GEC NEWS WIREAs technology gets smarter with each passing day, a CIO shoulders the responsibility of being the ‘Smartest’. As 2016 dawns upon the region with new challenges and fresh opportunities, EC MEA has a chat with Mario Foster, Group Chief Information Officer, Al Naboodah Group Enterprises LLC who talks about his plans and predictions for the year and the organization that he heads.
The market has people with the “average knowledge”, but there is a major shortage in the Middle East when it comes to the “expert knowledge”, in addition to the fact that finding the right IT expertise is very expensive.
2015 Flashback— Overall, how good or bad was the year for your organization?
I believe it was a good year for business in general. When it comes to IT, it has been an excellent year evaluating our current IT infrastructure and our existing ERP system and we have already started taking limited improvement steps at the infrastructure front. We have started the year with an extensive exercise to fully evaluate and re-structure our Group IT organisation at all fronts, starting with the organisational structure, staff skillsets, specialisation within the team, and going through IT processes and procedures to try to find areas of improvement.
On the technology forefront, how well did your organization perform? What were the various projects that you undertook?
On the technology front we have completed implementing Microsoft Lync, which improved business communications and collaboration between team members. On the infrastructure side, we have upgraded our infrastructure equipment in limited key locations to ensure network redundancy and high availability. We have spent a lot of time evaluating different technologies and we had several POCs for different hardware and software products in order to be able to plan in advance for 2016 projects. At the ERP applications front, we refreshed our Oracle JDE hardware with a new hardware, which has shown a direct positive impact on our business users who were able enjoy a better response from the system, hence, increasing their productivity. We have also completed planning for two possible major IT projects to start in 2016; one of those projects is a new Data Center, where (if approved), it will be a state of the art Data Center utilizing the latest available technology. As we speak, we are at the final stage of evaluating the options we have for a Data Center.
Flashforward 2016— Where do you see the IT market trending to in 2016?
I expect IT spending to stay flat for 2016 unless we see more political stability in the region. I also see more IT investments going towards enabling business for mobile devices. Technology devices are getting smarter day after day through the increased use of sensors, and I expect this to continue and increase in 2016, and those smart devices will be prominent. I expect information gathering technology to be one of the hot areas in 2016 because the more information devices and tools have, the more possible it would be to give a useful advice to users of those devices.
What are the various hiccups that you wish to tackle?
One of the key areas I would like to address is the shortage of skills required to handle several projects at the same time. The market has people with the “average knowledge”, but there is a major shortage in the Middle East when it comes to the “expert knowledge”, in addition to the fact that finding the right IT expertise is very expensive. One of the other areas I need to keep an eye on during 2016 is the Shadow IT within the Group.
What are the key plans that you have in store? What are the various ‘Carry Forwards’ from 2015 that you wish to implement in 2016?
Carry forwards from 2015, we must complete our hardware servers’ consolidation, virtual servers’ consolidation, applications consolidation, infrastructure/network upgrade. As for 2016, we need to better address our current disaster recovery plan and solution, have a proper data center, refresh our ERP System, and invest in IT staff training on the latest technology that is needed for Al Naboodah Group.
Which technologies do you think will rule the floors of 2016? Which technologies would take a back seat?
Mobile technology in general will dominate the market more and more. 3D printing is a hot subject as well, but I don’t expect it to rule the floors in 2016 yet. I expect to see mobile applications utilization taking over standard web access. I also expect several “younger” and “lighter” ERP Systems to start taking over some of the big names in this arena.
