IDC CIO Summit 2025

Architecting an AI-Fueled Business

17 - 18 Sep 2025

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Architecting an AI-Fueled Business

Saudi Arabia is in the midst of unprecedented national transformation, driven by ambitious Vision 2030 initiatives that aim to rapidly diversify the economy away from hydrocarbons. This has led to significant investments in giga projects such as NEOM, The Red Sea, Diriyah, and Roshn; mega sports events such as the Saudi Pro League, bids for the FIFA World Cup 2034 and the Winter Olympics 2030; and marquee global events such as World Expo 2030. In tandem, organizations in both the public and private sectors are undergoing transformation to upgrade their products, services, and operations to world-class levels.

Advanced technologies will underpin and enable these initiatives, leading to significant spending on applications, infrastructure, and cloud services. As the AI era unfolds, major investments are being made in AI and GenAI-enabled solutions including intelligence architecture, advanced big data analytics, next-gen intelligent automation, AIOps, and the convergence of AI with other technologies such as 5G connectivity, cloud, and IoT. Accordingly, IDC's META Digital Executive Survey revealed that 52% of organizations in Saudi Arabia are already prioritizing AI investments for the next 12 months, highlighting the substantial impact of AI in the country.

Why Attend?

Networking with Industry Leaders: Engage with top decision-makers, thought leaders, and solution providers from across the region to expand your professional network.

Expert Guidance on AI Strategies: Learn from a stellar lineup of C-suite executives, thought leaders, and industry analysts who will share their expertise on building AI-led intelligence architectures.

Uncover New Business Models: Discover how AI is creating new opportunities for business innovation and how to adapt to an unpredictable business landscape.

Future-Proof Your Business: Stay ahead of the curve by understanding the long-term implications of AI on business strategy, helping your organization thrive in the digital economy.

Cloud as the Foundation for AI: Explore how cloud platforms are enabling scalable, secure, and agile AI deployments, supporting the next wave of AI-driven innovation.

Address AI-Related Security Challenges and Solutions: Understand the risks associated with AI adoption, including security concerns around data breaches, AI model integrity, and compliance issues, and explore mitigation strategies and explore how AI can enhance cybersecurity strategies, enabling proactive threat detection and response capabilities.

Discover AI-Driven Innovation and Implementations: Understand how organizations are adopting and leveraging generative AI (GenAI) to drive business transformation across industries. And, how to scale GenAI technologies across business processes and IT infrastructure, ensuring cost-effective and trusted real-world case studies of implementations.

Future-Proof Your Business: Stay ahead of the curve by understanding the long-term implications of AI on business strategy, helping your organization thrive in the digital economy.

IDC CIO Advisory Council 2025

H.E. Eng. Anas Al-Reemi

Vice Governor, Technologies & Solutions, Digital Government Authority

H.E. Khalid AlGhligah

Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation, Ministry of Sports

Eng. Naif Sheshah

Chief Digital Officer & Assistant Deputy Governor for Planning and Development, Communications, Space & Technology Commission (CST)

Sundah Alsehali

Chief of Digital Transformation, Public Sector

Nayef Bardeesi

Deputy Mayor, Digital Transformation, Holy Makkah Municipality

Dr. Eyad Buhulaiga

Chief Data & Digital Strategy Officer, Saudi Electricity Company (SEC)

Alessio Garofalo

Chief Information & Technology Officer, Oxagon, NEOM

Ramez AlFayez

CITO, King Abdullah Financial District

Dr. Abdulrahman Al Khnaifer

CIO, King Saud University (KSU)

Eng. Majed Mohammad Ayoub Alshodari

CIO, Ministry of Hajj and Umrah

View all

Experience the Extraordinary

Join Adrian Hayes, World-Record Adventurer and Renowned Speaker, for an Inspiring Journey.

Events Highlights 2024

Key Themes

AI Everywhere

Digital Business strategies

Digital Economy Trends

IDC CIO Excellence Awards

To compete and thrive in the new digital economy, progressive CIOs across the region are increasingly transforming their customer engagements, business operations, and operating models by leveraging digital technologies. They are rapidly adopting advanced technologies such as AI and leveraging cloud solutions to accelerate transformation. They are also supported by line-of-business leaders in delivering business transformation.

Through the IDC CIO Excellence Awards 2025, IDC intends to honor those organizations and IT leaders that have conceptualized and successfully delivered digital transformation initiatives that brought about tangible results.

At IDC, we pride ourselves on enforcing the very highest levels of transparency and impartiality. As such, each nomination will be reviewed and validated using a multi-tiered process.

