World CIO 200 Summit completes Oman, Kuwait, Qatar edition with keynotes, panel discussion, awards

The World CIO 200 Summit 2021 continued with the third virtual event of the Oman, Kuwait, Qatar edition on 22^nd September with a theme “#Change” at the GCF Virtual Arena. Carrying forward its legacy of the past five years, this year, the roadshow is going to cover 36+ countries and provide a platform for 200+ exhibitors with 300+ engaging sessions. Over 4,000 C-Level executives will be recognised in the 2021 edition.

The event partners of The World CIO 200 Summit were Infoblox, F5, Exclusive Networks, BMB, Laserfiche Veritas, Finesse and Arcon.

The World CIO 200 Summit- Oman, Kuwait, and Qatar edition was opened by CEO Ronak Samantaray and Gurleen Rooprai, Project Lead, GEC Media Group.

During the event, there were four keynote speakers, and one panel discussion was moderated by Arun Shankar. The event was followed by The World CIO 200 awards. The event was streamed live from the GCF virtual arena and on Vimeo.

The World CIO 200 Summit has four award categories including Legend CIO, Leader CIO, Master CIO, and Next-generation CIO:

• Legend CIO: Lifetime achievement awards.
• Master CIO: Experience of more than 15-20 years and unparalleled technological experience in a career life span.
• Legend CIO: Experience of 10-15 years and multiple domain expertise.
• Next-generation CIO: Experience of 5-10 years or less and undertaken mammoth projects in a less span of time.

World CIO 200 Summit have four categories legend CIO- lifetime achievement awards, master CIO- Experience of more than 15-20 years and unparalleled technological experience in a career life span, legend CIO- experience of 10-15 years and multiple domain expertise and next-generation CIO- Experience of 5-10 years or less and undertaken mammoth projects in a less span of time.

Here are the highlights of the various speaker keynote presentations.

World CIO 200 Country IT Outlook

In the opening keynote address, Hussain AlNakkas, CIO, National Assembly of Kuwait highlighted how the roles and responsibilities of CIOs post Covid pandemic.

Inspire Keynote

Andy Malone, MVP, MCT said that the coronavirus has a major impact on the way of doing business and the way we work now. Andy Malone highlighted some of those changes and impacts in his speech and said, “Products like Zoom, Microsoft team exploded and working in the cloud becomes a new normal and for companies you have hybrid solutions.”

Technology Outlook 2022

Ahmed Farid, Territory Account Manager, Infoblox talked about the reason of customers embracing digital, security and operational challenges and improve incident response times through extensive integration.

Ahmed Farid said ransomware is everywhere and somewhere it is raising, and it is a natural result of where we reach. Now it is easier to attack on penetrates.

Leadership in Post Pandemic: A cross-border view

A cross-border panel discussion was moderated by Arun Shankar, Editor, GEC Media Group along with top panelists including Dr Sunil Kumar Pandey, Praful Thummar, Umesh Moolchandani, and Zubair Elahi.

Businesses led by their technology heads are revamping their infrastructure and application stack looking at vastly improved customer experience, higher returns from sales, business resilience and business continuity. Failed organisations and industries are experiencing consolidations, shakeouts, and exits for being laggards in technology adoption. The panelists answered three rounds of discussions as below:

• In your opinion, based on your organisation’s experiences and the market sector that you operate in, which specific technologies and applications have helped your organisation build resilience, agility, and leadership in the last 18 months.
• As the head of technology decision making, responsible for pulling your organisation through the challenges of the last 18 months, tell us about your engagement with business and other peers, who worked closely to revamp operations and processes, and facilitate further digitisation and cloud migration.
• As we move into the recovery phase of the pandemic and further, many business opportunities are appearing ahead. In your opinion, what technology initiatives should organisations put in place to further build leadership and resilience in their markets and industries.

2021 Outlook

Srihari Moningi, Territory Account Manager, Infoblox Qatar talked about Zero-Trust Model and DNS- Demystifying the concept for advancing security of infrastructure. Srihari Moningi said Infoblox has those solutions who can mitigate risk and briefed the old concept of architecture and new architecture including Cloud, SaaS, SD-Wan and WFH.

The announced winners of The World CIO 200 Summit – Oman, Kuwait and Qatar edition include:

Critical Elements of World CIO 200

• BOTS- The Annual CIO Handbook.
• Grand Finale with 2 days of networking, collaboration, knowledge sharing and CAC.
• Tech Talk: The most novel way of making your presentations come alive.
• DX Inspire Awards: Global 20 Recognition for the most Transformative Projects and Solutions.

What is new this year

The 2021 edition is ready to build roadmaps for strategic decision making and identify yardsticks that are the key drivers of growth in the digital world. While CIOs can pick on sessions to help them fast-track their growth, the solution providers can build their brand, present their solutions and network with 500+ relevant C-level IT decision-makers flown in from 14 countries.

The top CIOs from respective countries will arrive in the United Arab Emirates for the grand finale in an all-expense-paid trip, on 5-6^th December 2021 at Topaz Ballroom, Fairmont Ajman. The event will also be part of the Dubai Expo 2020.