Gartner Symposium/ITxpo is the world’s most important gathering of CIOs and senior IT leaders, uniting a global community of CIOs with the tools and strategies to help them lead the next generation of technology and achieve business outcomes. Last week, from March 4th to 6th leading CIOs, senior business and IT leaders worldwide gathered in Dubai for the next edition, for insights to ensure their IT initiatives are key contributors to, and drivers of, their enterprise’s success.
This year the focus of the Symposium was drawn towards understanding the importance of coping with the rapid digital business transformation. The opening keynote was delivered by Gartner analysts Don Scheibenreif, Gavin Tay, John Kost and Leigh McMullen, examining how CIOs need to connect the dots on their digital journey- from culture to technologies strategy to operating models, so that they can adapt to a world of continuous change.
The Symposium also offered for some of the top companies to exhibit their most innovative solutions, giving an opportunity to visitors and customers to compare some of the world’s leading technologies in one place. This year some of the key exhibitors included, Amazon Web Services, Dell Technologies, du, IBM, Huawei, Oracle, Google Cloud, and more.
“The Gartner forum offers a wonderful opportunity as the top CIOs from across the Middle East region and globally come together to understand the latest trends and the path ahead. It also gives us the opportunity to meet up and discuss about our company’s latest innovations, and together find ways in which we can be helpful to them,” said Faisal Ameer Malik, Chief Technology Officer, Middle East Enterprise Solution Sales, Huawei.
The event also proved to be an important platform for companies who are keen to take the first step into the Middle East, to network and understand the key trends. Expressing about their interest to expand into the region, Victoria Molloy, Head of Sales, Support Revolution shared, “This is our second year participating at the Gartner Symposium. Since our goal this is year is to expand into the region, this event offers us a platform to understand what the appetite for
third party support is like here, and explore opportunities that we can work with. Through the event, we have had the chance to interact with some key organizations from the region. We hope that through the discussions we have here, we can make our presence felt.”
Talking about the growing need for digital transformation, Molloy further said, “We believe that digital transformation is in the future and it is where everybody is heading to. Our goal is to help organizations move forward on that path. The event will hopefully help us get out there and help organizations understand who we are, so when they are ready to look at third party support, they are aware of us and what we do.”
“As the only German vendor in the event, we are very well aware that the Middle East is a very important market for us. Being at the Gartner Symposium has given us a great opportunity to network with some key players from the region. We are very keen to support the Smart Dubai initiative and support companies to head towards the paperless direction,” said Lars Matschenz, International Sales Consultant, SER Group.
The event also marked the launch of a new report on 2019 Middle East IT spending. At the briefing session, Miriam Burt, Managing Vice President, Gartner, highlighted the key findings on Middle East business innovation trends and IT spending figures with a focus on the retail sector. The report stated that the IT spending in the MENA region is projected to reach $160 billion in 2019, a 1.8 per cent increase from 2018.
Talking about the idea of Continuous Next, Miriam Burt shared how the idea offers a framework for the rapid cultural shift due to digital transformation, the changing mindsets and the growing need for acceptance. Offering insights into some of the key findings in the report, she talked about the need for all companies to take ownership of the culture and keep an eye on what needs to be delivered to the customer.