Agenda

Export Complete Agenda

8:00	Registration & Networking Arrive early & Stand a chance to be among 50 winners of a Apple HomePod Mini!
8:30	Event Opening Battle of The Beats...Where Rhythm Meets Tech!
8:35	IDC Welcome Address
	Jyoti Lalchandani Head of WW Events & MD - META, Central Asia, India, IDC
8:45	IDC Opening Keynote: CIO Strategies for Thriving in the Agentic AI Era
	As AI unleashes a wave of investment and innovation worldwide, Saudi Arabia is making significant moves to position itself as a global AI hub. Across industries, CIOs are building strategies for an AI-fueled business future. Generative AI, and now Agentic AI technologies, are already accelerating digital business transformation, and promise to have significant impact on digital innovation, customer experience and operational efficiencies. As they prepare their organizations for the Agentic AI era, CIOs need to develop critical capabilities around use case prioritization, AI governance, skills development, infrastructure for AI, and data-readiness. This session will provide Saudi CIOs with a playbook to help focus their efforts, address challenges, and unlock value from AI investments. Ranjit Rajan Vice President, Head of Research (META), IDC
9:10	From Vision to Velocity: Building the Intelligent Enterprise
	As AI moves from hype to impact, enterprises must rethink their foundations to thrive in a data-driven era. In this opening keynote, Tareq Alangari, CEO of e& enterprise, will share his vision for how organizations can harness AI, powered by cloud and intelligent infrastructure, to accelerate innovation and competitiveness. He will explore the building blocks of AI readiness — strategy, culture, and technology — and how public-private collaboration is shaping the future of digital transformation in the Middle East. This session will set the tone for a day focused on actionable insights and strategic priorities for architecting truly intelligent, AI-fueled businesses. Tareq Alangari CEO, e& enterprise Saudi Arabia Amine Chigani Global Head of Enterprise Technologists, AWS
9:30	Driving Real Value from Generative AI: A Framework for CIOs and Business Leaders
	Almost all analysts agree that while the majority of CEOs and government executives strongly believe in the potential of GenAI as a competitive advantage, they are not yet seeing that translate into real use cases for their business or institutions. This session will provide the UnifyApps point of view on the specific and tangible opportunities, solutions, and benefits. Haitham Elkhatib Co-Founder & Chief Revenue Officer, UnifyApps
9:50	Everything as a Service - The New Infrastructure Trends in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
	Modern IT infrastructure in Saudi Arabia is being reshaped by “Everything as a Service.” This session highlights how XaaS enables organizations to become more agile, innovative, and growth-focused. Leaders will explore ways to leverage modern IT models to accelerate transformation, optimize resources, and drive strategic impact. Learn how adopting XaaS and infrastructure modernization aligns enterprises with Vision 2030, strengthens competitiveness, and unlocks long-term value. Erick Baduy CEO, Board Member, Founding Partner, Edarat Group
10:10	Building the AI-Ready Enterprise: Vision for Agentic Infrastructure
	As AI continues to redefine the IT landscape, organizations must reimagine their infrastructure to thrive in the agentic era. This keynote will explore the latest innovations — such as AgenticOps, the AI Canvas, and advanced cloud control — that are transforming enterprise infrastructure from reactive to intelligent and secure. Discover how AI-optimized platforms spanning networking, security, and observability are empowering enterprises to operate at AI scale with greater confidence and control. Tarik Alturki Director, System Engineering, Cisco
10:30	From Vision to National Impact: AI, Orchestration and the Digital Future
	Mamoun Masood Regional Director, Saudi & Northern Gulf, Nintex
10:50	AI that Generates Human Value Outcomes: Full-Stack Innovation for Vision 2030
	Join this session to explore how artificial intelligence is transforming industries — from marketing and IT operations to customer experience — delivering measurable efficiency gains and cost savings. With 90% of the world’s data created in just the past two years and AI projected to become a $407 billion market by 2027, the time to act is now. Discover how a full-stack AI approach can meet diverse needs across personal devices, private systems, and the cloud, enabling solutions that drive meaningful outcomes. Dr. Mauro Arruda Director, AI Solutions & Services, EMEA Leader, Lenovo
11:10	Fireside Chat: Sovereign AI at Scale – Accelerating the Kingdom’s AI Ambitions
	As Saudi Arabia advances its national AI strategy, safeguarding data with secure, scalable infrastructure is essential. This session will explore how Oracle and NVIDIA are uniquely positioned to deliver hyperscaler-grade, sovereign AI infrastructure within the Kingdom. We will highlight how NVIDIA’s cutting-edge AI and accelerated computing technology, combined with Oracle Cloud’s in-country regions, high-performance networking, and compliance-ready architecture, come together to support this goal. Attendees will gain insights into how enterprises and government entities can safely and efficiently build, train, and deploy AI models without compromising data control or regulatory compliance. We’ll also share real-world examples and look ahead at how Oracle and NVIDIA’s joint innovations support Vision 2030’s goal of elevating Saudi Arabia’s role in the global AI ecosystem. Mohamed Taha Benssiba Vice President & Head of AI, Europe South, Middle East, & Africa, Oracle Ahmed Mostafa AI Ecosystems Adoption Lead (META), NVIDIA
11:30	Unleashing Efficiency: The Rapid Progression of IT Automation
	Addressing the challenges organizations face in adopting and scaling automation initiatives while highlighting the opportunities presented by these technologies in driving digital transformation. This session delves into the transformative power of automation technologies, highlighting their pivotal role in driving efficiency, optimizing, workflows, and reshaping the future of work. Mohammed Alobaid VP, Products & Solutions, Salam
11:45	Advisory Council Felicitation
12:00	Tea / Coffee & Networking Break
12:10 13:25	Technology Focus Group Tracks - Cluster A (Parallel Sessions)
	Track A1: Turning Data into Real-Time Intelligence 12:10 - 12:15 Opening Act 12:15 - 12:18 Session Overview Uzair Mujtaba Senior Research Manager, IDC 12:18 - 12:20 Start of the Session Raffle Attend the Track, Ask Questions, Rate Sessions & Stand a Chance to win iPhone 16 12:20 - 12:35 Supercharge Your AI Initiatives: Real-World Use Cases, Best Practices, and Essential Tools With a focus on practical use cases and proven best practices, this session will explore how to accelerate your organization's AI initiatives. Learn how to leverage key tools and strategies to enhance AI projects, optimize workflows, and achieve better results. Frederic Azar Solution Architect, Cloudera 12:35 - 12:50 Unlocking the Value of AI with a Data Streaming Platform To thrive in the evolving AI landscape, it is essential to steer clear of obstacles posed by outdated data-at-rest architectures. Organizations should construct a contemporary AI framework based on dynamic, real-time data. However, real-time AI requires trustworthy, relevant data served in the moment for smarter, faster insights. This is why data streaming is emerging as the fundamental infrastructure for the modern AI stack, enabling everyone to build powerful AI applications Steve Fernandes Senior Manager, Solutions Engineering, Confluent 12:50 - 13:05 AI with Guardrails: Enabling Regulatory Intelligence for Vision 2030 Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 is accelerating AI adoption and digital transformation. Yet, in highly regulated industries, success depends on doing AI with guardrails. Organizations must balance rapid innovation with compliance requirements from NDMO, PDPL, and sector regulators such as SAMA and NCA. This session will explore how enterprises can: Align their data strategy with Vision 2030’s transparency and innovation mandates. Translate regulatory frameworks into auditable data controls like lineage, catalog, classification, and quality. Unlock AI-driven regulatory intelligence — anomaly detection, risk modeling, natural language compliance queries — on top of a unified operational lakehouse. Learn from Saudi success stories including Balady (MoH), the Ministry of Justice, and Neoleap, where compliance and AI-driven insights have been enabled at scale. Key takeaways: How to embed NDMO and PDPL compliance directly into your data foundation. Reference architectures for AI-ready, regulation-first data platforms. Saudi case studies: Balady, the Ministry of Justice, and Neoleap. A 90-day road map to deliver AI with guardrails at enterprise scale. Hesham Mohamed Strategic Senior Manager. Enterprise & Government Accounts, Incorta 13:05 - 13:20 Rebuilding Businesses for the Future: AI, Computer Vision, Robotics, and Digital Twins 13:20 - 13:25 Announcement of iPhone 16 Raffle Winner! Track A2: Accelerating Digital Experience & Application Innovation 12:10 - 12:15 Opening Act 12:15 - 12:18 Session Overview Mufasir Yousuf Research Manager, IDC 12:18 - 12:20 Start of the Session Raffle Attend the Track, Ask Questions, Rate Sessions & Stand a Chance to win iPhone 16 12:20 - 12:35 From Building Apps to Designing Intelligent Systems The transition from traditional software development to low-code has already accelerated digital transformation, but the rise of artificial intelligence is reshaping the very foundations of software architecture. Mendix demonstrates how low-code is evolving from a productivity accelerator into an agentic platform that enables intelligent, adaptive, and integrated business systems. Generative AI augments the entire software development lifecycle, from requirements to deployment, while agentic AI embeds autonomy and orchestration into applications themselves. This shift transforms software from static solutions into dynamic participants within business ecosystems. Key architectural considerations such as trust, governance, and composability ensure that AI moves beyond isolated features to become an integral part of enterprise solutions. Low-code thus emerges as the foundation for businesses that are not merely AI-enabled, but truly AI-fueled. Wilco Leenders Lead Solution Architect Middle East, Mendix 12:35 - 12:50 Architecting for Outcomes: From Hype to ROI In an era of unprecedented AI hype, businesses are grappling with a critical question: how do you move from impressive AI demos to a strategy that delivers tangible business value? This session will introduce a new paradigm for the Digital Experience Platform (DXP), one that is built to architect a truly AI-fueled business. We will explore how organizations can leverage AI not just to create, but to learn, adapt, and drive outcomes through a continuous loop of intelligent experimentation and real-time personalization. This approach emphasizes the critical need for validating and optimizing AI-driven experiences against key performance indicators like conversion, revenue, and customer lifetime value. For CIOs and business leaders, this is the blueprint for a future-proof technology stack that transforms customer interactions into strategic business assets. Omar Sheliby Regional Director, Optimizely 12:50 - 13:05 Reimagining Work: The Connected AI-Powered Enterprise The way we work is being redefined. With 80% of companies investing in AI to transform their operating models, the challenge is no longer whether to adopt AI, but how to make it deliver a measurable impact. In this session, discover why AI matters and how it can be used to re-imagine work, creating a more connected, agile, and human-centered workplace. We’ll dive into practical ways to build, run, and orchestrate enterprise AI securely, so you can unlock productivity, elevate experiences, and prepare your workforce for the future. Luuk Wösten Senior Solution Consultant APAC and EMEA, Neptune Software 13:05 - 13:20 Smarter AI, Stronger Apps 13:20 - 13:25 Announcement of iPhone 16 Raffle Winner! Track A3:Rethinking Cloud & Enterprise IT Modernization 12:10 - 12:15 Opening Act 12:15 - 12:18 Session Overview Jawairia Asif Senior Research Analyst 12:18 - 12:20 Start of the Session Raffle Attend the Track, Ask Questions, Rate Sessions & Stand a Chance to win iPhone 16 12:20 - 12:35 From Bots to Brains: How Agentic AI Is Redefining Enterprise Intelligence Over the past two decades, automation has transformed from simple task-based scripts into complex, intelligent ecosystems capable of self-directed decision-making. This session will trace the evolution from rule-based automation, through intelligent process automation, to the era of agentic AI — autonomous, goal-oriented AI systems that can plan, act, and adapt in dynamic environments. Attendees will explore how these capabilities are reshaping business models, augmenting human decision-making, and creating competitive advantage. The talk will highlight the strategic, technological, and governance considerations CIOs must address to adopt agentic AI responsibly and at scale. Enas Ashraf Senior Manager, Digital Evolution & Innovation, Crayon 12:35 - 12:50 Unifying the Intelligent Enterprise: An AI-Fueled Platform for End-to-End Agility In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, organizations are seeking unified platforms that seamlessly integrate development, operations, service management, content services, and security. An AI-powered enterprise platform is redefining how businesses operate by bringing these critical domains together under one intelligent framework—fueling agility, resilience, and innovation. This session explores how such platforms empower business users and IT teams alike to develop, test, monitor, and secure applications with greater autonomy and speed. By embedding AI across DevOps pipelines, observability tools, and enterprise service management workflows, organizations gain real-time insights, predictive capabilities, and enhanced governance. Generative AI-powered conversational search further accelerates decision-making by enabling users to access, classify, summarize, and manage content intuitively. Security and compliance are strengthened through intelligent automation and proactive threat detection, ensuring that innovation doesn’t come at the cost of control. Discover how the convergence of these capabilities within a single AI-fueled platform is helping enterprises unlock new ways of working—where every process is smarter, every decision is faster, and every user is empowered. Karim Bounid Director, Solution Consulting, OpenText 12:50 - 13:05 Fast AI Outcomes in Your ERP AI can offer significant benefits for ERP systems, enabling simpler process automation, better decision-making, and improved user experiences. Should these AI capabilities be developed inside the ERP ecosystem using the vendor’s platform or outside, on the corporate data platform? Come to this session to learn about the intersection of AI and the back-office ERP and explore the trade-offs, costs, and ROI of different strategies for you to consider in your AI evolution. Uncover how to create an AI road map for your ERP system that maximizes business ROI and identify high-value use cases for AI, risks and common pitfalls, and strategies for maintaining agility in an ever-changing landscape. Martyn Hoogakker Group Vice President & Theatre General Manager, Rimini Street 13:05 - 13:15 Future-Proofing Employee Experiences: The AI Advantage 13:20 - 13:25 Announcement of iPhone 16 Raffle Winner!
12:11 13:25	Technology Focus Group Tracks - Cluster B (Parallel Sessions)
	Track B1: Building Resilient Security & Risk Management Strategies 12:10 - 12:15 Opening Act 12:15 - 12:18 Session Overview Hyder Aftab Research Manager, IDC 12:18 - 12:20 Start of the Session Raffle Attend the Track, Ask Questions, Rate Sessions & Stand a Chance to win iPhone 16 12:20 - 12:35 Integrating a Risk-Based Approach into MSS In today’s dynamic cyberthreat landscape, managed security services (MSS) can no longer rely on a one-size-fits-all model. Traditional MSS models often prioritize volume — alerting on everything, treating every incident as equal — leading to fatigue, inefficiency, and missed critical threats. A risk-based approach transforms this paradigm by shifting the focus from sheer detection to measured, prioritized protection. By embedding risk into MSS, organizations align their security operations with business objectives. Threats are no longer viewed in isolation but evaluated against the context of business impact, critical assets, and regulatory obligations. This means not every alert warrants the same urgency: what matters most gets the highest priority, while noise is reduced through automation, context enrichment, and tailored playbooks. For MSS providers, adopting this model creates strategic value. It enables them to deliver more than monitoring — it empowers them to act as true risk advisors. They can guide clients to make smarter investments, demonstrate measurable risk reduction, and align security outcomes with executive decision-making. The integration journey requires three pillars: Risk Identification and Mapping: Assessing assets, vulnerabilities, and threat exposure in business terms. Prioritization and Contextualization: Leveraging frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK, threat intelligence, and compliance requirements to assign true business risk scores. Operationalization in MSS: Embedding risk scoring into SOC workflows, reporting dashboards, SLAs, and incident response to ensure security operations deliver maximum impact. Ultimately, integrating a risk-based approach into MSS is not just about better security — it’s about building trust, demonstrating business value, and ensuring resilience in a constantly evolving threat environment. Muntaser Bdair CEO, Security Matterz 12:35 - 12:50 The Cloud to Edge Continuum for AI Excellence 12:50 - 13:05 AI, Automation, and the Future of CIO Decision-Making Naveed Yousuf Consultant, Qualyn 13:05 - 13:20 Unlocking Peak Performance and Security for AI Apps: A Real-World Success Story AI can offer significant benefits for ERP systems, enabling simpler process automation, better decision-making, and improved user experiences. Should these AI capabilities be developed inside the ERP ecosystem using the vendor’s platform or outside, on the corporate data platform? Come to this session to learn about the intersection of AI and the back-office ERP and explore the trade-offs, costs, and ROI of different strategies for you to consider in your AI evolution. Uncover how to create an AI road map for your ERP system that maximizes business ROI and identify high-value use cases for AI, risks and common pitfalls, and strategies for maintaining agility in an ever-changing landscape. Raffaele D’Albenzio Solution Architect Leader, F5 13:20 - 13:25 Announcement of iPhone 16 Raffle Winner! Track B2: Ensuring Business Continuity with Data Protection & Resilience 12:10 - 12:15 Opening Act 12:15 - 12:18 Session Overview Arif Sultan Shiekh Senior Research Analyst, Software, IDC Saudi Arabia 12:18 - 12:20 Start of the Session Raffle Attend the Track, Ask Questions, Rate Sessions & Stand a Chance to win iPhone 16 12:20 - 12:35 From Ransomware to Recovery: Building Unbreakable Data Resilience In today’s aggressive cyber threat landscape, data protection isn’t just about backup—it’s a strategic imperative for CXOs. Veeam empowers organizations to protect their most vital asset—data—while enabling rapid recovery and continuous business operations, even in the face of sophisticated ransomware attacks. Our approach centers on delivering "Zero Trust Data Resilience" through resilient data protection, AI-driven threat intelligence and detection, and automated orchestration. This holistic strategy minimizes costly downtime, mitigates reputational damage, and ensures compliance. With Veeam, CXOs can confidently drive digital transformation initiatives, knowing their business is resilient against any disruption. Marwan AlHuthail Senior Enterprise Sales Manager, Veeam Software 12:35 - 12:50 GenAI in the Enterprise: Shaping Smarter Workflows and Future-Ready Organizations As enterprises race toward digitization, generative AI is redefining how we work, automate, and interact. It’s not just about faster processes — it’s about smarter decisions, intelligent content, and secure, human-centric experiences. This session will explore how GenAI is transforming the future of work, from automating document-heavy workflows to enabling real-time, personalized enterprise interactions. Through real-world examples, it will also show how organizations are being empowered to integrate GenAI securely within their digital platforms — bridging the gap between innovation and operational excellence. Join us to discover how your enterprise can harness GenAI not just to keep up — but to lead. Mihalis Balonuskovs Digital Solutions Architect (MENAT), Iron Mountain 12:50 - 13:05 Cyber Recovery & Resilience Hamad Alawbathani Account Director, Rubrik 13:05 - 13:20 Navigating the Edge: Overcoming Complexity in IoT and Edge Infrastructure 13:20 - 13:25 Announcement of iPhone 16 Raffle Winner! Track B3: Empowering Collaboration & Developer Velocity 12:10 - 12:15 Opening Act 12:15 - 12:18 Session Overview Dr. Eman Elshewy Senior Research Manager, IDC 12:18 - 12:20 Start of the Session Raffle Attend the Track, Ask Questions, Rate Sessions & Stand a Chance to win iPhone 16 12:20 - 12:25 Why AI Isn't a Silver Bullet: Beyond the Hype \| Why It Won’t Work for You Many believe AI simply "works." But true AI success hinges on more than just algorithms. This session will dissect the critical, often-overlooked foundations: your organizational culture, adaptable processes, and robust platforms. It will expose why ignoring these elements renders even the most advanced AI ineffective. Using Atlassian Intelligence as a prime example, this discussion will illustrate how a holistic approach, considering the human and operational layers, dictates whether AI genuinely transforms or simply complicates! Discover the true levers for AI adoption and impact. Khalid Rabie Head of Business Consultancy, Vidscola 12:35 - 12:50 Security, Simplicity, and Speed: Imperatives for Test Data Management in an AI-Fueled Business Automated, efficient and secure data access will allow you to get ahead of your competition, regulators and your biggest security threats. This session will outline some fundamentals of handling very large core application datasets and provide examples of how to remove complexity and risk. Getting a handle on your most precious asset — customer data — drives benefits beyond the DevOps arena, improving business outcomes, operational resilience, delivery speed, and security. Whether your systems are entirely on-prem, in the public cloud, or across a hybrid infrastructure, ensuring fast and secure access to clean, current, and compliant data for your practitioners is vital — whether those practitioners are human or not. Gary Hallam Director, Channel Business, Delphix 12:50 - 13:05 AI-Human Harmony in CX: From Vision to Outcomes AI-human harmony in CX is no longer an idea — it’s delivering real business outcomes today. This session will explore how organizations are putting AI-human harmony into practice to achieve: Better Observability: Real-time visibility into conversations, quality, and compliance Smarter Automation: Streamlining routine interactions while enabling agents to focus on high-value tasks Deeper Personalization: Creating contextual, human-centric journeys across channels By blending AI’s precision with human empathy, enterprises are reimagining CX for the next decade. This discussion will uncover why AI-human harmony is becoming the foundation of future-ready, human-centric customer experience. Sachin Bhatia Co-Founder & Chief Growth Officer,Exotel, Exotel 13:05 - 13:20 Building AI Centers of Excellence: A Global Perspective for the MEA Region 13:20 - 13:25 Announcement of iPhone 16 Raffle Winner!
13:25	Refresh & Reorganize
13:35	For the CIO by the CIO Redesigning Experience: How AI is Elevating Both Customer and Employee Journeys
	As AI continues to evolve, its influence is no longer confined to customer-facing applications. This panel brings together CXOs from diverse industries to explore how AI is reshaping the entire experience ecosystem, bridging the gap between customer expectations and employee enablement. From intelligent automation and personalized engagement to smarter workflows and decision support, we’ll examine how AI is fostering more connected, responsive, and collaborative environments. Dr. Aseel Addawood KSA Lead, EMEA Artificial Intelligence Center of Excellence, Oracle Dr. Abdulrahman Al Khnaifer CIO, King Saud University (KSU) Suliman Mohammad Khader Group Chief Information Officer, Al Faisaliah Group Filip Nekvinda Chief Information and Digital Officer (CIDO), ALJ Enterprises Dr. Muhammad Ehsan Khan VP Data and AI, GO Telecom Mohammed Belkhayatte Chief Transformation Officer, Bindawood Group
14:05	For the CIO by the CIO Cross-Functional Collaboration in the Future Enterprise
	Aligning IT strategies with line-of-business (LOB) strategies has become ever more critical to achieving business agility and resilience. In the age of AI everywhere, while advanced technology can accelerate business outcomes, frameworks for ensuring alignment with other functions on strategy, LOB needs, execution, expected outcomes, governance, risk management are crucial to business success. This session will explore how practices and operating models are evolving to enable greater alignment and collaboration between IT functions and other LOB functions like HR, finance, and operations. Saeed Alzahrani General Manager, Saudi Arabia, NetApp H.E. Khalid AlGhligah Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation, Ministry of Sports Ahmad AlRifai Group IT Director, Al Muhaidib Group Mohannad AlSalmi CIO, Flyadeal Anas Mosa IT Director, Government Entity Dr. Manal Albawardi Deputy Chief Information Officer, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM)
14:35	Lunch & Close of Day 1

Speakers

Jyoti Lalchandani

Head of WW Events & MD - META, Central Asia, India, IDC

Ranjit Rajan

Vice President, Head of Research (META), IDC

Tareq Alangari

CEO, e& enterprise Saudi Arabia

Amine Chigani

Global Head of Enterprise Technologists, AWS

Haitham Elkhatib

Co-Founder & Chief Revenue Officer, UnifyApps

Erick Baduy

CEO, Board Member, Founding Partner, Edarat Group

Tarik Alturki

Director, System Engineering, Cisco

Mamoun Masood

Regional Director, Saudi & Northern Gulf, Nintex

Dr. Mauro Arruda

Director, AI Solutions & Services, EMEA Leader, Lenovo

Mohamed Taha Benssiba

Vice President & Head of AI, Europe South, Middle East, & Africa, Oracle

View All Speakers

Venue

Four Seasons Hotel Riyadh

Kingdom Centre, Olaya St, Al Olaya, Riyadh 11321

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Knowledge Hub

Analyst Spotlight
The AI Everywhere Era in the Public Sector

Analyst Spotlight
Enabling AI Outcomes with Cybersecurity

CXO Spotlight
AI in Defense: Automated Threat Detection

Analyst Spotlight
Architecting the Future of Enterprise Applications: The AI-Cloud Convergence

Uzair Mujtaba,
Senior Research Manager, IDC

Saudi Arabia’s digital economy is entering a crucial phase. As Vision 2030 accelerates nationwide transformation, CIOs across industries are reimagining their enterprise application stacks, and the conversation is quickly shifting from cloud migration to building an intelligent, adaptive, and autonomous application ecosystem powered by AI, generative AI (GenAI), and the next frontier, agentic AI.

IDC’s latest research indicates that nearly 42% of CIOs are already running AI-native and AI-enhanced applications in production with established training and acquisition plans. Driven by operational efficiency and customer centricity priorities, this shift comes with its own set of challenges. Legacy ERP environments, fragmented data pipelines, and skills shortages are testing the resilience of transformation strategies.

Partner Spotlight
The Rise of AI Agents Signals the Growing Importance of Data Privacy

Tariq Salameh,
Senior Solutions Engineering Manager, META, Cloudera

Data privacy is becoming increasingly complex and critical as organizations turn to AI to revamp their operations and processes. Among these advancements is agentic AI, designed to autonomously execute tasks without human intervention and act with agency.

For all its benefits, Agentic AI’s reliance on vast amounts of personally identifiable data raises significant privacy concerns and fuels growing consumer mistrust in how organizations manage personal information. According to a recent Cloudera Agentic AI survey, data privacy tops the concerns of respondents with 53% citing it as the main barrier. This has the potential to worsen when agentic AI hits the mainstream adoption phase in critical sectors like healthcare and financial services where personal data is prized at a premium.

Partner Spotlight
Rethinking Leadership for the Middle East’s AI-Powered Future

Khalid Rabie,
Head of Business Consultancy and Executive Coach and Trainer, Vidscola

From hype to sustained impact, enterprises must blend human insight, ethical rigor, and agile culture to unlock AI’s true value.

Across the Gulf, sovereign visions and business ambitions have positioned AI as the next growth engine. Yet leadership teams discover that algorithms alone cannot redesign an organization; they simply expose its strengths and bottlenecks. Navigating this revolution therefore begins with organizational development — clarifying decision rights, shortening feedback loops, and empowering multidisciplinary squads that can learn as fast as models evolve.

Contact Us

Ronita Bhattacharjee

Vice President - Conferences, IDC Middle East, Africa, & Turkey

+971 4 391 2747 Email

Taher Hamdan

Sales Director – Events, IDC Middle East, Turkey & Africa

+971 50 659 1320 Email

IDG

IT executives worldwide rely on IDG’s technology events to discover new ideas, trends, and solutions. Leveraging 60 years of IDC’s market intelligence and Foundry’s media brands (CIO, CSO, Computerworld, InfoWorld, Network World, ARN, Reseller News, ChannelPartner, Channel Asia, ITWorld), these events offer powerful learning and networking experiences.

Held in more than 30 countries, they foster networking, collaboration, engagement, and knowledge sharing among industry leaders and professionals. Each event is meticulously curated to provide valuable insights and meaningful connections through analysts and editor-led content, global perspectives, case studies presented by the world’s leading tech companies and a range of interactive formats including expert panels, live demos, roundtables, 1:1 meetings and workshops.

