IDC Hosts Inaugural CIO Summit in Kuwait Under the Patronage of the Country’s Central Agency for Information Technology

International Data Corporation (IDC) today hosted the inaugural edition of its IDC Kuwait CIO Summit. With more than 250 of the country's most influential ICT decision makers in attendance, the event took place at the Courtyard by Marriott Kuwait City under the theme 'Accelerating Your Journey to a Digital-First World' and featured an honorary keynote from Dr. Ammar Alhusaini, deputy director general of the Central Agency for Information Technology (CAIT) on the topic 'Driving Digital-First Government'.

"The pandemic was the catalyst for many organizations across the GCC to shift to a digital-first strategy," said Ranjit Rajan, IDC's vice president of research for the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa, as he opened the day's proceedings. "This means choosing digitalization options over non-digital options as a rule, while implementing or enhancing new products, services, channels, customer/employee experiences, or operational processes. Over 40% of the CIOs of large and medium-sized organizations we surveyed recently across the region say that the pandemic led them to embrace a digital-first strategy. This is a worldwide trend, with digital expenditure growing at four times the rate of GDP, and we expect that digital investments will account for 55% of all ICT spending by the end of 2024."

The agenda for the IDC Kuwait CIO Summit 2022 incorporated a series of sessions that saw senior IDC analysts, respected tech pioneers, and industry heavyweights from the vendor community present essential guidance on a diverse range of topics such as implementing a software-defined everything strategy, building a digital backbone for the new Kuwait, accelerating digital innovation with new-age technologies, transforming IT from a cost center to a profit center, developing dynamic resiliency in the face of unprecedented risk, and enabling security automation for the digital journey.

The day was brought to a close with two fascinating best-practice panel discussions that presented first-hand insights on vendor selection and management strategies and the need to drive greater alignment, collaboration, and co-innovation with lines of business. The expert end-user panelists for these sessions included:

• Dina S. Subuh, Director of Technology Capability Management, Ooredoo
• Dr. Reem AlShammari, Digital Transformation Corporate Solution Leader, Kuwait Oil Company
• Dr. Prof. Mohammed Almulla, Acting Vice President, Kuwait University for Academic Support Services
• Sameer Abduh, Head of IT Security Operations, Al Ahli Bank of Kuwait
• Dr. Rania Azmi, Founder & CEO, Alexandrite Decisions
• Ajai Thomas, CFO, Kuwait International Bank
• Yousef Elkourdi, CIO, City Group

To learn more about the IDC Kuwait CIO Summit 2022, please contact Sheila Manek at smanek@idc.com  or on +971 4 446 3154. You can also join the conversation on social media using the hashtag #IDCSACIO.

The IDC Kuwait CIO Summit 2022 was supported by the Central Agency for Information Technology (CAIT) and the following partners: Host Partner: VMware / Diyar United Company; Summit Partner: Software AG / Future Technology Systems Company; Platinum Partners: SentinelOne, Trend Micro, Qualys, OutSystems, Veeam; Exhibit Partners: Acronis, Freshworks, ManageEngine.