Global & regional IBM executives, regional CIOs, analysts to gather in Dubai for 7th Annual IBM CIO Conference

Dubai, UAE - 16th October 2010: IBM Middle East will host its annual CIO conference, in its 7th consecutive year, which gathers industry experts, CIOs, analysts and global specialists in Dubai for one day. The conference will be held at The Meydan Hotel on the 17th of October 2010.

The main topic of discussion in this year's conference will be 'Smarter Planet', which will be discussed by Dr Colin Harrison, Master Inventor and Director for Strategic Innovation, IBM, who will address the issue of 'Delivering on the vision of a Smarter Planet'. The topic will be broken down to discuss 'Smarter Cities', by a panel of industry experts from government, telecoms, education and transport.

"The IBM CIO conference has become an annual meeting point for regional industry experts to address the issues they face with a changing business environment. Through a series of sessions, we share our global expertise and that of regional specialists in an open and frank discussion with CIOs from across the region," said Takreem El Tohamy, general manager IBM Middle East and Africa. "The emerging need for smarter systems has ensured that CIOs in all sectors from government to healthcare and from banking to education are now undertaking 'Smarter Projects' that will bridge the gap between the progress of digitised and instrumented organizations and the siloed nature of their data, giving them better insight into their business."

With a rapidly growing Global population, urbanization is changing the global landscape, over 50% of the world's population currently lives in urban areas and almost 70% of the world's population will live in cities by 2050 with many of them in mega-cities of more than 10 million people making critical, the issue of Smarter Cities. This is therefore incredibly pertinent to today's CIO, as enterprise and government get to grips with challenges in transportation, water, energy, public safety, education and the many other aspects in building the Smarter Cities of tomorrow, today.

Jennifer Belissent, Ph.D., Senior Analyst, at independent research firm Forrester Research, Inc.  will be presenting a session that answer's one of the most critical factors in building a Smarter Planet, that of Smarter Cities as she discusses 'Taking Lessons from Smart Cities'.

The conference will also be attended by eminent IBM executives including; Laura Voglino - VP Growth Markets, Marketing and Communications, IBM Systems and Technology Group; Mark Musto - Business Development, Travel & Transportation, Smarter Travel and Transportation, IBM Global Business Services; Virginie Haas, Vice President, Worldwide Cloud Sales and Strategy and John Mclean, Vice President WebSphere Connectivity Development and the Director of the IBM Hursley Laboratory, amongst many others.

Following the Panel discussion IBM invites attendees to participate in breakout sessions, led by IBM global executives, covering topics related to smarter banking, smarter cities and smarter systems. Subject such as 'Business Analytics and Optimization for Banking', 'Smarter Healthcare', 'Smarter Energy and Utilities' and 'Virtualization with Integrated Service Management for improved business agility' are intended to encourage regional CIOs to discuss issues affecting their business regionally as well as globally.

"Advanced information technology can now be used to develop the way organisations react to an emergent economic environment," said Colin Harrison, director for Strategic Innovation for IBM Global Services Strategic Outsourcing in EMEA. "IBM's CIO conference provides a platform for the region's forward thinking organisations to discuss ways to approach their cities' systems, so that they are better instrumented and intelligent, in order to better provide for the needs of their businesses and their citizens."

-Ends-

For more information on the IBM MENA CIO Conference, please visit: https://www-950.ibm.com/events/wwe/cio/10menacio.nsf
For more information on IBM, visit www.ibm.com

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© Press Release 2010