Partner Spotlight
How AI Is Revolutionizing Software Development: A Complete Guide to the Future

Gasser Abdullah, Head of Presales (Digital Solutions), Link Development
Mohamed Haaban, Senior Account Executive, OutSystems
The AI-Driven Development Revolution

Software development as we know it is being completely transformed. Traditional coding methods that once took weeks are now completed in hours. AI-powered development tools are enabling every organization to operate like a tech company, accelerating innovation and time-to-market while maintaining enterprise-grade security and compliance. Imagine a world where developers focus on creative problem-solving instead of repetitive tasks, where legacy systems modernize themselves, and where high-quality applications deploy faster than ever before. This transformation is happening now. Here's everything you need to know about AI-driven software development and how to implement it successfully.

Generative AI: Speeding Up the Cycle
Generative AI has already reshaped how developers work. By turning natural language prompts into code snippets, it accelerates routine coding tasks and reduces development time. Beyond code generation, it creates standardized templates, detailed user stories and comprehensive test cases. It can even draft documentation and user guides, freeing developers to focus on problem-solving and innovation. Agentic AI: Beyond Automation
While generative AI improves efficiency, agentic AI goes further. Agentic AI consists of purpose-built intelligent agents capable of autonomous action, collaborating with each other, making decisions, and executing tasks. These agents act like team members, with reasoning and planning capabilities that allow them to generate, check, edit, and optimize code. Specialized agents support tasks such as translating legacy code into modern languages, detecting security vulnerabilities, and optimizing performance. This shift enables organizations to tackle long-standing technical debt and accelerate modernization efforts, achieving outcomes that were previously too costly or complex. What once took weeks can now be achieved in hours, redirecting developer efforts toward higher-value, creative work.

The Role of Low Code
While developers are embracing AI-powered application generation (AppGen) and experimenting with agents, enterprise leaders are understandably concerned about their impact on an already fragmented technical landscape and unpredictable outcomes for stakeholders and customers. This is where low-code platforms can play a critical role in AI-driven development. Low-code platforms combining security guardrails, governance, and full life-cycle management with AppGen and agents give development teams a safe, interpretable, and sustainable path to enterprise-scale innovation.

This approach ensures that AI-generated code adheres to enterprise standards, reducing risks associated with autonomous AI coding. It also empowers teams with varying technical expertise to participate in development, democratizing innovation while maintaining control over architecture, compliance, and performance.

Embracing the AI-Driven Future
The convergence of generative AI, agentic AI, and low-code platforms represents more than technological advancement — it's a fundamental shift in how software gets built. Organizations that embrace this transformation will:
● Accelerate innovation cycles
● Reduce development costs significantly
● Improve software quality through automation
● Enable broader participation in development
● Focus talent on high-value activities

At the same time, this shift reshapes the developers’ role. They will work alongside AI agents that automate repetitive tasks, orchestrate workflows and ensure compliance, allowing them to focus on strategic initiatives while evolving into key partners to the business. AI-powered AppGen on a robust low-code platform unlocks the best of both worlds: high-quality, enterprise-grade applications delivered with speed and reliability — a balance standalone AI or code-centric tools cannot achieve. The key to success lies in choosing approaches that integrate automation with built-in governance, security, and scalability frameworks. The future of software development is here — and it’s powered by AI. As these technologies continue evolving, the organizations that invest in AI-driven development today will lead tomorrow's digital landscape.

Partner Spotlight
From Vision to Velocity: Building the Intelligent Enterprise in Saudi Arabia

Tareq Alangari, CEO, e& enterprise Saudi Arabia
Amine Chigani, Global Head of Enterprise Technologists, AWS

Saudi Arabia is undergoing one of the most ambitious digital transformations in the world. Guided by Vision 2030, the Kingdom has invested heavily in building world-class digital infrastructure, with the digital economy expected to nearly double its share of GDP by 2030. This momentum places Saudi Arabia among the fastest-growing digital economies in the Middle East.

Yet ambition alone does not deliver results. The challenge for organizations lies in execution — turning strategy into measurable, business-wide impact. This is where the concept of the “intelligent enterprise” becomes vital. By embedding cloud, data, and artificial intelligence across every function, enterprises can shift from digital vision to tangible outcomes such as faster decision-making, greater efficiency, and stronger trust.

Several technologies are at the heart of this transformation. Cloud computing provides the foundation for agility and sovereignty, ensuring organizations can innovate securely and at scale. Artificial intelligence, forecast to contribute significant economic value to the Kingdom by 2030, is already driving predictive insights and reshaping industries. Meanwhile, 5G is enabling new possibilities for IoT, automation, and connected services. Still, technology alone is not enough — secure, high-quality, and well-governed data remains the true differentiator for scaling innovation responsibly.

Execution at speed requires more than tools. Leadership commitment, robust governance, and security by design are critical enablers. Trust has become the currency of transformation, and with cybersecurity investments rising, organizations are ensuring that innovation moves forward responsibly.

Equally important is the human dimension. An enterprise becomes intelligent not through systems alone, but through people and culture. Digital fluency, a mindset of continuous learning, and the preservation of creativity, empathy, and ethics will ensure that human judgment remains central alongside AI and automation.

Finally, no enterprise can achieve this journey in isolation. Collaboration between governments, regulators, industry players, and academia is essential to accelerate innovation and build sustainable, sovereign digital ecosystems.By 2030, being an intelligent enterprise will no longer be a differentiator — it will be the default. The foundations are already being laid today for organizations in Saudi Arabia to be cloud native, AI driven, globally competitive, and trusted locally.

Partner Spotlight
AI-Driven IT: A Strategic Imperative for Sustainable Business Performance

Salman Ali,
Senior Manager, Solution Engineering, Riverbed Technology

“Sustainable performance” isn’t about a single quarter’s uptick. It’s the ability to deliver consistent, high-quality outcomes year after year, even as customer expectations, regulatory demands, and technology stacks evolve. It’s this pressure that makes AI-driven IT foundational to business resilience.

The starting point is data. Most organizations are swimming in telemetry but short on truth. AI changes this by turning data from networks, clouds, applications, databases, and endpoints into context-rich insight. Instead of reacting to incidents, teams gain early warning on degradations, capacity risks, and experience dips, preventing issues before they reach customers. That shift from hindsight to foresight is the bedrock of reliable performance.

Measurement matters. You can’t measure what you can’t see. High-fidelity observability, enriched by machine learning, empowers organizations to track the metrics that move the business. This evidence-based approach underpins credible reporting to the board and regulators, while also informing continuous optimization.

Resource optimization is the next lever as a more efficient IT environment is inherently a more effective one. With the aid of AI, IT teams can effectively identify inefficiencies such as underused infrastructure, redundant tools, and idle licenses. By automating right-sizing, workload placement, and life-cycle clean-up, they can unlock capacity, trim spend, and reduce complexity. Eliminating these inefficiencies also curbs complexity, allowing infrastructure to stay agile over the long term.

Crucially, observability must be treated as a framework, not a feature. When insight spans SaaS, IaaS, PaaS, applications, data tiers, end-user experience, and devices, AI can correlate symptoms to causes and recommend targeted remediation. Yet tools alone are not enough. Many teams lack the bandwidth or skills to interpret signals and translate them into business impact. Here, AI and automation play a pivotal role, summarizing root causes, proposing fixes, and orchestrating changes through low-code runbooks so IT teams can focus on more strategic initiatives — what we at Riverbed call “Shift Left.”

Organizations that embed AI into the fabric of IT operations don’t merely run more reliably. They adapt faster, innovate with confidence and meet rising expectations without spiraling costs. In short, AI-driven IT is how enterprises turn operational excellence into a sustained competitive advantage.

Partner Spotlight
High-Return Enterprise AI: Rethinking Value Creation in the Age of Intelligence

Mohammed Ebrahim,
Chief Data Scientist, Mozn

As Saudi Arabia accelerates its digital transformation, the role of the CIO is rapidly evolving. It is no longer enough to deliver operational efficiency alone; today, leaders are expected to unlock new strategic value and build a sustainable competitive advantage. In this environment, enterprise AI stands out as a powerful tool. Yet its full potential often goes untapped when it is viewed only as a tactical solution for automation or data processing.

To truly drive impact, AI must be designed to support smarter decision-making, foster meaningful dialogue among leaders, and remain aligned with the organization’s long-term vision. This shift requires rethinking how AI is conceived, implemented, and integrated into enterprise strategies. Rather than treating AI as a set of features, it should be built with purpose, grounded in knowledge that is actionable, and designed to reflect the realities of organizational structures, cultural contexts, and regulatory environments.

Without this deeper approach, even the most advanced AI risks creating a gap between technological capability and business impact. Systems may process data on a scale but still fail to address the strategic needs of the enterprise. The difference lies in cultivating AI that not only works efficiently but also adapts to context, drives relevant insights, and delivers outcomes that matter.

CIOs in Saudi Arabia are uniquely positioned to lead this transformation. With access to cutting-edge technologies and a strong national mandate for innovation, they have both the tools and the responsibility to shape AI strategies that create real value. As the IDC CIO Summit brings together regional technology leaders, the conversation must move beyond simple adoption. The future of enterprise intelligence lies not in generic platforms, but in systems that understand, adapt, and lead — turning AI into a true driver of growth and transformation.

Partner Spotlight
The Digital Backbone of Tomorrow's Cities: Why Enterprise Asset Management Is the Unsung Hero of Transformative Projects

Jaseem Aboo,
Senior Sales Director, Godrej Infotech

As we bear witness to some of the most ambitious urban development projects of our generation in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a critical question arises: how do we ensure these marvels of human achievement don't become monuments to operational inefficiency? The answer lies in a technology that rarely makes headlines, yet fundamentally underpins long-term success — enterprise asset management (EAM).

When we talk about projects that redefine cityscapes and create entirely new ecosystems, we're discussing assets worth billions, infrastructure spanning thousands of square kilometers, and operational complexities that would overwhelm traditional management approaches. This is where EAM transforms from supporting technology to strategic imperative.

Modern EAM systems, particularly when integrated with advanced performance management (APM) tools, provide something far more valuable than maintenance schedules. They offer:

• Predictive intelligence that anticipates failures before they occur
• Lifecycle visibility across diverse asset portfolios
• Performance optimization through data-driven decision-making
• Risk mitigation in environments where operational continuity is non-negotiable

In these transformative environments, EAM becomes the digital command center — the single source of truth that coordinates everything from critical infrastructure maintenance to facility operations. It's the technological backbone that ensures:

• Seamless integration of smart building systems
• Real-time monitoring of energy consumption and sustainability metrics
• Automated compliance with increasingly complex regulatory requirements
• Optimized resource allocation across massive operational footprints

Moreover, APM tools also play a huge role in this. In a way they are the game changer. APM tools elevate EAM from reactive maintenance to proactive optimization. They enable:

• Condition-based monitoring that moves beyond scheduled maintenance
• Performance benchmarking against industry standards and project objectives
• Predictive analytics that transform operational data into strategic insights
• Integration capabilities with IoT ecosystems and smart infrastructure

Therefore, from the C-suite, the value proposition is clear: EAM and APM tools provide the visibility, control, and predictability needed to manage billion-dollar investments effectively. They transform capital projects from construction achievements into operational successes.

As for measuring success, the ROI extends far beyond maintenance cost reductions. It’s all about:

• Extended asset lifespans in demanding environments
• Enhanced safety records through predictive risk management
• Operational efficiency gains that compound over decades
• Sustainability achievements through optimized resource utilization

Over time, as these projects evolve, the integration of EAM with digital twin technology, AI-driven analytics, and IoT ecosystems will create operational environments that are not just efficient, but truly intelligent.

Conclusion

In the grand narrative of transformative urban development, EAM may not be the star of the show, but it's undoubtedly the director ensuring everything performs perfectly night after night, year after year. For leaders steering these monumental projects, it's not just another system — it's the foundation upon which operational excellence is built.

Partner Spotlight
How AI Agents Are Impacting API Management

Larbi Belbecir,
Senior Solutions Consultant, Boomi

Organizations today use an average of 275 cloud applications — and large enterprises use even more. This rapid SaaS expansion often goes hand in hand with shadow IT, resulting in increased costs, security risks, and data silos.

A centralized API management approach can help organizations get a handle on this sprawl, but also creates more challenges in the form of undocumented APIs, security gaps, and governance silos. Agentic AI is quickly emerging as a solution to the complexities of API management.

The Role of AI in API Management

AI-powered API management is revolutionizing documentation, security, and developer experiences while solving API sprawl challenges. AI agents can automate routine tasks, enhance security, and provide insights into API performance, ultimately improving operational efficiency. Key potential areas of benefit include:

● API Documentation: AI can automatically generate and maintain accurate API documentation, ensuring it stays current with evolving APIs. This reduces development time and security vulnerabilities.
● Developer Experience: AI simplifies API integration by providing intelligent assistance, suggesting APIs, generating code, and creating test cases. This accelerates development timelines and reduces the learning curve for new APIs.
● Security and Governance: AI enhances API security by offering real-time monitoring and alerts for potential threats. It helps organizations maintain compliance with regulations and ensures consistent security policies across all APIs.
● Traffic Management: AI improves traffic management by analyzing usage patterns and dynamically adjusting resources. This ensures optimal performance during traffic spikes and reduces downtime.

Addressing API Sprawl and Data Quality

As organizations adopt more APIs, they face challenges like redundancy, security issues, and difficulty getting the right data to the right place when it’s needed. AI agents can help by:

• Discovering and cataloging existing APIs
• Identifying redundant APIs for consolidation
• Monitoring usage for optimization opportunities

But it’s not just a one-way street. Even the most sophisticated AI systems need high-quality data to deliver accurate, meaningful results. While AI is transforming API management, APIs are enabling AI integration — providing the connectivity among data sources, secure data transfer, and real-time access to information that businesses need for success. Well-designed APIs can streamline AI implementations and reduce complexity.

Developing an AI-Driven API Strategy

To prepare for AI-driven API management, organizations should:
1. Establish Strong API Governance: Create clear policies and standards for API design and management.
2. Invest in API Discovery: Implement comprehensive API discovery and create a centralized catalog of APIs.
3. Adopt AI-Ready Design Practices: Design APIs with clarity and comprehensive metadata to maximize AI interaction.
4. Leverage a Unified Management Platform: Use a comprehensive platform that integrates API management with broader integration capabilities.

https://boomi.com/blog/ai-api-management/

Learn more at boomi.com.

Analyst Spotlight
"Next-Gen Networks”: Inflexion point to Re-Wire for the AI Era underpinned by Cloud

Wilson Xavier,
Senior Research Director, ICT Services, META, IDC

Global and Regional AI Spend and Adoption Trends

AI investment is accelerating, with worldwide annual Artificial Intelligence IT spending is projected to hit $1.3 Trillion by 2029, as per the latest IDC forecast. The Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia and the UAE, leads in rapid enterprise AI adoption, fueled by aggressive national strategies and demand for smarter resilient supply chains. Governments and organizations in META are prioritizing AI competitiveness through initiatives like AI hubs, datacenters, local language models, and enabling regulatory frameworks. and integrating AI into public sector digital transformation projects. Initiatives like OpenAI's Stargate UAE project and Saudi Arabia's "Humain" initiative are driving the development of AI datacenters and multimodal language models.

