The upcoming Gitex Technology Week in Dubai, the region’s largest ICT forum, has introduced exclusive industry briefing sessions for oil and gas, banking and finance, education, healthcare and government sectors.

The Gitex Technology Week conference schedule runs from October 14 to 18 at Dubai World Trade Centre.

The briefings will be led by top thinkers and technology leaders, addressing trends and challenges that are unique within each of these areas. SAP, which is among the market leaders in enterprise application software, is a Strategic Sponsor of the Industry Briefings at Gitex Technology Week this year.

Speaking at the Education briefing is Dr Mohamed Al Kahtani, Dean, IT & Distance Learning Deanship, Salman bin Abdulaziz University, providing insight on how to enhance universities by enabling more technologies, and providing training for faculty members to empower a deeper connection between faculty and students.

As technology accelerates exponentially and new digital platforms and devices are emerging, the Digital Strategies Forum, in collaboration with strategic partner Gemalto, provides an insight into unleashing the power of digital to drive top line growth, with a keynote address on the social data revolution and transforming digital data into corporate value delivered by Jonathan Labin, head of Marketing Solutions, Facebook Mena.

“With so much data available, especially on social networks, being able to make effective use of this information is not easy but offers vast potential. Companies are only beginning to scratch the surface of what’s possible with social data, and even those that are best-of-breed have only started to tap into its true potential: developing an intimate real-time knowledge of your customers’ relationships and behaviour,” said Labin.

Consumerisation of IT, or BYOD, is a key trend set to be one of the most impactful technologies to influence the IT landscape in years to come, calling into question the scope, role and scale of IT departments around the world. Without the right tools, this increases IT costs, risks of data breach, data loss and non-compliance. However, if implemented correctly, BYOD has far-reaching benefits, said Leif-Olof Wallin, research vice president in Gartner Research.

“Very few clients have the luxury to resist BYOD – people will buy their own devices that their companies may not give them in order to raise their own productivity levels, and this is a hard value proposition to resist,” he added.

“It’s important to know how to implement BYOD and develop a framework for companies in the region, that will need to be tweaked because of differences in compliance and legal issues across the Gulf states.”

Dave Brook, GM Middle East, Dell, which is a strategic sponsor of the Consumerisation of IT Forum, said: “The growing influence of BYOD and the consumerisation of IT in the workplace is as inevitable as it is unstoppable. Today’s worker wants a flexible, converged mobility experience and, increasingly, that means using personal, top-of-the-range devices.”

“They want their own technology with all the apps and functionalities that make their lives easier.  This presents a multitude of challenges for CIOs that need to be efficiently dealt with, from security to data management to software compatibility. Business leaders realise that a more connected, technologically comfortable employee is likely to be more productive, and they want to enable their employees to BYOD.”

Under the theme “Business Innovation through Cloud Computing – From Hype to a Must-Have Service Model”, Cloud Confex is well-established as the largest and most influential conference and exhibition of its kind in the Middle East.

Last year saw 1,350 delegates attend Gitex conferences, making the Gitex Technology Week conference program the leading annual gathering for the IT industry in the Middle East.

Now in its 32nd year, Gitex Technology Week connects more than 138,000 industry professionals and over 3,500 suppliers from 144 countries across five continents, making it one of the world’s top three ICT exhibitions.

This year’s Gitex Technology Week is themed “Where Technology Means Business”. – TradeArabia News Service