IDC Steps Up Presence in Saudi Arabia with New Country Office



In a move confirming Saudi Arabia's status as a critical area of focus for the world's leading ICT providers, International Data Corporation (IDC), the premier global market intelligence and advisory firm for the information technology and telecommunications markets, has stepped up its presence in the Kingdom with the launch of a dedicated country office in Riyadh. And in a further show of its commitment to serving the needs of the Saudi ICT community, IDC also recently extended its flagship CIO Summit series to the Kingdom, hosting a successful gathering of senior technology leaders at Jeddah's InterContinental Hotel.

IDC has been present in the Middle East and Africa since the mid-1990s, and launched a major expansion program in 2001 with the establishment of its regional office in Dubai. This step was followed by new IDC offices in offices in Istanbul, Johannesburg, Casablanca, Lagos, and Nairobi. The latest addition in Riyadh represents the culmination of many years spent developing close working relationships with the Kingdom's vendors and end users, and comes as the world's premier IT vendors switch their attention to the burgeoning emerging markets of the Middle East and Africa in general, and Saudi Arabia in particular.

With a strategic focus on market intelligence, consulting/advisory, and Go-to-Market services for multinational and local ICT providers and end-users, IDC views the new Riyadh office as critical to exploiting the immense growth potential that this shift presents. "IDC has a proven track record of equipping organizations in Saudi Arabia with the necessary tools to enable business expansion, and our new physical presence in the Kingdom will only serve to enhance our capabilities in this respect," says Jyoti Lalchandani, Vice President and Regional Managing Director at IDC Middle East, Africa, and Turkey. "As the largest and fastest-growing ICT market in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia represents a key area of investment focus for IDC, and we are looking forward to addressing the needs of an ever-expanding network of clients within the country."

It was this positive outlook that saw IDC bring its flagship CIO Summit to Saudi Arabia for the first time on September 25 and 26, having enjoyed overwhelming success in Dubai over the past four years with the Middle East CIO Summit, which is now widely recognized as the seminal event on the region's ICT calendar. Benefiting from a much narrower focus than its region-wide counterpart, the inaugural Saudi Arabia CIO Summit tackled the issues of most specific concern to Saudi-based ICT executives, serving up winning strategies for reigniting momentum, rejuvenating business operations, and enhancing market share.

With more than 100 of the Kingdom's most influential IT end users in attendance, the Saudi Arabia CIO Summit 2011 presented in-depth analysis of key emerging trends such as cloud computing, datacenter management, and infrastructure virtualization and offered advice from representatives of the world's most pioneering technology providers on managing change within the enterprise, measuring the ROI of IT-related expenditure, ensuring security in a virtualized world, transforming the perception of IT from a cost to a profit center, and aligning IT with the wider needs of the business. A total of 21 organizations – including STC, IBM, Microsoft, EMC, and Matco – partnered with IDC for the Saudi Arabia CIO Summit 2011, a clear indication of the intense interest currently surrounding the Kingdom's technology markets.

"IDC's CIO Summit series has built up an extremely loyal following since its inception in the Middle East in 2008, and we were delighted that so many senior ICT figures chose to support its arrival here in Saudi Arabia," says Abdulaziz Al-Helayyil, Country Manager for Saudi Arabia. "We are seeing an explosion of awareness in the Kingdom around the role that IT can play in driving economic growth and greater business agility, and this was reflected in the eclectic mix of vertical industries represented at the event, which included manufacturing, banking and finance, government, oil and gas, and education. The new office in Riyadh augments our ability to capitalize on this growing awareness, presenting a myriad of opportunities for our business in the Kingdom."

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Gexton said…
In a move confirming Saudi Arabia's status as a critical area of focus for the world's leading ICT providers, International Data Corporation (IDC), the premier global market intelligence and advisory firm for the information technology and telecommunications markets,
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