Convergence of AI and Cloud: A Catalyst for Continuous Transformation and implications for Networks

AI and cloud computing are evolving together, with AI enhancing cloud-native systems and cloud serving as the foundation for AI capabilities. In this broad context, enterprises perceive AI as the driver of value, while cloud provides the platform to enable AI adoption. This mutually cascading catalyst effect is leading to accelerating AI adoption and influencing cloud strategies by re-setting pace for modernizing applications and driving hybrid/multi-cloud adoption. In the META region, fueled by investments of Hyperscalers and National Cloud providers– focus on Data Sovereignty and Governance are being prioritized by organizations across vertical sectors such as Government, Healthcare, Telecom, and Finance to address compliance requirements with local regulations and ensuring data security when adopting AI solutions. As per IDC Research, 34% of META organizations are planning to adopt AI solutions on the cloud platform over the next twelve months. These advances create exponential growth in data volume and require networks optimized for performance and security.

Trusted Network Foundations: Architectural Evaluation of Network Strategy in tandem with AI and Cloud adoption

Modern AI deployments rely on resilient, ultra-low-latency networks to process context-rich data in real time. Robust network infrastructure—including SDWAN, network security, cloud connect networks, SASE, and Network as a Service (NaaS)—is thereby essential for META CIOs to consider in order to successfully adopt and deliver AI-enabled services. These technologies form the backbone for modern digital transformation, unlocking operational efficiencies, scalability, and greater business value in the age of AI.

Software Defined Network architectures like SDWAN solutions automate traffic routing and bandwidth allocation, ensuring critical AI workloads get the best path for speed and consistency. For CIOs, robust SDWAN facilitates scalable, cloud-connected digital ecosystems needed to deliver services such as predictive analytics, automation, and digital customer experiences. Similarly, Cloud Connect networks and NaaS enable “Network Instance” construct for agile, on-demand infrastructure, scalable and context-aware for AI workloads. They enhance organizational agility, reduce operational complexity, and lower costs—outcomes crucial for multi-site enterprises driving digital transformation projects. In Parallel (On the other hand…), AI-driven network automation ensures that connections adapt dynamically, boosting performance and reducing latency across applications and services.

Security framework for AI on Network layer brings a critical dimension to consider as AI-powered applications introducing complex cyber risks, making network security and SASE pivotal. Security-first networks leverage AI and Zero Trust principles to actively monitor and contain threats, protect sensitive data, and mitigate breaches before they impact operations. SASE converges networking and security in a unified cloud-native solution, delivering secure, seamless connectivity for distributed teams, multi-cloud environments, and hybrid workplaces.Interestingly, as per IDC META Region Research latest Insights, 66% of the CIOs in the region are looking at Strategic Focus on Networking Investments moving forward, which exemplifies the realization of this outlook.

Strategic Impact and Leadership Considerations for META region & KSA CIOs

For META and KSA CIOs, envisioning and evaluating next-generation networking architectures like —SDWAN, SASE, cloud connect networks, and NaaS—are foundational to AI success. CIOs must champion next-generation networking technologies and foster cross-functional collaboration, positioning their organizations to lead in digital transformation and extract maximum value from Cloud and AI investments.

Analyst Spotlight
AI Is Redefining the Job of Your Website

Hyder Aftab,
Research Manager, IDC

The telecommunications sector is undergoing a profound transformation, driven by advances in next-generation connectivity, cybersecurity, and AI integration. IDC’s 2025 insights position Saudi Arabia as a regional leader in network modernization, with enterprises adopting innovative technologies and dedicating investments aligned to emerging business priorities.

Telecommunications networks are now foundational enablers at the intersection of cybersecurity and AI, delivering secure, resilient infrastructures essential for innovation and competitive differentiation. These networks embed security at every layer, supporting critical AI-driven digital services. Enterprises increasingly prioritize security and operational agility over traditional connectivity metrics, illustrating a fundamental market shift.

Saudi Arabia exemplifies this evolution with a clear trend toward flexible network services. A majority of enterprises recognize the growing importance of solutions like SD-WAN and SASE, alongside cloud connectivity and fixed wireless access. These dynamic signals the Kingdom’s leadership in the META region’s push for agile, secure digital infrastructure.

Investment priorities clearly reflect a security-first and agility-driven mindset. Nearly half or more organizations emphasize enhancing security, resilience, and flexibility. Notably, improving connectivity with external partners is a growing focus area, highlighting the importance of ecosystem integration.

In communication platforms, maturity varies. Cloud-based unified communications are on par with traditional on-premises deployments, while contact center modernization presents an untapped opportunity with a sizeable portion of legacy systems still in use.Despite progress, challenges around budget constraints, regulatory compliance, and skills shortages remain. However, most enterprises pursue bold strategic transformation goals rather than simply maintaining operational continuity.For CIOs guiding digital transformation, these insights underscore critical imperatives: architecting security-enabled, agile networks that support AI innovation; prioritizing scalable cloud and edge solutions; and enhancing partner ecosystem connectivity. Addressing workforce development and compliance from the outset will mitigate risks and accelerate gains. Modernizing contact centers and adopting cloud UCaaS further unlock operational and customer experience improvements.

In sum, Saudi Arabia’s rapid digital infrastructure evolution offers CIOs a unique opportunity to align their strategies with Vision 2030 ambitions and the shifting ICT landscape. By focusing investments on secure, flexible, and integrated network services, organizations can build a resilient foundation for sustainable growth in an AI-driven economy.

Partner Spotlight
AI Is Redefining the Job of Your Website

Omar Sheliby,
Enterprise Account Executive, Optimizely

The role of an enterprise website is undergoing a profound shift. For years, its primary purpose was to attract visitors, deliver information, and drive conversions. But today, we are witnessing a structural change in how people discover and consume information with AI, one that is reshaping the very job your website performs. If you’re a CIO or head of digital experience, this shift affects your road map today.

Your new audience doesn’t click; it crawls.

In just one year, human website traffic has declined by 10–30% year over year across industries. It’s like someone walked into your store, asked a question, got the answer, and left, without ever opening the door. This isn’t a sign of failure. It’s a signal that your website’s function has changed. Your site no longer serves just a single audience. It now has two equally critical constituencies: humans and AI agents.

For humans, the website remains a validation layer and an experience hub. People still turn to websites to confirm credibility, immerse themselves in branded storytelling, or complete complex workflows — things AI interfaces can’t fully replicate, like applying for a loan or configuring an enterprise solution.

For AI, the website has become a data source. Large language models (LLMs) are crawling, extracting, and summarizing your content continuously. Increasingly, they deliver answers directly to users, without ever sending traffic back to your site. This “invisible traffic,” untraceable in your analytics, creates a new strategic imperative: generative engine optimization (GEO).

SEO helps you rank in search. GEO helps you show up in answers.

Where SEO was about ranking on search results pages, GEO is about ensuring your content is authoritative, structured, and trusted enough to be embedded in AI-generated responses. Meeting this challenge requires more than marketing tweaks. It demands a rethinking of your digital infrastructure. Your CMS isn’t just a content tool. It’s your content supply chain. A single source of truth designed to feed both human-facing channels and AI engines. This composable approach reduces risk, lowers total cost of ownership, and increases agility by ensuring content flows seamlessly across websites, apps, and AI-driven ecosystems.

The mandate is clear: architect for AI. That means designing content and systems the way AI consumes them — structured, concise, reliable — while still delivering compelling human experiences. Organizations that optimize for both audiences will not only remain visible but gain influence in the AI-driven economy.

Your website hasn’t disappeared. Its job has changed. Architect for both audiences and become unmissable in the age of AI. Don’t wait for your site to vanish. Make it indispensable — to humans and AI.

Partner Spotlight
Modernization to Monetization: How CIOs Orchestrate Ecosystem Growth with AI

Karthik TS,
Head of Technology, Torry Harris Integration Solutions

From Digitization to Monetization: The next frontier is about turning core assets — data, APIs, and services — into products that drive new revenue.
AI as a Business Driver: AI is shaping offerings, bundles, and partnerships across the ecosystem, moving beyond efficiency to create shared value.
Ecosystem Leadership — An Advantage: No enterprise can realize the Vision 2030 goals on its own — it takes collaboration. CIOs who master the orchestration of partners, start-ups, and peers will own the platforms that define tomorrow’s markets

Saudi Arabia’s rails are laid for platform plays1: over 97% of government services are digitized2, and the Kingdom ranks among the world’s most advanced in digital government. Meanwhile, boards are chasing AI revenue and partner-led growth as the digital transformation market races from $10.9 billion in 2024 toward $82 billion by 2033 (23%+ CAGR)3. Further, 93% of organizations in KSA have an AI strategy in place or under development4 — meaning your competitors are already wiring AI into products, processes, and partner ecosystems.

Modernization & Beyond: Turning Tech into Trade.

The next phase of value in Vision 2030 may not come from “projects that digitize” but from platforms that monetize — specifically, ecosystem platforms and marketplaces, built on strong integration foundations, that productize your capabilities (APIs, data, services) and let partners compose them into outcomes. The CIO mandate is to make this commercially safe and technically simple:

Monetize the core, not just modernize it. Treat modernization as productization: surface a small set of revenue-ready capabilities with contractable SLAs, pricing, and telemetry, underpinned by integration that makes them consumable across business units and partners, and with intelligence embedded so each capability improves over time
Operationalize AI where value transacts. Embed AI in the partner life cycle across onboarding, scoring, bundling, and pricing so that each new partner increases margin instead of operational load.
Engineer for ecosystem scale. Build integration-first architectures, governance, and observability that let APIs, data, and services scale safely across multiple partners and markets, ensuring interoperability, resilience, and compliance without linear cost.

The P&L Playbook for CIOs

In our experience, CIOs who own platform P&L are looking for a de-risked path to first ecosystem revenue. This usually manifests in the form of:

a) An integration fabric that connects legacy estates, cloud services, and partner APIs so everything else is composable and revenue ready

b) A 90-day blueprint to stand up 2–3 monetizable bundles, identifying the APIs, data sets, or services to productize first

c) A partner contract kit (legal, risk, incentives)

d) A run-time governance model (data/AI, observability, chargeback)

The market is already moving in this direction, and with KSA’s ecosystem momentum accelerating, the window of opportunity is short. Success will come less from scale and more from the speed at which partners are orchestrated into revenue.

Footnotes:

Partner Spotlight
Unlock Network Efficiency with Intelligent Operations

Roger Holder,
DipM, MCIM, Senior Manager, Field & Partner Marketing EMEA, BlueCat

Why the future of network management is proactive, predictive, and intelligent

Are You Still Firefighting?

If your network team spends more time reacting to incidents than driving strategy, you’re not alone. According to the DDI Maturity Report from Enterprise Management Associates, 52% of enterprises struggle with DDI complexity.

And that complexity isn’t slowing down. Hybrid architectures, multicloud adoption, and AI-driven workloads are pushing traditional network operations to breaking point.

The Silent Threat: Network Complexity

Today’s networks are:

• Distributed across on-premises and multiple cloud providers
• Managed by disparate tools with limited integration
• Dependent on manual workflows and institutional knowledge

The risks? Hidden misconfigurations, slow resolution times, compliance gaps, and outages that ripple across the business.

Complexity isn’t just an operational headache — it’s a business risk.

Why Intelligent Network Operations Changes the Game

Imagine a network that tells you when something’s about to break — and fixes itself before it does.

Intelligent network operations embeds automation, diagnostics, and real-time analytics into the heart of your infrastructure. The result? A shift from reactive firefighting to proactive problem prevention.

The core capabilities:

• Continuous monitoring for real-time health insights
• Automated anomaly and misconfiguration detection
• Root cause analysis with guided remediation steps
• Virtual expertise that extends the reach of your team

From Firefighting to Foresight

When organizations embrace intelligent network operations, they see measurable gains:

• Faster resolution: Automation slashes downtime and mean time to recovery (MTTR)
• Greater resilience: Early warnings catch issues before they escalate
• Unified visibility: A single operational view across hybrid and multicloud environments
• Smarter decisions: Data-driven insights guide resource allocation and troubleshooting

One IT team in financial services uncovered a replication failure they didn’t even know existed — avoiding a service outage that would have cost millions.

The “Before and After” Effect

Before:

• Incidents escalate before detection
• Monitoring tools are disconnected and incomplete
• Recovery depends on the right person being available at the right time

After:

• Proactive detection and automated remediation
• Centralized visibility across all environments
• Self-healing capabilities that scale with network demands

Why this Matters Now

The pace of change in network environments isn’t slowing. Cloud adoption, SD-WAN deployments, and AI workloads are reshaping performance requirements. Without intelligent operations, keeping up will require more people, more budget, and more risk tolerance than most organizations can afford.

The Bottom Line

Intelligent network operations isn’t about replacing teams — it’s about empowering them. By giving IT the tools to see, predict, and resolve problems before they impact users, organizations unlock agility, resilience, and operational clarity.

In the next era of IT, the winners won’t be those who respond fastest to outages. They’ll be the ones who prevent them altogether.

Partner Spotlight
AI at Work: Empowering Business Users with OpenText Aviator

Karim Bounid,
Director, Solution Consulting, OpenText

As organizations across the Kingdom accelerate their digital transformation journeys, the IDC Saudi Arabia CIO Summit 2025 presents a timely opportunity to explore how AI is reshaping the future of business. Under the theme “Architecting the AI-Fueled Business,” OpenText is proud to spotlight how its innovative Aviator AI platform is helping enterprises break new limits, ushering in a new era of intelligent, autonomous operations.

In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, business users are increasingly seeking agility, autonomy, and control over their information and applications. OpenText Aviator delivers on this promise by empowering users to securely manage and govern their data, while dramatically reducing reliance on traditional IT processes. From development and testing to deployment and monitoring, Aviator enables a self-service model that puts the power of AI directly into the hands of business teams.

This shift is not just about efficiency; it’s about elevating human potential. By embedding AI into the core of enterprise workflows, OpenText Aviator helps organizations unlock new ways of working. Whether it’s automating content classification, enhancing decision-making with predictive insights, or streamlining compliance and security, OpenText Aviator transforms how information is used and understood across industries.

For CIOs and digital leaders attending the summit, the message is clear: the future of business is AI-fueled, and OpenText is at the forefront of this transformation. By bridging the gap between IT and business, OpenText Aviator enables organizations to innovate faster, respond smarter, and operate with greater resilience.

Join us at the IDC Saudi Arabia CIO Summit 2025 to discover how OpenText is helping organizations in KSA and beyond architect the intelligent enterprise — where AI empowers every user, every process, and every decision.

Partner Spotlight
IT Sustainability in the Age of AI: Navigating the Rising Environmental Costs of Innovation

Yahya Bakir,
Sales Director (KSA & Bahrain), Evernex

The Paradox of Progress

AI is transforming industries, from manufacturing and cybersecurity to communications. Its benefits are clear — as is the threat of falling behind. However, this transformation comes with a high cost to the planet. As companies accelerate their adoption of AI, they must also address their environmental impact and ensure their practices align with evolving sustainability standards and industrial compliance.

The Hidden Emissions Behind Smart Tech

The International Energy Agency forecasts that datacenters could consume as much as 1,000 TWh of electricity by 2026 — nearly double today’s levels — while Forbes affirms that AI server cooling in datacenters evaporates approximately 9 liters of water per kWh of energy used.

As hardware works harder to meet the demands of artificial intelligence, their GHG emissions increase: the World Economic Forum indicates that “AI’s wider industry category of information and communications technology currently generates at least 1.7% of global emissions.”

Upgrading IT hardware also means many businesses dispose of their older assets. In 2022, global e-waste surpassed 62 million metric tons, with only 22% officially recycled.

The Regulatory Wake-Up Call

Sustainability is an urgent issue, and policy is reflecting that. The EU introduced the Digital Product Passport in 2024, improving transparency around digital assets’ origins and environmental impact, while the WEEE directive mandates the responsible disposal of unwanted electronic equipment.

In the Middle East, the UAE Securities and Commodities Authority requires public joint stock companies to publish sustainability reports, demonstrating a heightened emphasis on corporate environmental accountability. At the same time, Saudi Arabia is dedicated to achieving environmental sustainability and social prosperity through its Saudi Vision 2030.

