Dell CIO Robin Johnson recently announced his belief in the strength of the Middle East’s position when it comes to IT innovation, but how realistic is this viewpoint?
'Agility', 'business services' and 'cloud' stand as the ABC of the new CIO lexicon. How do we turn these latest buzzwords into actionable imperatives to produce new business capability for Middle East markets? Which of tomorrow's IT-led initiatives will produce real business advantage? How do we drive the necessary changes to strategy, to operations, and to services to benefit from them?
First the CIO MENA committees, who will be meeting at the CIO MENA summit at the end of November, believe we must identify those technologies and business service trends that could be assimilated into the CIO strategy to help drive new levels of competitive advantage and business value. They also discussed exploring how the changing role of the CIO could best serve the business. No longer solely about capacity, infrastructure or operations, new business demands could push the boundaries as Chief Innovation Officer, Customer Insight Officer or Cloud Interface Officer.
“The role of IT in the next decade must have a shift in its paradigm from focusing on IT to focusing on people. The next decades will even witness further enhancements and many additional technological innovations on top of what exists today,” commented representatives from BP - Farhan Mazhar, CIO Middle East & Pakistan, Landmark Group - Kirit Shah, CIO, GE Corporate - Neil Dyke, Corporate CIO EMEA, Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank - Lee North, SVP IT, Dubai Holding - Imad Choucair, CIO and Zain Group - Lynne Dorward, Group Chief Regulatory Officer.
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