following a break for lunch, the delegates returned en masse to hear IDC's senior vice president and chief analyst, Frank Gens, as he served up a compelling strategic view of the key global technology trends that constitute the 'Third Platform' - a host of new technologies that will define the future of the enterprise and consumer ICT industry through to 2020. The final session of the day featured a series of real-life case studies outlining successful implementations of groundbreaking technology solutions by Saudi Arabian Airlines, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM), King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Bindawood and Danube Supermarkets, and Northern Border University.

To ensure that the Saudi Arabia CIO Summit 2012 covers the very latest technology developments, IDC has partnered with a host of leading global, regional, and national vendors:
- Strategic Partner: Ministry of Communications and Information Technology
- Summit Partners: Intel, STC, IBM
- Platinum Partners: Fujitsu, Schneider Electric, Devoteam, Lexmark, Canon, and SAP
- Gold Partners: Riverbed, Cognizant, Kaspersky Lab, McAfee, First Information Security, Citrix Systems, Secureway Network Distributors, Fortinet, and Hitachi Data Systems
- Exhibition Partners: AirWatch, Dell, SonicWALL
- Lunch Partner: Interactive Intelligence Group
- Gala Dinner Partner: Future Systems
- Airline Partner: Saudi Arabian Airlines.

Day Two of the IDC Saudi Arabia CIO Summit 2012 opens tomorrow morning at 08.30 with Frank Gens hosting a panel of eminent Saudi Arabia CIOs as they discuss their business and technology challenges for 2012, outline their current priorities, and suggest strategies for addressing the hurdles that lie ahead.