The initiative incorporates the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and 17 Sustainable Development Goals, while applying the Agenda's five pillars (People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace, and Partnership) as a guide for its national reforms. On an environmental level, this includes efficient waste management, combating pollution, and optimizing water resources. In the era of AI, which when left unchecked can impact on all three, these policies are more vital than ever.

While regulations are tightening, stakeholders and consumers increasingly expect businesses to take measurable action to minimize their carbon footprints, creating a correlation between sustainability efforts and business success.

A Circular Economy Blueprint for the IT Industry

IT life-cycle extension is a key strategy to reduce our overall footprint.

For equipment that still meets business needs, this can involve regular maintenance and updates.

While organizations invest in newer assets for critical infrastructures, they can reassign older equipment to lower-priority systems. This approach reduces e-waste production and saves enterprises the costs of complete IT overhauls.

Refurbishment and resale programs allow enterprises to recover investment value, lower industry-wide demand for new manufacturing, and keep equipment out of landfills. Meanwhile, IT asset disposition (ITAD) provides a secure and environmentally responsible exit — combining rigorous data sanitization with compliant recycling practices to safeguard both information and the planet.

Sustainability Is a Leadership Imperative

Rethinking IT life-cycle strategies and embracing a circular economy model will allow organizations to enjoy the value of emerging technologies and maximize performance, while supporting sustainability efforts.

The future of innovation isn’t just faster and smarter — it’s sustainable. It’s time to rethink how we build, use, and renew the digital backbone of our businesses.

Partner Spotlight
Building an AI-Fueled Business in the Middle East

Dr. Ahmed Alhusayni,
Medad SaaS & Cybersecurity Manager, Naseej for Technology

At a time when artificial intelligence is becoming a major driver of innovation, businesses in the Middle East are working hard to create AI-powered companies that can succeed in the future. The potential of AI is huge. Globally, the technology is expected to contribute $19.9 trillion to the economy by 2030. In the Middle East, AI could boost the regional economy by around $320 billion, which is about 11% of GDP, by 2030. These figures highlight why nearly 72% of organizations in the region are already using or planning to use AI. From finance and healthcare to oil & gas and education, companies are rethinking their services and operations through an AI-focused perspective to stay competitive in this rapidly changing landscape.

AI as a Key Priority

To truly become "AI-fueled," organizations must see AI as a key priority rather than a minor experiment. Progressive companies are moving beyond piecemeal pilots and broadening AI use throughout the business. They are transitioning from tentative trials to widespread adoption that delivers real benefits. This demands that AI be integrated into the company’s framework and culture. As an IDC study pointed out, AI is changing the rules of competition, and to succeed, firms must include AI in their core strategies. In practice, this involves using AI in decision-making, customer interactions, and everyday operations. It’s no surprise that almost 90% of IT leaders worldwide plan to increase or maintain their AI investments next year — a clear sign that boards and executives view AI as vital for future growth. Companies that realize they must adjust to an AI-first world or risk becoming obsolete are prioritizing AI in the boardroom, linking AI projects with business objectives to enhance productivity and innovation.

Opportunities and Challenges

The opportunities provided by AI are extensive. Organizations can use AI for predictive analytics to boost efficiency, implement intelligent automation to lower costs, and harness generative AI for new product ideas and personalized customer service. Various sectors are benefiting — retailers use AI to improve supply chains, educators use AI for tailored learning experiences, and governments leverage AI for better city services. Furthermore, the combination of AI with other technologies like cloud computing, 5G, and IoT is creating new possibilities for innovation. However, achieving these benefits comes with challenges. Companies need to invest in solid data infrastructure and AI management to ensure their systems are dependable, secure, and ethical. IDC experts suggest that the path ahead requires building strong ecosystems, promoting skill development, and implementing scalable cloud and datacenter solutions to support AI on a large scale. A shortage of skilled AI professionals and the difficulties of incorporating AI into existing processes are significant concerns, particularly in emerging digital economies. Bridging talent shortages through education and training, forming partnerships, and establishing clear ethical guidelines will be crucial for making the most of AI.

Embracing the AI-Fueled Future

As Middle Eastern companies shape their AI-driven future, the region is positioning itself as a leader in the global AI movement. National initiatives — from Saudi Arabia’s ambitious AI strategy to the UAE’s dedicated AI ministry — show a commitment to an AI-driven economy. Success in this endeavor will depend on strong leadership and the capacity for continual adaptation. Organizations that embrace AI's transformative potential while addressing its challenges will set the standard for innovation in the next decade. On the other hand, those that hesitate may risk being left behind in a world where AI capabilities determine competitive edge. By fostering a culture of data-driven decision-making and ongoing learning, businesses across the Middle East (and beyond) can build an AI-enabled organization that not only improves efficiency and growth but also drives significant change in industry and education. In summary, building the AI-powered business is about creating a resilient, adaptable organization that is prepared to lead in the age of AI and inspire a new wave of progress in the digital economy.

Partner Spotlight
State of Application Strategy 2025: Misalignment Means Mediocrity

Lori MacVittie,
Distinguished Engineer, F5

As we move through 2025, the pressure to deliver faster, more secure, and efficient applications is intense. Yet complexity, legacy practices, and misalignment keep undermining AI’s full potential. To stay competitive, organizations must align their strategies across security, automation, and deployment. This was one of the key themes in our latest State of Application Strategy report. Below are some of the main takeaways.

Security Focus: Prioritizing AI Over Microservices

Security tends to follow the buzz. But the forgotten corners of your architecture can be just as vulnerable.

AI deployments often receive top-tier security due to their direct interaction with sensitive data, while microservices — vital to modern apps — are overlooked.

Shielding AI is crucial but leaving microservices under-protected opens the door to breaches. These services often handle user authentication, data exchange, and core logic, so a weak link here can threaten the entire ecosystem.

Manual Operations

We love to talk about how AI and automation will transform everything, yet many teams still rely on manual steps.

Although AI promises automated tasks like traffic optimization, nearly 29% of teams are mired in scriptwriting, and 56% rely on human operators to initiate processes.

Ultimately, legacy methods and manual interventions can choke the pipeline. Even advanced AI can’t deliver results if the infrastructure relies on time-consuming, error-prone manual steps.

Deployment Delays

Many teams still use processes that require multiple manual approvals and ticketing. This can delay deployments and sap team morale.

Traditional deployment practices, such as reliance on human operators and cumbersome ticketing systems, cause significant delays — 23% cite ticketing integration as a primary automation roadblock.

Although modern CI/CD pipelines are built for speed, outdated processes can slow them to a crawl. If you’re pushing for continuous delivery yet still depending on manual approvals, you’re missing the point of agile deployment.

Complexity

Today, the challenges in automating application delivery — across APIs, tasks, languages, and time zones — are widespread and evenly distributed, revealing systemic complexity. Fragmentation across multiple tiers and services adds layers of manual effort and risk. Streamlining APIs, reducing redundant tasks, and unifying technologies can drastically reduce complexity, unlocking genuine automation benefits.

Final thoughts

While AI can optimize old processes, it can’t fix fundamental misalignment on its own. The path forward requires not just plugging in new tools but questioning if the underlying workflows are still relevant. Embrace modernization with a clear strategy or risk automating yesterday’s problems.

Partner Spotlight
From Digital Native to AI Native: The Next Five Years

Haitham Elkhatib,
Co-Founder & Chief Revenue Officer, UnifyApps

We’ve seen this movie before. In the 1990s, enterprises either rebuilt for the web or bolted on a browser layer and hoped for the best. The winners rewrote. The same pattern is unfolding now — with AI. Only this time, the change will be faster, deeper, and more unforgiving.

In our new Enterprise Roadmap for AI Nativity white paper, we outline what it takes to move beyond pilots and become truly AI native.

Why “AI Native” Matters

AI is no longer a sidecar; it’s the operating model. AI-native enterprises embed intelligence at the core of operations, not as an add-on. That shift drives speed, efficiency, and growth — just as early adopters are proving across industries with measurable gains in revenue, cost reduction, and customer experience.

The problem with today’s stack is that most organizations run on three siloed layers:

• Systems of Record (ERP/CRM/HRIS)
• Systems of Activity (email, chat, meetings)
• Systems of Knowledge (docs, wikis, PDFs, tribal know-how)

After a decade of “business-led tech,” the result is integration debt, compliance risk, and —crucially — AI unreadiness. Foundation models can talk, but they can’t act across your stack without orchestration, governance, and deep system access. We call this the “60% problem.”

The Enterprise AI Canvas: A Practical Blueprint

Our framework lays out six layers to become AI native — without ripping and replacing what you have:

• Systems (connectivity and integration) to every SoR/SoA/SoK
• Services, data, and knowledge unified and callable (including external AI agents)
• AI data and ontology to model entities and relationships
• Workflow and automation to encode reusable, AI-infused processes
• Application (UI) to ship web/mobile/chat apps with conversational UX
• Agent layer for autonomous, governed action with auditability

So, how do you start to connect your systems and index knowledge?

• Define your ontology and AI-ready data objects
• Design AI-native workflows and the guardrails to govern them
• Build and ship business apps quickly
• Deploy agents that monitor, act, and escalate with confidence thresholds
• Observe and iterate with an AI SDLC: requirements → design → test → deploy → monitor

Leaders who move now won’t just add a chatbot — they’ll modernize how work gets done. The next era belongs to enterprises that make AI the backbone of their operating model. If you’re planning your rewrite, this road map will help you ship value in weeks, not years

Partner Spotlight
Artificial Intelligence: No Longer a Futuristic Concept

Mo Mobasseri,
CEO, emt

Artificial intelligence is no longer a futuristic concept; it has become the driving force behind business transformation across industries. In Saudi Arabia, where Vision 2030 is reshaping the economic landscape, organizations are at the crossroads of opportunity: to architect businesses that are not only AI-enabled, but AI-fueled at their very core.

Building an AI-fueled business begins with mindset. Traditional companies often treat AI as a tool to automate repetitive tasks or reduce costs. Forward-thinking organizations, however, recognize that AI is an architectural pillar shaping strategy, decision-making, customer engagement, and new revenue models. Rather than adding AI as a feature, businesses must weave it into the blueprint of their operations.

One of the most profound benefits is intelligent decision-making. AI systems can analyze massive streams of data far beyond human capacity to uncover patterns, predict outcomes, and recommend actions. For example, retailers can anticipate demand shifts, banks can detect fraudulent activities in real time, and manufacturers can foresee equipment failures before they occur. This not only reduces risk but accelerates growth through informed, data-driven strategies.

Another benefit lies in customer intimacy. AI enables hyper-personalization at scale, allowing companies to engage each customer as if they were the only one. From tailored product recommendations to AI-powered service chatbots fluent in Arabic and English, businesses in Saudi Arabia can create customer experiences that are seamless, human-like, and deeply relevant. In a market that values both innovation and hospitality, this blend of technology and cultural nuance becomes a competitive advantage.

Moreover, AI strengthens workforce potential. Contrary to the fear that AI replaces humans, the smarter approach is to see AI as an amplifier. By automating mundane tasks, employees are empowered to focus on creativity, strategy, and innovation. This synergy leads to a more motivated workforce, new job categories, and opportunities for Saudi talent to lead the region in AI innovation.

To architect an AI-fueled business, leaders must consider three key steps:

1. Vision First: Align AI initiatives with long-term national and organizational goals.
2. Build the Ecosystem: Invest in data infrastructure, cloud platforms, and partnerships that fuel AI adoption.
3. Empower People: Train teams, foster digital literacy, and ensure ethical and responsible AI practices.

Saudi Arabia is uniquely positioned to pioneer this transformation. With government backing, young digital-native demographics, and ambitious economic diversification goals, the Kingdom has the ingredients to be one of the region’s leaders in AI-driven enterprises.

The future will not belong to businesses that simply use AI; it will belong to those that are architected around it.

Partner Spotlight
AI in 2025 and Beyond: Authenticity, Action, and Autonomy Will Define Success

Ted Orme,
Field CTO Data Integration EMEA, Qlik

As artificial intelligence continues to accelerate, 2025 has proven to be a turning point, prompting organizations to rethink how they use data, automation, and insights to deliver business impact. While the promise of AI is vast, so are the risks. Staying competitive now demands not only speed, but also clarity and responsibility.

With AI-generated content now making up more than half of what we see online, trust in digital information is increasingly under pressure. The risk of generative models learning from unreliable or fabricated data is real. To address this, organizations are investing in data integrity and emphasizing the importance of verifiable sources, provenance tracking, and initiatives like AI Trust Scores. Unlocking the potential of previously untapped “dark data” and embracing interoperable platforms is also helping build confidence in AI outcomes.

At the same time, businesses are shifting away from broad AI ambitions and focusing on tangible results. Practical use cases are taking priority over infrastructure-heavy projects, with generative AI (GenAI) being applied to improve decision-making, streamline operations, and empower users. However, data quality, cost control, and return on investment continue to challenge adoption. Organizations seeing the most benefit are those integrating GenAI into real workflows, particularly through conversational interfaces and targeted, business-specific applications.

Meanwhile, AI is beginning to act independently. Autonomous systems capable of managing multi-step processes and executing decisions are no longer theoretical. Multi-agent models and real-time data processing are reshaping how work gets done, which unlocks new efficiencies and enables faster, more adaptive operations. But these systems are only as strong as the data and processes behind them.

These developments are deeply connected. Without trustworthy data, the value of AI tools declines. Without clear use cases, innovation stalls. And without strong foundations, autonomy leads to risk, not reward.

Three-quarters of the way into 2025, it’s clear that the organizations making real progress are those that have moved beyond experimentation, embracing AI with a focus on authenticity, measurable value, and intelligent autonomy. The foundation they’re building now will define their trajectory well beyond this year.

Partner Spotlight
Minimum Viable Company: The New Go-To Strategy for Modern Cyber Resilience

Sameh Hassan,
Country Manager, Saudi Arabia, Commvault

Cyberattacks are becoming more frequent, more sophisticated, and more critical, and organizations need to think beyond conventional recovery models. That said, being able to recover after the damage is not enough. The focus must shift to sustaining operations during a crisis.

This is where the concept of the minimum viable company (MVC) becomes invaluable. MVC has been defined as “the smallest possible version of an organization that can still function and serve customers should an incident bring down part(s) of the operations and systems.” It’s a pragmatic approach through which to view continuity.

The strategic value of the MVC approach lies in prioritization. Rather than attempting to recover everything at once following an attack, the goal is to restore only what is most critical to maintain core operations. These essential components typically include secure access to identity management systems, internal and external communications tools, and the most crucial operational or customer-facing applications.

As well as ascertaining what systems make up your MVC, there is a shift in mindset from recovery to resilience that is required too. This demands more than just technical preparedness. Roles and responsibilities must be clearly defined well in advance of an incident, such as who leads in a crisis. Key personnel should be trained not only in response protocols but in decision-making under pressure. A business operating in MVC mode must be agile, organized, and decisive.

Importantly, organizations must complete regular testing of all recovery and defense systems. An untested backup is merely a theoretical safety net. Continuous validation, automated restoration testing, and failover drills ensure that the systems designed to support MVC operation will work effectively when they are most needed. Increasingly, artificial intelligence and machine learning are being deployed to enhance these processes, helping to detect anomalies, identify threats in real time, and optimize recovery decisions based on dynamic conditions.

In a world where cyber incidents are no longer anomalies but expectations, organizations must stop treating security and continuity as separate disciplines. This concept is not merely a contingency plan, it aligns operational capability with strategic risk tolerance.

To conclude, organizations that adopt the MVC concept are building future-ready organizations that can adapt, recover, and continue even in the most hostile conditions. In doing so, not only are they safeguarding their data and systems, but also their reputation and long-term viability.

Partner Spotlight
Unlocking the Power of GenAI for Service Innovation

Helder Gonçalves,
Chief Product Officer, Neptune Software

In today’s enterprise landscape, the conversation around generative AI (GenAI) is shifting from hype to tangible impact. Organizations are asking not just whether to adopt AI, but how to integrate it in ways that enhance services, deliver measurable value, and maintain operational control.

