The spending on Information Technology (IT) sector in the Middle East and Africa is set to reach $212.9 billion, up 3.9 per cent from last year's spending of $205 billion, according to Gartner, a leading IT research and advisory company.

While organizations are spending more on IT this year, CIOs and IT leaders are under increasing pressure to drive business growth, the company said.

“Business expectations are shifting from a focus on greater cost-based efficiencies, to achieving better results based on enterprise and IT productivity,” said Mark McDonald, group vice president and head of research for Gartner Executive Programs.

“These productivity gains will come from collaborative and innovative solutions that take advantage of the new ‘lighter-weight’ services-based and social media technologies, including virtualization, cloud computing and Web 2.0 social computing,” he noted.

For second consecutive year, Gartner Executive Programs and University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School are hosting an executive training program for CIOs and IT managers to develop strategic management skills and deliver value to their organization.

The second annual CIO Academy will be held from September 26 to 29 in Kuwait.

An executive leader with more than 20 years of experience leading IT organizations in the US and the UAE, Samer Hamwi, CIO at Shuaa, will be the featured speaker.

Having previously attended CIO Academy, Hamwi will share his experiences as an executive leader in the region who has managed change through complex and turbulent times.

CIO Academy is a prestigious and unique management development programme for the most senior person with ultimate responsibility for an organization’s IT. The programme has become established over several years at Oxford, helping many IT leaders to maximise the contribution of technology.

“While enterprises will transition at different rates and times, every CIO faces the need to raise productivity, create new capabilities and use the recovery to drive fundamentals of the current agenda and the repositioning of IT,”  McDonald said.

“Such transitions will not happen overnight but they will start with the decisions and directions established in 2010.”

Some of the sessions and issues to be examined at this year’s CIO Academy include:

The Anatomy of the CIO: The session will set out the key responsibilities, capabilities and skills of the CIO role, and how the CIO role is adapting to new global economic, strategic and technological realities.

CEO and CFO Views of the CIO: Many CEOs and CFOs see their CIOs as effective operational executives, but not as business leaders. There is evidence that enterprises are losing out on the business contributions that IT can make. This session will examine common CXO perspectives on IT and give advice on how CIOs can better understand and engage their CXO.

Success Strategies for CIOs: As the CIO role continues to evolve, this session examines what it takes to be successful as the demands change. Using a number of mini-cases, presenters will illustrate the continuing challenges for CIOs and suggest proven strategies for coping with these challenges.

Planning in the Real World: Since corporate planning is the principal process by which resources are allocated inside the organization, it can be fraught with internal politics. Navigating the planning process can be a hazardous experience for CIOs because they have to adopt a horizontal view even as they work with vertical business units.

This session explores a number of planning practices that CIOs can adopt to improve their influence and effectiveness in planning, McDonald explained.

Established in 1996 the Saïd Business School is one of Europe’s youngest and most entrepreneurial business schools with a reputation for innovative business education.

An integral part of Oxford University, the School embodies the academic rigour and forward thinking that has made Oxford a world leader in education.-TradeArabia News Service