International Data Corporation (IDC) has released the full Middle East, Africa, and Turkey schedule for the 2010 edition of its IT Managers Forum, which covers the importance of ICT technologies as a remedy in times of economic crisis.
A global market intelligence and advisory firm for the IT and telecommunications markets, the IDC has subtitled the conference: “The smart IT buyer”.
The conference series opened in Jeddah and will go on to visit 15 of the region's other key business centres, including Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Doha, Lagos, Johannesburg, Ankara, and Istanbul.
Best IT practices
“IT spending has been significantly impacted by the storms of economic recession since the second half of 2008. Playing host to over 3 000 of the region's top ICT end-users along the way, IDC's IT Managers Forum 2010 will showcase best practices from across the globe on how to become a smart IT buyer in a crisis situation,” says the corporation.
Industry experts will offer advice on surviving this period of global uncertainty and on identifying spaces of opportunity that IT heads need to focus on in the coming 18 months.
"While recovery is certainly on the horizon, and is already well under way in some markets, the process is likely to be a gradual one," says Jyoti Lalchandani, VP and regional MD of IDC Middle East, Africa, and Turkey.
She adds that organisations must make smart decisions in order to protect their bottom line, maintain a high level of customer satisfaction, and build competitive advantage during these tumultuous times.
“The new economic reality means intense pressure on every aspect of business operations to curtail capital spending and reduce operating expenses, all while trying to achieve the seemingly contradictory aim of driving the business forward."
Expert advice
The IDC says that with this in mind, its IT Managers Forum will demonstrate that, used wisely, ICT technologies can form a crucial part of the remedy for dealing with the fallout of the crisis.
“ICT thought leaders will delve into a whole raft of cutting-edge concepts and solutions, from information management and IT outsourcing through business intelligence, virtualisation, and green IT to VOIP, unified communications, and IT consolidation, detailing how their application can improve efficiency, lower costs, and keep profitability high,” the firm says.
Delegates will also be given an insight into how they can expect their roles as IT managers to change in the coming years as they embrace the conflicting demands of having to reduce costs and enable an ever-faster-moving enterprise, according to IDC.
“They will also be privy to in-depth analysis of the emerging trends that will be critical in shaping the future of IT within their organisations, such as cloud computing, virtualisation security, collaboration, Web 2.0, social computing, managed print services, green IT, and data centre efficiency.”
The schedule for the IT Managers Forum 2010 is: Cairo, 2 August; Lagos, 4 August; Nairobi, 10 August; Johannesburg, 24 August; Cape Town, 16 September; Ankara, 21 September; Istanbul, 29 September; Algiers, 19 October.
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