At the IDC Saudi Arabia CIO Summit 2025, the theme “Unlocking the Power of Gen AI: Enhancing Services Through Innovation” reflects both the challenges and opportunities facing leaders in the Kingdom’s public and private sectors. The rapid evolution of AI capabilities around predictive analytics, natural language interfaces, process automation, and generative content has opened doors to new service models and customer experiences. Yet, these advances also raise critical questions around governance, data integration, and ethical use.

From Trend to Imperative

GenAI is no longer a niche experiment. It is being embedded into enterprise platforms, workflows, and decision-making frameworks. In service delivery, this means routine tasks can be automated, insights generated in real time, and customer engagement personalized at scale.

Still, adoption is complex. Many enterprises rely on technology estates such as SAP ERP, where modernization efforts like the shift to S/4HANA already demand significant resources. Adding GenAI requires more than features; it calls for a deliberate approach that balances innovation with operational stability.

Bridging Innovation and Reality

A central challenge for CIOs is connecting AI’s potential with organizational realities. For service-driven enterprises, the question becomes: how can we innovate without disrupting mission-critical systems or overwhelming technical teams?

Here, pairing AI with low-code/no-code platforms offers a path forward. These tools allow faster experimentation and reduce the reliance on scarce specialist skills. When combined with a clear AI integration strategy, they enable organizations to prototype, test, and scale AI-enhanced services — whether intelligent chatbots, predictive dashboards, or citizen-facing apps — without long development cycles.

Governance and the Human Factor

Innovation in services also requires trust. GenAI adoption depends on explainable outputs, compliant processes, and seamless integration. CIOs must define frameworks for selecting and governing models, while ensuring data protection. Equally, AI should augment rather than replace human expertise, allowing staff to focus on higher-value work.

Looking Ahead

As CIOs gather in Riyadh, the discussion will move from “what’s possible” to “what’s practical.” GenAI offers an unprecedented opportunity to rethink service delivery, accelerate innovation, and boost efficiency. But success requires clear strategy, strong governance, and the ability to bridge emerging technologies with core systems.

Those who master this balance will not only enhance services but redefine service excellence in the age of intelligent innovation.

Partner Spotlight
Navigating AI and Data Privacy: Key Considerations for CIOs

Beth Hanson,
Senior Marketing Manager, Perforce DelphiX

CIOs today face the dual challenge of driving innovation through artificial intelligence (AI) while upholding stringent data privacy standards. The rapid proliferation of AI across business operations introduces new complexities, especially as sensitive data increasingly fuels development, analytics, and automation. To remain competitive and compliant, CIOs must strategically address the intersection of adopting AI and protecting data privacy.

The Intersection of AI and Data Privacy

AI systems require large and varied datasets, often containing personally identifiable, confidential, or proprietary information. As organizations leverage AI for competitive advantage, risks of data exposure, misuse, or re-identification are elevated—particularly in non-production environments that may be less rigorously governed. With global privacy regulations evolving, CIOs must ensure that data policies prevent unauthorized access and comply with standards.

A recent State of Data Compliance and Security Report indicates that 82% of organizations are concerned about threats to AI model training data, as well as the possibility of sensitive data being re-identified. These risks can result in regulatory non-compliance, reputational harm, and significant financial penalties.

Regulatory Compliance in AI Environments

The regulatory landscape for data privacy is becoming increasingly complex, with established regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in the United States setting high standards for protecting sensitive data. The advent of the EU AI Act further intensifies the focus on transparency, accountability, and ethical handling of data in AI systems. These evolving frameworks challenge CIOs to ensure that their organizations not only meet current mandates but are also prepared to rapidly adapt to new requirements as they emerge.

The Path Forward

As data continues to drive organizational transformation, CIOs must view privacy and security as core enablers of trustworthy AI. By anticipating risks, adopting comprehensive protection measures, and maintaining agility in the face of regulatory change, CIOs can successfully harness AI's transformative potential — protecting sensitive data, ensuring data compliance, and building enduring trust with customers and stakeholders.

Partner Spotlight
From Exploration to Execution: The AI Inflection Point

Hussein Ragy,
Chief Executive Officer, BBI

For years, we’ve witnessed organizations explore artificial intelligence with cautious curiosity — running pilots, testing use cases, and evaluating proof of concepts. Yet, we are no longer in the era of exploration. Today, we are firmly stepping into the execution phase of AI.

Across industries — whether public sector or private enterprises — the shift is clear. Leaders are no longer asking, “What can AI do for us?” Instead, they are asking, “How do we implement AI now and what value will it deliver?” At BBI, this shift resonates deeply with our journey. Since 2009, we have remained focused solely on data and AI solutions, and today, our strength in execution is what drives results for our clients.

The market no longer rewards theoretical conversations about AI potential. It demands tangible ROI, accelerated impact, and strategic integration — and this is where the real opportunity lies. AI has matured beyond hype, and the organizations that thrive will be those that execute, measure, and scale with intent.

Currently, we are witnessing a powerful transformation in how humans interact with data. Generative AI — and more recently agentic AI — is redefining both internal decision-making and external customer engagement. Internally, companies are moving beyond static dashboards and reports, seeking instead natural language interfaces that allow decision-makers to query their data in real time — as if speaking to a trusted advisor. The days of building KPIs manually are giving way to seamless, conversational access to insight.

Externally, GenAI is rapidly becoming the new layer between organizations and their customers. However, this layer is no longer passive. With the rise of agentic AI, these systems don’t just respond to queries but rather, they understand intent, anticipate needs, and act autonomously. They can make self-directed decisions, call the right services, and integrate across backend systems — all while ensuring a natural, human-like interaction. This reduces operational costs, improves service speed, and makes customer engagement not only more efficient, but more intelligent. This shift is not just about efficiency; it’s about reimagining customer experience.

As AI moves from concept to core, leadership must embrace the mindset of applied and agentic intelligence — where data, autonomy, and execution converge. This is the future we are building at BBI, and we are proud to stand at the forefront of this evolution.

Partner Spotlight
Rethinking Leadership for the Middle East’s AI-Powered Future

Khalid Rabie,
Head of Business Consultancy and Executive Coach and Trainer, Vidscola

From hype to sustained impact, enterprises must blend human insight, ethical rigor, and agile culture to unlock AI’s true value.

Across the Gulf, sovereign visions and business ambitions have positioned AI as the next growth engine. Yet leadership teams discover that algorithms alone cannot redesign an organization; they simply expose its strengths and bottlenecks. Navigating this revolution therefore begins with organizational development — clarifying decision rights, shortening feedback loops, and empowering multidisciplinary squads that can learn as fast as models evolve.

The promise of AI is tangible — from predictive maintenance in energy to personalized citizen services — yet early pilots often stall when headline metrics outpace operational realities. Unlocking real value demands disciplined product thinking, clear value hypotheses, and success indicators that move beyond vanity demos to enterprise wide outcomes.

Critically, competitive advantage in the Middle East will still be written by people. Trust, context, and empathy enable teams to interpret model outputs, challenge bias, and translate insights into action at board, ministry, and frontline levels — tasks no neural network can replicate.

Responsible innovation must run in parallel. Regional data privacy statutes are maturing, and reputational scrutiny is rising. Boards that embed ethical risk reviews into their delivery cadence not only protect citizens but accelerate stakeholder confidence and adoption.

In a data saturated world, leadership judgment becomes scarcer, not redundant. Executives who pair algorithmic foresight with scenario thinking and culturally attuned intuition will steer the region through volatility with greater conviction.

Finally, success lies in reframing AI from automation to augmentation. By hard wiring continuous learning and psychological safety into agile operating models, organizations can cultivate an AI positive culture — one that rewards experimentation, shares lessons, and scales wins across portfolios.

The Middle East stands at a moment; leaders who integrate technology, talent, and trust will shape the region’s next decade of growth.

We invite you to connect with the Vidscola team during the IDC Summit to explore how agile, AI, and, human-centered transformation can converge into a road map tailored for your enterprise.

Partner Spotlight
The Rise of AI Agents Signals the Growing Importance of Data Privacy

Tariq Salameh,
Senior Solutions Engineering Manager, META, Cloudera

Differentiating and protecting critical information

The first and most crucial step in protecting consumer trust is securing critical and personally identifiable information. Organizations must invest in secure and governed data platforms that employ comprehensive encryption and tokenization strategies. These measures should be applied across all data environments, whether on-premise or cloud-based and across diverse storage solutions. Building robust defences ensures that data remains secure while enabling the safe adoption of AI.

Addressing data governance and security mandates

As governments worldwide strengthen regulations to protect citizens’ data privacy rights, compliance with local market rules and data sovereignty laws has become increasingly complex. The growing adoption of agentic AI adds another layer of difficulty, as these systems often require access to historical and cross-border data to operate effectively.

To address this, enterprises must adopt a granular approach to data governance, supported by a zero-trust architecture – a security model that ensures no user or system is trusted by default. This involves accurately identifying where specific customer data resides, applying appropriate controls, and being prepared to produce detailed audit reports.

Building a culture of trust and transparency is essential for managing expectations around data usage and the ethical limitations of Agentic AI. Implementing Privacy by Design principles ensures that privacy is integrated into AI products and services from the outset. As AI agents increasingly influence decision-making with consumer data, organizations must prioritize transparency in data handling to foster trust and reduce reputational risks, ultimately supporting long-term success.

Analyst Spotlight
Architecting the Future of Enterprise Applications: The AI-Cloud Convergence

Uzair Mujtaba,
Senior Research Manager, IDC

Saudi Arabia’s digital economy is entering a crucial phase. As Vision 2030 accelerates nationwide transformation, CIOs across industries are reimagining their enterprise application stacks, and the conversation is quickly shifting from cloud migration to building an intelligent, adaptive, and autonomous application ecosystem powered by AI, generative AI (GenAI), and the next frontier, agentic AI.

IDC’s latest research indicates that nearly 42% of CIOs are already running AI-native and AI-enhanced applications in production with established training and acquisition plans. Driven by operational efficiency and customer centricity priorities, this shift comes with its own set of challenges. Legacy ERP environments, fragmented data pipelines, and skills shortages are testing the resilience of transformation strategies.

The upcoming IDC Saudi Arabia CIO Summit 2025 will serve as an opportunity for technology leaders to navigate this next wave of disruption. Let's see what is shaping the future of enterprise applications and what it means for CIOs preparing their organizations for the AI-enabled era.

From being an add-on function for enterprise application, AI has evolved into a key component of modern application design. AI is enabling new efficiencies and insights through predictive analytics, natural language interfaces, and generative design tools across industries. The banking, manufacturing, and government sectors of Saudi Arabia stand to significantly benefit from such approaches and, in many cases, are fast-tracking similar pilots aimed at translating AI innovation into competitive advantage.

While AI augments decision-making, agentic AI takes it a step further into operating independently, making decisions aligned to defined goals, and dynamically adjusting processes in real time. IDC's worldwide research reveals that over half of enterprise applications now feature embedded AI assistants or advisors, while 20% have advanced to incorporate AI agents, signaling a rapid shift toward intelligent, agentic software. For CIOs in Saudi Arabia, this means rearchitecting APIs to enable autonomous agents to access and act on data without manual intervention, adopting hybrid AI models where processing at the edge is critical for real-time autonomy in industries like energy, logistics, and smart cities, and establishing new governance and trust frameworks to ensure autonomous systems make decisions that align with ethical and regulatory requirements.

Saudi organizations are increasingly deploying IoT sensors across industrial sites, supply chains, and public services. Driven by national initiatives and industrial modernization initiatives, spending on IoT will continue its surge to top $3.8 billion in 2027. The challenge is to make this exploding amount of data actionable at scale. IDC surveys show that close to 30% of Saudi enterprises plan to make edge computing investments by 2026, complementing their IoT deployments with localized intelligence.

Building the AI-Ready Enterprise Application Stack

To capitalize on these trends, Saudi CIOs must focus on five transformation pillars:

• Infrastructure Modernization: Cloud-native, API-driven platforms capable of hosting AI and agentic workflows.
• Data Foundations: Unified, high-quality, and governance-ready data pipelines feeding AI models.
• Workforce Enablement: Upskilling talent to design, supervise, and continuously improve AI-enabled systems.
• Security and Trust: Robust cybersecurity frameworks for autonomous agents and sensitive data processing.
• Partner Ecosystem: Strategic alliances with hyperscalers, ERP vendors, and AI innovators to accelerate deployment and scale.

The IDC Saudi Arabia CIO Summit 2025: A Forum for Actionable Insights

The path to AI-powered, adaptive enterprise applications is not straightforward. CIOs face real barriers such as legacy systems, skills shortages, and integration complexities, but the opportunities out there are transformative. The IDC Saudi Arabia CIO Summit 2025 will bring together global technology leaders, regional innovators, and forward-thinking CIOs to tackle these challenges head on. Expect deep dives into agentic AI readiness, industry-specific GenAI use cases, cloud-native transformation strategies, and future-proof application architectures tailored to the Kingdom’s unique digital ecosystem.

CXO Spotlight
AI in Defense: Automated Threat Detection

Nasser AlGhamdi,
GM of Cybersecurity, Saudi Commission for Health Specialties

AI is changing the way we stay safe on the internet. One thing many companies and individuals have been using historically is a list of known threats, but the hackers would not stay still. They would rename the code, switch servers, and find gaps in our security — and I’ve seen too many companies get left behind. But what they have missed is that this is AI’s real power; machine learning can identify undesirable behavior before serious damage is done. For instance, if an account suddenly logs in at midnight or downloads files it never uses, we can immediately stop it and address the problem before the hackers get the company’s data or overrun the system.

One of the main reasons I like AI is that it reduces false alarms. It knows that a deliberate spike in data could be normal for the marketing team around a product launch. The value of context is you avoid being inundated by meaningless alerts and allow yourself to focus on the real threats that warrant your attention.

Hackers, too, use AI to circumvent obsolescent defenses. They experiment with new techniques, hone their tactics, and mount attacks against those who don’t catch up. And so on, and on, and on it goes, this cat-and-mouse game — and it’s not going to stop anytime soon. The solution is to make sure we train our AI on current data. We use the data that we made available to it about known tactics and habitual behavior to optimize its ability to spot anomalies that might be the start of a new threat.

Despite its promise, AI is not a panacea. It relies on human involvement to set it up, review alerts, and make final decisions. It can occasionally make mistakes, and we must be prepared to step in to prevent breaches. However, if we rely solely on manual checks, we risk falling behind. Security teams must collaborate with AI, allowing it to handle most tasks while experts address the more complex issues.

I am also concerned about privacy. AI can observe everything from user logins to emails. We must establish clear boundaries: collecting only what is necessary, ensuring security, and informing individuals about why we monitor their data. Transparency is crucial for gaining the trust of employees and customers. AI can be a force for good, but it must be handled with care.

Looking to the future, I envision AI playing an even more significant role in preventing attacks before they occur. It will analyze patterns across various companies, detect threats early, and disseminate warnings so others can stay prepared. However, attackers can exploit this same technology, crafting convincing phishing emails or customizing malware for specific targets. This reality keeps me vigilant, reminding me that our defenses must evolve as rapidly as the offenses we face.

Ultimately, AI is a partner rather than a replacement for human insight. It should handle the heavy lifting, allowing us to concentrate on planning and creativity. We can defend ourselves robustly and personally by combining relentless AI with real-world expertise. It is akin to having a loyal watchdog by our side, always ready to raise the alarm. This sense of security keeps us calm, even in turbulent times, and reassures us that as digital threats evolve, so too do our defenses, one line of code at a time.

Analyst Spotlight
Enabling AI Outcomes with Cybersecurity

Frank Dickson,
Group Vice President, Security & Trust, IDC

GenAI was coming. Predictive AI was coming. No . . . wait, it was already here. Anyway, we sit here today focused on the art and the genuineness of the possible.

