Navigating AI-Driven Digital Transformation at the IDC Saudi Arabia CIO Summit 2024

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• Sheila Manek  Email: smanek@idc.com  Phone number: +9714 4463154

Riyadh – As Saudi Arabia continues its turbocharged journey toward digital transformation, the Kingdom’s leaders are collaborating closely with both private and public sector entities to achieve the goals of their ambitious Vision 2030 strategy and successfully execute multiple giga projects. International Data Corporation (IDC) forecasts that ICT spending in Saudi Arabia will top $36.6 billion in 2024, with many leading organizations already exploring and investing in generative AI (GenAI) use cases as they prepare for the emergence of an 'AI everywhere' world.

"In this new era of GenAI-driven disruption, technology leaders are reassessing AI's pivotal role in the digitalization landscape," says Jyoti Lalchandani, IDC's regional managing director for the Middle East, Türkiye, Africa, and India. "Given AI’s transformative power to significantly enhance digital innovation, customer experience, operational efficiency, and sustainability, forward-thinking governments and digitally driven organizations are increasingly adopting an 'AI everywhere' mindset and making AI a tech agenda priority as they strive to maintain competitive parity with early adopters."

As a result, today’s IT leaders increasingly find themselves fulfilling multidimensional, strategic, and collaborative roles with evolved and prominent reporting structures and mandates. These new roles carry greater responsibilities as AI becomes increasingly embedded in services, products, and experiences, intertwining with the lives of employees, customers, partners, and society at large. IDC expects annual worldwide spending on AI-centric systems to surpass $300 billion by 2026, with the technology underpinning areas such as performance, growth, engagement, satisfaction, safety, security, governance, privacy, sustainability, ethics, wellbeing, payments, and more.

The IDC Saudi Arabia CIO Summit 2024, which takes place at the Fairmont Riyadh on September 18–19 under the theme The Future of IT: Rethinking Digitalization for an AI Everywhere World, will provide an essential platform for empowering the Kingdom's IT leaders to succeed in this new era. It will help them to better understand their roles in an increasingly AI-infused business landscape, with renowned industry experts serving up essential guidance on deploying innovative solutions, forging new business models, and scaling massively in today's dynamic digital economy.

"As AI continues to evolve and integrate into multiple facets of our lives, organizations must be prepared to embrace data-centric platforms, migrate workloads to cloud infrastructure, optimize security and digital trust, and invest in skills," says Hamza Naqshbandi IDC's country lead for Saudi Arabia and Bahrain and Vice President of Custom Solutions for the META region. "The IDC Saudi Arabia CIO Summit 2024 will discuss a multitude of hot topics, trends, and challenges, enabling technology leaders to gain insights, share knowledge, and prepare for an AI-centric future."

The summit will also play host to the inaugural CIO50 Awards for Saudi Arabia, with a dedicated ceremony honoring the Kingdom's top 50 CIOs and senior technology executives for their role in steering innovation, fortifying resiliency, and catalyzing rapid change within their organizations. Aligned with Foundry's esteemed global awards program, the CIO50 Awards for Saudi Arabia stand as a symbol of excellence within the enterprise landscape and as testament to the outstanding contributions made by these visionary technology executives as they shape the future of technology in Saudi Arabia. Nominations for the awards can be submitted here.

To learn more about the IDC Saudi Arabia CIO Summit 2024 and the CIO50 Awards for Saudi Arabia, please contact Sheila Manek at smanek@idc.com or on +971 4 446 3154.

About IDC

International Data Corporation (IDC) is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. With more than 1,300 analysts worldwide, IDC offers global, regional, and local expertise on technology, IT benchmarking and sourcing, and industry opportunities and trends in over 110 countries. IDC's analysis and insight helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community to make fact-based technology decisions and to achieve their key business objectives. Founded in 1964, IDC is a wholly owned subsidiary of International Data Group (IDG), the world's leading tech media, data, and marketing services company. To learn more about IDC, please visit www.idc.com. Follow IDC on Twitter at @IDC and LinkedIn. Subscribe to the IDC Blog for industry news and insights.

IDC in the Middle East, Türkiye, and Africa

For the Middle East, Türkiye, and Africa region, IDC retains a coordinated network of offices in Riyadh, Nairobi, Lagos, Johannesburg, Cairo, and Istanbul, with a regional center in Dubai. Our coverage couples local insights with international perspectives to provide a comprehensive understanding of markets in these dynamic regions. Our market intelligence services are unparalleled in depth, consistency, scope, and accuracy. IDC MEA currently fields over 130 analysts, consultants, and conference associates across the region. To learn more about IDC MEA, please visit www.idc.com/mea. You can follow IDC MEA on Twitter at @IDCMEA.

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