As we consider and dream of the possible, we sometimes forget the reality of the now. Between the hype around GenAI and the COVID-19 pandemic before that, we sometimes fail to acknowledge that cybersecurity has grown up. Once the dominion of hoodie-wearing basement dwellers, the topic has elevated to the C-suite and beyond. Attacks from the cyberthreat landscape do not just present a technical risk — the ramifications create a risk to the organization itself. In essence, cyber risk equals business risk.

Unlike many other corporate functions, cybersecurity did not develop from the typical path of strategy, goals, policies then tactics. It started in reverse with tactics first, then policies, then goals, and finally to strategy — if it made it there at all. The result is that formal strategy is really more of an amalgamation of small tactical decisions over time. This opportunistic cybersecurity strategy creation makes it challenging for organizations that are looking to create competitive advantages with AI. Thus, security needs to evolve from the tactical to the strategic, from being reactive to being proactive, from being an inhibitor to an enabler.

Cybersecurity leaders must now think strategically and act as business leaders alongside the executives of their organizations — creating insights, aiding executives in decision-making, and showing an organization's risk posture are all critical for cybersecurity leaders' success in today's fast-changing threat landscape and regulatory environment.

The IDC Saudi Arabia CIO Summit looks to address security in this new reality of security becoming an enabling function for AI-created competitive advantage. We aim to guide you in working with the CEO and board of directors as we transition to delivering secure outcomes and a trusted organization to our executive constituencies.

Analyst Spotlight
The AI Everywhere Era in the Public Sector

Massimiliano Claps,
Research Director, IDC

AI and GenAI are having an increasingly pervasive impact on government — across missions, use cases, processes, and systems — in the Middle East and beyond. The disruptive impact of these technologies, compounded by geopolitical volatility, technical debt, digital sovereignty concerns, elevated citizen expectations, and regulatory changes, will require government leaders to approach innovation holistically. The acquisition and implementation of new technologies will not be enough. Realizing the benefits of AI, cloud, and industry platforms will require revisiting governance, risk management, culture, and the building of competencies to accelerate innovation.

Realizing the Value of AI at Scale in the MEA Region

The advent of GenAI prompted a surge of experimentation. Governments piloted GenAI for task automation, such as summarizing meeting minutes, drafting RFI and RFP documents for public tenders, creating job requisitions, synthesizing information to respond to freedom of information requests, and conducting research for the preparation of policy briefs. As pilot projects empowered them to evaluate benefits and risks, national governments and smart cities started to invest in scaling both traditional AI/ML and GenAI systems to address more complex industry-specific scenarios, such as service and benefits personalization, clinical care, and traffic safety. AI-enabled digital assistants started to help citizens interact with systems through conversational interfaces, instead of having to scroll through screens and fill out forms. Employee digital assistants started to help expert government case managers review, validate, and respond to citizen requests in a more holistic and personalized manner.

AI-powered governments will need to rethink their strategies, governance, people, and technologies to effectively adopt AI. This radical transformation will require governments to establish senior leadership roles that can build organizational capacities and competencies; design and enforce governance policies, structures, and processes; and deploy data and AI infrastructure, platforms, and application capabilities that align with strategic mission goals — all while complying with regulation. The MEA region is leading the charge; for instance, the Dubai government appointed 22 chief artificial intelligence officers (CAIOs) in 2024.

To achieve this level of automation, CAIOs need to work with line-of-mission and program leaders to re-engineer processes and systems so they can apply algorithms that recognize changes in their constituents' circumstances, identify the root causes, and trigger operational workflows or dynamically reconfigure services and programs to meet constituents' evolving needs and preferences.

From an architectural standpoint, this level of end-to-end process automation will require a combination of agents that will provide multimodal capabilities to process text, rules, and images, and will be orchestrated to deliver intended outcomes across end-to-end workflows.

To generate the desired outputs and outcomes from the application of AI and GenAI, government CAIOs and chief data officers need to feed data-hungry algorithmic training and fine-tuning. To avoid using low-quality datasets, which grow bias and hallucination, lower accuracy, and increase the risk of intellectual property infringement and other ethical and compliance risks, governments will invest in data logistics and control planes and establish governance polices and processes that enable them to control quality, reliability, and integrity of datasets.

Hybrid, multicloud environments are becoming the cornerstone for governments wanting to modernize their infrastructure, transform their applications, and take advantage of innovations such as AI and GenAI. FinOps practices and tools need to be in place to control costs, particularly as innovative capabilities are being tested and then scaled. AI will augment FinOps tools too, to optimize cloud resource sizing and usage, increase the transparency and accountability of cloud costs and carbon footprints, and detect anomalies.

Governments consider AI not only a tool for efficiency improvement, but a national strategic asset. They want to be able to harness AI to drive opportunities for the national AI innovation ecosystem and secure data and technical independence. This will drive new policy requirements for sovereign AI controls, such as data governance, data localization, and control requirements; scrutiny over hardware and software bills of material, algorithmic transparency, data protection, cybersecurity, and the ethical use of AI; and investments in local knowledge transfer. As a result of some of these policies, global cloud and AI platform companies have significantly increased their investments in local infrastructure and operations in the MEA region, with the Saudi Arabia and the UAE being the main beneficiaries.

As AI becomes more pervasive, robust security controls must be put in place, starting early on in the design stage for the hybrid, multicloud environments where these systems will be deployed. Security controls, along with updated governance policies and literacy programs, will be critical to ensure responsible AI innovation that minimizes the risk of misuse, such as generating misinformation, deepfakes, or biased content, as well as avoiding exposing systems to attacks and loss of sensitive and critical data.

Government CIOs and CAIOs that have a mandate to realize the benefits of AI at scale will have to develop trustworthy collaborative approaches to identify early wins, establish responsible AI governance and cybersecurity best practices, embed sovereignty principles in platform procurement and implementation, and apply FinOps best practices and tools to control the cost of innovation.

Testcrew

TestCrew is an award-winning quality engineering company and a leader in AI-based testing. Based in Saudi Arabia and serving businesses across various industries and regions, TestCrew has established a significant presence globally.

TestCrew empowers businesses to deliver flawless and secure software by ensuring that the highest standards of quality, compliance, and security are met. The globally circulating reputation of TestCrew is found to be stirred by a deeply rooted commitment to exceptional quality and this is a key enabler of business transformation, enhances user experience, and fuel confident innovation.

It is how TestCrew combines its well-established AI-based quality engineering services with its knowledge of different domains to create its award-winning methodologies and testing frameworks.

The company has a proven track record of eminent clients of leading public, private, and governmental organizations in technology, banking, tourism, healthcare, and more. This indicated a great ability of TestCrew to deliver excellence across all sectors. Through clients’ testimonials, TestCrew managed to achieve significant improvements in software performance, reliability, user satisfaction, and operational efficiency.

TestCrew takes advantage of its strategic partnerships with the world's latest AI-powered technology and services providers to provide efficiently optimized testing. This is evident in its significant reduction of time-to-market, accelerated delivery timelines, and boosted overall accuracy and efficiency.

Another hallmark of TestCrew's value proposition is its extensive team of ISTQB-certified professionals, who bring localized experience to every project across diverse industries.

TestCrew offers specialized end-to-end testing and quality assurance services tailored to meet the unique needs of clients.

These services are structured into three core categories:

• Cloud & Performance Engineering, which includes performance testing, verification and validation testing, and cloud engineering and migration testing.

• Digital Assurance, encompassing system integration testing, user acceptance testing, test automation, and consultation.

• Digital Engineering, featuring services such as security testing, DevOps testing, engineering outsourcing, and robotic process automation.

The company’s achievements have been recognized with multiple awards for innovation and service excellence. TestCrew’s strategic growth initiatives focus on expanding its technological capabilities and entering new markets, ensuring it remains at the forefront of industry advancements.

IDC recognizes TestCrew's dedication to providing confidence in software. This dedication to excellence, alongside their innovative approaches and highly skilled team promises TestCrew to be a trusted partner towards achieving superior digital aspirations.

8:30	Registration & Networking Arrive Early & Stand a Chance to be among 100 Winners of a Sony Headphone!
8:55	IDC Welcome Address & Recap of Day 1
	Jyoti Lalchandani Head of WW Events & MD - META, Central Asia, India, IDC
9:00	The Cloud's Next Chapter: Intelligent Infrastructure for the AI Workload
	The cloud is no longer a destination; it has become the launchpad for the next era of innovation. While the initial rush of adoption was often driven by compliance mandates — such as the MCIT's "Cloud First Strategy" and the DGA's goal to achieve 50% cloud adoption for digital government services by 2025 — the CIO's role has now evolved from managing costs to becoming a strategic leader for the entire business. The next great frontier is the integration of AI. This session will dive directly into the core challenge and opportunity: preparing your infrastructure for the AI revolution. It will explore what comes after the initial cloud adoption phase and discuss how CIOs must pivot from building a flexible, scalable cloud environment to architecting an intelligent infrastructure specifically designed to support the immense demands of AI and GenAI workloads. This isn't just about more computers; it's about a fundamental rethinking of data pipelines, network architectures, and security frameworks to enable AI at scale. Sa'ed Tuffaha Regional Director, Digital Innovation & AI, CNTXT
9:00
9:20	Bringing AI Everywhere: Unlock the Full Potential of AI
	Ahmed Hussein Senior Regional Manager, Solution Architects, Red Hat Kareem Sherif Director, AI & Datacenters, Intel
9:40	Bridging the AI Gap: Saudi Arabia’s AI Readiness & Maturity Journey
	Saeed Al-Hadwan Director, Data Analytics & AI, NourNet Hamza Elfassi Director, AI Services, OmniOps
10:00	Reinventing Data, Insights, and Action Amidst the Noise
	AI is advancing at a pace that challenges even the most seasoned experts, offering immense potential but also significant uncertainty. This session outlines the most critical trends in AI and data, offering practical guidance to help data leaders make responsible choices today that will shape a more secure, impactful future. Ted Orme Field CTO Data Integration EMEA, Qlik
10:20	GenAI Meets Enterprise Low Code: A Strategic Pathway to Innovation
	Generative AI (GenAI) and enterprise-grade low code are reshaping how organizations innovate. This session will showcase a strategic pathway to innovation that combines the speed and intelligence of GenAI with the scalability, security, and governance of low code. Learn how enterprises can modernize legacy systems, drive operational efficiency, and bring innovative ideas to market faster. Join us as we explore real-world examples of how organizations are using AI-powered capabilities to empower teams, streamline development, and create real impact while maintaining quality and control. Mohamed Shaaban Senior Account Executive, OutSystems Gasser Abdullah Head of Presales (Digital Solutions), Link Development
10:40 11:25	Summit Tracks (Parallel Sessions)
	Summit Track A: Leveraging Data and AI for Customer and Operational Success 10:39 - 10:40 Session Overview Paul Potgieter Director, Technology & Digital Platforms, NEOM (UAE) 10:40 - 10:55 Data-Driven CX Transformation: Practical Pathways for Saudi Enterprises This session will explore how businesses can turn customer data into results. It will explain how embracing practical strategies like building data foundations, connecting insights, and personalizing engagement can equip enterprises with clear takeaways to boost loyalty, improve efficiency, and drive growth. Saran Babu Regional Director, (MEA), Zoho Corporation 10:54 - 10:55 Ask Questions, Rate Sessions & Stand a Chance to win iPhone 16 10:55 - 11:10 Beyond Adoption: Building Intelligent Enterprises in the Age of AI As Saudi organizations move beyond AI experimentation, the real challenge lies in building intelligent, adaptive, and scalable enterprises. This session explores the strategic leap from AI adoption to operationalized intelligence — where data, people, and platforms are orchestrated to think, learn, and act. Tarek Khattab will be sharing insights on how CIOs can lead this evolution by integrating AI into core business functions, embracing governance, and preparing for future technologies like AGI. With reference to IBM’s watsonx platform and Saudi’s national AI momentum, this talk will outline how to turn AI into lasting, intelligent transformation. Tarek Khattab Country Manager, Solutions & Services, SBM 11:09 - 11:10 Ask Questions, Rate Sessions & Stand a Chance to win iPhone 16 11:10 - 11:25 AI Agents & Innovation: Accelerating Saudi Arabia’s Digital Vision Discover how AI agents and intelligent integration are enabling Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 across both public and private sectors. This session will explore how AI-driven platforms accelerate digital innovation, streamline cloud transformation, and modernize customer and business services. Learn how the latest AI capabilities are helping organizations to break down data silos, orchestrate smarter operations, and establish agile foundations for sustainable growth as we share real-world insights into how leading Saudi enterprises are delivering customer-centric experiences, scaling digital ecosystems, and boosting operational efficiency. A must-attend session for CIOs and technology leaders aiming to harness emerging technologies in support of the Kingdom's ambitious digital transformation agenda. Larbi Belbecir Senior Solutions Consultant, Boomi 11:24 - 11:25 Ask Questions, Rate Sessions & Stand a Chance to win iPhone 16 Summit Track B: Strategies for Enabling an AI-powered Data-driven, Resilient, Sustainable Business 10:39 - 10:40 Session Overview 10:40 - 10:55 AI-Driven IT: A Strategic Imperative for Sustainable Business Performance As organizations embrace AI, the success of these initiatives hinges on IT’s ability to deliver the performance, reliability, and scale required. In this session, we will explore how enterprises can shift from reactive IT operations to intelligent, AI-driven strategies that improve decision-making, reduce operational overhead, and unlock business impact. We will demonstrate how leading companies are aligning IT with core business outcomes - accelerating services, elevating user experiences, and building resilience into every layer of their digital operations. Salman Ali Senior Manager - Solution Engineering, Riverbed Technology 10:54 - 10:55 Ask Questions, Rate Sessions & Stand a Chance to win iPhone 16 10:55 - 11:10 AI + Security + Connectivity: Powering the Next Generation of Enterprises AI is reshaping enterprise operations — but it brings new security and connectivity challenges. This session will explore how the Connectivity Cloud combines AI-driven security and unified networking to help CIOs reduce complexity, protect critical assets, and scale AI initiatives with confidence. Samer Hasan Senior Strategic Solutions Engineer, Cloudflare 11:09 - 11:10 Ask Questions, Rate Sessions & Stand a Chance to win iPhone 16 11:10 - 11:25 High Return Enterprise GenAI An AI that creates higher returns and competitive advantages for an enterprise should: ● Generate strategic insights rather than tactical responses. ● Engage meaningfully with decision makers instead of simply answering queries. ● Create measurable value by understanding and pursuing organizational purpose. We found that the creation of such AI in the enterprise needs to be shaped by the following perspectives: 1. Teleology: What AI models should achieve , 2. Epistemology: What counts as knowledge, and 3. Ontology: How AI represents reality Without thoughtful and rigorous cultivation of such perspectives in the development of enterprise AI, organizations will fail to garner higher returns and competitive advantage from their generative and/or predictive AI investments, no matter how big these investments may be. In this session, we will take the audience on a tour de force of how we make the above perspectives indigenous to our Enterprise AI offerings" Mohammed Ebrahim Chief Data Scientist, Mozn 11:24 - 11:25 Ask Questions, Rate Sessions & Stand a Chance to win iPhone 16
11:25	Tea/ Coffee & Networking Break
11:35 12:20	Technology Focus Group Session - Cluster A (Parallel Sessions)
	Track A1: Turning Data into Real-Time Intelligence 11:35 - 11:40 Opening Act 11:40 - 11:43 Session Overview Uzair Mujtaba Senior Research Manager, IDC 11:43 - 11:45 Start of the Session Raffle Attend the Track, Ask Questions, Rate Sessions & Stand a Chance to win iPhone 16 11:45 - 12:00 Real time Intelligence 12:00 - 12:15 Beyond Printing: Complementary Business Communication Technologies 12:15 - 12:20 Announcement of iPhone 16 Raffle Winner! Track A2: Accelerating Digital Experience & Application Innovation 11:35 - 11:40 Opening Act 11:40 - 11:43 Session Overview Mufasir Yousuf Research Manager, IDC 11:43 - 11:45 Start of the Session Raffle Attend the Track, Ask Questions, Rate Sessions & Stand a Chance to win iPhone 16 11:45 - 12:00 Smarter AI, Stronger Apps AI and business applications are two sides of the same coin — one enables intelligence, while the other ensures scalability, efficiency, and enterprise-wide impact. This session explores how low-code/no-code (LCNC) bridges this gap, accelerating AI adoption while enhancing the agility and intelligence of business applications. It highlights how LCNC empowers enterprises to break down adoption barriers, drive real-time decision-making, and create a new wave of smarter, more connected, and high-ROI solutions. Aly Hassballah Director, Delivery & Solutions, CODE81 12:00 - 12:15 Winning Strategies for Multi-Cloud Environments 12:15 - 12:20 Announcement of iPhone 16 Raffle Winner! Track A3: Rethinking Cloud & Enterprise IT Modernization 11:35 - 11:40 Opening Act 11:40 - 11:43 Session Overview Jawairia Asif Senior Research Analyst 11:43 - 11:45 Start of the Session Raffle Attend the Track, Ask Questions, Rate Sessions & Stand a Chance to win iPhone 16 11:45 - 12:00 Unlocking the Future with Agentic AI and Computer Vision Avinash Hegde Director -Operations, Godrej Infotech 12:00 - 12:15 IoT in Print Infrastructure: Revolutionizing the Office Ecosystem 12:15 - 12:20 Announcement of iPhone 16 Raffle Winner!
11:36 12:20	Technology Focus Group Session - Cluster B (Parallel Sessions)
	Track B1: The Cloud Revolution: Foundation for Digital Business Transformation 11:35 - 11:40 Opening Act 11:40 - 11:43 Session Overview Hyder Aftab Research Manager, IDC 11:43 - 11:45 Start of the Session Raffle Attend the Track, Ask Questions, Rate Sessions & Stand a Chance to win iPhone 16 11:45 - 12:00 Unleashing Innovation: Industry 4.0's Impact on Agile, Integrated Operations 12:00 - 12:15 Harnessing AIOps: Optimizing IT Performance and Efficiency 12:15 - 12:20 Announcement of iPhone 16 Raffle Winner! Track B2: Powering Organizations with AI-Enabled Apps and Experiences 11:35 - 11:40 Opening Act 11:40 - 11:43 Session Overview Arif Sultan Shiekh Senior Research Analyst, Software, IDC Saudi Arabia 11:43 - 11:45 Start of the Session Raffle Attend the Track, Ask Questions, Rate Sessions & Stand a Chance to win iPhone 16 11:45 - 12:00 Cyber-Resilience Journey Maps: Delivering Minimum Viability to the Business Cyber resilience has become a business imperative, ensuring continuity even when disruption strikes. In this session, we will explore Cyber Resilience Journey Maps - a practical approach to identifying critical business priorities and aligning them with resilience strategies. The discussion will highlight how organizations can define and deliver “minimum viable operations” to keep the business running during cyber incidents. We’ll also look at steps to assess current maturity, build a roadmap, and balance investment with risk. Join us to discover how translating cyber resilience into business outcomes helps safeguard operations, reputation, and customer trust. Mohammed Fayed Presales Engineer, Commvault 12:00 - 12:15 Empowering the Future of Work: The Intelligent Digital Workspace 12:15 - 12:20 Announcement of iPhone 16 Raffle Winner! Track B3: AI and Analytics: The Driving Forces of Digital Transformation 11:35 - 11:40 Opening Act 11:40 - 11:43 Session Overview Dr. Eman Elshewy Senior Research Manager, IDC 11:43 - 11:45 Start of the Session Raffle Attend the Track, Ask Questions, Rate Sessions & Stand a Chance to win iPhone 16 11:45 - 12:00 The True Outcome of Digital Transformation: AI-Powered Ecosystem Platforms that Unlock Enterprise Value Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 calls for bold digital innovation, new business models, and thriving ecosystems that diversify the economy. For enterprises, the journey begins with modernizing and transforming the core, legacy IT — simplifying, securing, and opening systems to become future ready. This session will demonstrate how AI-powered core transformation paves the way for digital ecosystem platforms that connect partners and customers, creating network effects. By evolving into ecosystem leaders, your enterprise can create new revenue streams, foster collaboration, and actively contribute to Vision 2030’s digital economy agenda. This session will outline practical steps to translate modernization into new growth avenues and platform-led innovation for the Kingdom. Wafa Alqahtani Business Growth & Innovation Partner, Torry Harris 12:00 - 12:15 Crafting a Hybrid Work Model: Navigating Policy and Technology 12:15 - 12:20 Announcement of iPhone 16 Raffle Winner!
12:20	Refresh & Reorganize
12:30	Celebrity Speaker: Peak Performance: Leadership, Teamwork & Growth
	Adrian Hayes World-Record Adventurer and Renowned Speaker
12:50	Partner Felicitation
13:00	Mega Raffle Announcement MacBook Pro
13:05	IDC CIO Excellence Awards
13:25	Lunch & Close of Summit

IDC CIO Summit 2025

Architecting an AI-Fueled Business

IDC CIO Advisory Council 2025

Experience the Extraordinary

Events Highlights 2024

Key Themes

AI Everywhere

Digital Business strategies

Digital Economy Trends

IDC CIO Excellence Awards

Agenda

Filter Topics

Registration & NetworkingArrive early & Stand a chance to be among 50 winners of a Apple HomePod Mini!

Event OpeningBattle of The Beats...Where Rhythm Meets Tech!

IDC Welcome Address

IDC Opening Keynote: CIO Strategies for Thriving in the Agentic AI Era

From Vision to Velocity: Building the Intelligent Enterprise

Driving Real Value from Generative AI: A Framework for CIOs and Business Leaders

Everything as a Service - The New Infrastructure Trends in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Building the AI-Ready Enterprise: Vision for Agentic Infrastructure

From Vision to National Impact: AI, Orchestration and the Digital Future

AI that Generates Human Value Outcomes: Full-Stack Innovation for Vision 2030

Fireside Chat: Sovereign AI at Scale – Accelerating the Kingdom’s AI Ambitions

Unleashing Efficiency: The Rapid Progression of IT Automation

Advisory Council Felicitation

Tea / Coffee & Networking Break

Technology Focus Group Tracks - Cluster A (Parallel Sessions)

Technology Focus Group Tracks - Cluster B (Parallel Sessions)

Refresh & Reorganize

For the CIO by the CIORedesigning Experience: How AI is Elevating Both Customer and Employee Journeys

For the CIO by the CIOCross-Functional Collaboration in the Future Enterprise

Lunch & Close of Day 1

Registration & NetworkingArrive Early & Stand a Chance to be among 100 Winners of a Sony Headphone!

IDC Welcome Address & Recap of Day 1

The Cloud's Next Chapter: Intelligent Infrastructure for the AI Workload

Bringing AI Everywhere: Unlock the Full Potential of AI

Bridging the AI Gap: Saudi Arabia’s AI Readiness & Maturity Journey

Reinventing Data, Insights, and Action Amidst the Noise

GenAI Meets Enterprise Low Code: A Strategic Pathway to Innovation

Summit Tracks (Parallel Sessions)

Tea/ Coffee & Networking Break

Technology Focus Group Session - Cluster A (Parallel Sessions)

Technology Focus Group Session - Cluster B (Parallel Sessions)

Refresh & Reorganize

Celebrity Speaker: Peak Performance: Leadership, Teamwork & Growth

Partner Felicitation

Mega Raffle AnnouncementMacBook Pro

IDC CIO Excellence Awards

Lunch & Close of Summit

Speakers

Venue

Partners

Photo Gallery

Knowledge Hub

Analyst SpotlightThe AI Everywhere Era in the Public Sector

Analyst SpotlightEnabling AI Outcomes with Cybersecurity

CXO SpotlightAI in Defense: Automated Threat Detection

Analyst SpotlightArchitecting the Future of Enterprise Applications: The AI-Cloud Convergence

Partner SpotlightThe Rise of AI Agents Signals the Growing Importance of Data Privacy

Partner SpotlightRethinking Leadership for the Middle East’s AI-Powered Future

Partner SpotlightFrom Exploration to Execution: The AI Inflection Point

Partner SpotlightPioneering Cloud, AI, and Datacenter Solutions in Riyadh

Partner SpotlightNavigating AI and Data Privacy: Key Considerations for CIOs

Partner SpotlightUnlocking the Power of GenAI for Service Innovation

Partner SpotlightMinimum Viable Company: The New Go-To Strategy for Modern Cyber Resilience

Partner SpotlightAI in 2025 and Beyond: Authenticity, Action, and Autonomy Will Define Success

Partner SpotlightArtificial Intelligence: No Longer a Futuristic Concept

Partner SpotlightFrom Digital Native to AI Native: The Next Five Years

Partner SpotlightState of Application Strategy 2025: Misalignment Means Mediocrity

Partner SpotlightBuilding an AI-Fueled Business in the Middle East

Partner SpotlightIT Sustainability in the Age of AI: Navigating the Rising Environmental Costs of Innovation

Partner SpotlightAI at Work: Empowering Business Users with OpenText Aviator

Partner SpotlightUnlock Network Efficiency with Intelligent Operations

Analyst SpotlightEnabling Digital Transformation in Saudi Arabia Through Policy and Regulation

Partner SpotlightModernization to Monetization: How CIOs Orchestrate Ecosystem Growth with AI

Partner SpotlightAI Is Redefining the Job of Your Website

Analyst SpotlightAI Is Redefining the Job of Your Website

Analyst Spotlight"Next-Gen Networks”: Inflexion point to Re-Wire for the AI Era underpinned by Cloud

Partner Spotlight AI-Human Harmony: The Future of Customer Engagement

Partner SpotlightHow AI Agents Are Impacting API Management

Registration & Networking
Arrive early & Stand a chance to be among 50 winners of a Apple HomePod Mini!

Event Opening
Battle of The Beats...Where Rhythm Meets Tech!

For the CIO by the CIO
Redesigning Experience: How AI is Elevating Both Customer and Employee Journeys

For the CIO by the CIO
Cross-Functional Collaboration in the Future Enterprise

Registration & Networking
Arrive Early & Stand a Chance to be among 100 Winners of a Sony Headphone!

Mega Raffle Announcement
MacBook Pro

Analyst Spotlight
The AI Everywhere Era in the Public Sector

Analyst Spotlight
Enabling AI Outcomes with Cybersecurity

CXO Spotlight
AI in Defense: Automated Threat Detection

Analyst Spotlight
Architecting the Future of Enterprise Applications: The AI-Cloud Convergence

Partner Spotlight
The Rise of AI Agents Signals the Growing Importance of Data Privacy

Partner Spotlight
Rethinking Leadership for the Middle East’s AI-Powered Future

Partner Spotlight
From Exploration to Execution: The AI Inflection Point

Partner Spotlight
Pioneering Cloud, AI, and Datacenter Solutions in Riyadh

Partner Spotlight
Navigating AI and Data Privacy: Key Considerations for CIOs

Partner Spotlight
Unlocking the Power of GenAI for Service Innovation

Partner Spotlight
Minimum Viable Company: The New Go-To Strategy for Modern Cyber Resilience

Partner Spotlight
AI in 2025 and Beyond: Authenticity, Action, and Autonomy Will Define Success

Partner Spotlight
Artificial Intelligence: No Longer a Futuristic Concept

Partner Spotlight
From Digital Native to AI Native: The Next Five Years

Partner Spotlight
State of Application Strategy 2025: Misalignment Means Mediocrity

Partner Spotlight
Building an AI-Fueled Business in the Middle East

Partner Spotlight
IT Sustainability in the Age of AI: Navigating the Rising Environmental Costs of Innovation

Partner Spotlight
AI at Work: Empowering Business Users with OpenText Aviator

Partner Spotlight
Unlock Network Efficiency with Intelligent Operations

Analyst Spotlight
Enabling Digital Transformation in Saudi Arabia Through Policy and Regulation

Partner Spotlight
Modernization to Monetization: How CIOs Orchestrate Ecosystem Growth with AI

Partner Spotlight
AI Is Redefining the Job of Your Website

Analyst Spotlight
AI Is Redefining the Job of Your Website

Analyst Spotlight
"Next-Gen Networks”: Inflexion point to Re-Wire for the AI Era underpinned by Cloud

Partner Spotlight
AI-Human Harmony: The Future of Customer Engagement

Partner Spotlight
How AI Agents Are Impacting API Management

Partner Spotlight
The Digital Backbone of Tomorrow's Cities: Why Enterprise Asset Management Is the Unsung Hero of Transformative Projects

Partner Spotlight
High-Return Enterprise AI: Rethinking Value Creation in the Age of Intelligence

Partner Spotlight
AI-Driven IT: A Strategic Imperative for Sustainable Business Performance

Partner Spotlight
From Vision to Velocity: Building the Intelligent Enterprise in Saudi Arabia

Partner Spotlight
How AI Is Revolutionizing Software Development: A Complete Guide to the Future

Partner Spotlight
How AI Is Revolutionizing Software Development: A Complete Guide to the Future

Partner Spotlight
From Vision to Velocity: Building the Intelligent Enterprise in Saudi Arabia

Partner Spotlight
AI-Driven IT: A Strategic Imperative for Sustainable Business Performance

Partner Spotlight
High-Return Enterprise AI: Rethinking Value Creation in the Age of Intelligence

Partner Spotlight
The Digital Backbone of Tomorrow's Cities: Why Enterprise Asset Management Is the Unsung Hero of Transformative Projects

Partner Spotlight
How AI Agents Are Impacting API Management

Partner Spotlight
AI-Human Harmony: The Future of Customer Engagement

Analyst Spotlight
"Next-Gen Networks”: Inflexion point to Re-Wire for the AI Era underpinned by Cloud

Analyst Spotlight
AI Is Redefining the Job of Your Website

Partner Spotlight
AI Is Redefining the Job of Your Website

Partner Spotlight
Modernization to Monetization: How CIOs Orchestrate Ecosystem Growth with AI

Analyst Spotlight
Enabling Digital Transformation in Saudi Arabia Through Policy and Regulation

Partner Spotlight
Unlock Network Efficiency with Intelligent Operations

Partner Spotlight
AI at Work: Empowering Business Users with OpenText Aviator

Partner Spotlight
IT Sustainability in the Age of AI: Navigating the Rising Environmental Costs of Innovation

Partner Spotlight
Building an AI-Fueled Business in the Middle East

Partner Spotlight
State of Application Strategy 2025: Misalignment Means Mediocrity

Partner Spotlight
From Digital Native to AI Native: The Next Five Years

Partner Spotlight
Artificial Intelligence: No Longer a Futuristic Concept

Partner Spotlight
AI in 2025 and Beyond: Authenticity, Action, and Autonomy Will Define Success

Partner Spotlight
Minimum Viable Company: The New Go-To Strategy for Modern Cyber Resilience

Partner Spotlight
Unlocking the Power of GenAI for Service Innovation

Partner Spotlight
Navigating AI and Data Privacy: Key Considerations for CIOs

Partner Spotlight
Pioneering Cloud, AI, and Datacenter Solutions in Riyadh

Partner Spotlight
From Exploration to Execution: The AI Inflection Point

Partner Spotlight
Rethinking Leadership for the Middle East’s AI-Powered Future

Partner Spotlight
The Rise of AI Agents Signals the Growing Importance of Data Privacy

Analyst Spotlight
Architecting the Future of Enterprise Applications: The AI-Cloud Convergence

CXO Spotlight
AI in Defense: Automated Threat Detection

Analyst Spotlight
Enabling AI Outcomes with Cybersecurity

Analyst Spotlight
The AI Everywhere Era in the Public Sector