Over 20 Top IDC Leaders to Attend 2nd W/Africa CIOs Summit

Stephen Elliot, Vice-President of IT Infrastructure and Cloud practice, Mark Walker, vertical market and Insights research and consulting practice at MEA and Lise Hagen, research manager for software and IT services in South Africa, are among over 20 top executives of the International Data Corporation (IDC) that will attend IDC CIOs summit holding for the second year in West Africa.

IDC is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets.

The Company has been helping IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community makes fact-based decisions on technology purchases and business strategy.

Apparently, more than 1,000 IDC analysts provide global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends in over 110 countries worldwide.

For more than 51 years, IDC has provided strategic insights to help our clients achieve their key business objectives.

Addressing a pre-event press conference in Lagos on Monday, Bola Adisa, country manager, International Data Corporation (IDC), said that scheduling of the top shots in the Company to attend the Summit presupposes the importance IDC attaches to West African IT market.

Adisa reasured that the West Africa CIOs Summit, now second in the series, will take place at the Oriental Hotel, Lagos on May 13 – 14, 2015.

The Summit represents the largest social gathering of CIOs in West Africa, numerous local ICT vendors join a host of major global giants to present their unique insights into the latest trends shaping tech adoption across the region, while a variety of senior line-of-business executives will also be on hand to offer that all-important non-IT perspective.

This year's edition will run under the theme 'Where IT Meets Business' and will drive home the importance of closely aligning IT and business functions at a time when organizations across the region are faced with the challenge of implementing emerging products and services while simultaneously trying to improve operational efficiency.

The event is expected to attract more than 150 CIOs, technology decision makers, and government advisors from across the region.

According to the IDC Country Manager, “West Africa CIO Summit will provide thought provoking and actionable insights to CIOs and Senior ICT Executives through a mix of end user presentations and case studies giving CIOs the opportunity to hear about the latest global trends, learn from ICT best practices and become involved in general discussions with colleagues and peers during the dedicated networking breaks.

“Delegates will meet IDC’s chief research officer, chief analyst, and more than 20 international and regional practice heads, who will be on hand to provide valuable insights and analysis to leading ICT vendors, technology buyers, and end users during the event. The CIO Summit also provides unrivalled access to peers and colleagues through numerous intimate and private group discussions.

“The annual CIO Summit continues to grow from strength to strength and plays an important role in both shaping and reflecting opinion across the region's continuously evolving ICT sector. IDC recognizes that the ability to rapidly correlate IT project spending with critical business priorities is essential, with CIOs increasingly required to demonstrate the business value of their projects and embrace the strategic benefits their businesses are striving to achieve. Against this backdrop, the West Africa CIO Summit 2015 will explore the need for IT plans to encompass strong business metrics alongside the existing IT-related metrics that typically examine application delivery in isolation”.

He added that, to ensure the very latest technologies are covered at the West Africa CIO Summit 2015, IDC has partnered with some of the world's foremost ICT players, including EMC and Vodacom as Summit Partners; Dell, Sunnet Systems (in co-partnership with IBM), SAP, and Oracle as Platinum Partners; Netapp and MTN Business Nigeria as Gold Partners; Magic Software and FVC as Exhibit Partners; and Winnigroup as a Lunch Partner.

He said that it pleases IDC to announce the introduction of five unique, informative workshops based around its IT Executive Programs. Designed to help today's time-constrained IT executives make more effective technology decisions, these sessions will serve up timely discussions on mitigating technology risks, maximizing the effectiveness of IT investments, identifying and capitalizing on new IT opportunities, and implementing cutting-edge tech solutions that are tightly aligned with overall business objectives.

“We are quite hopeful that this year’s event will generate interest and talkability amongst our stakeholders,” Adisa said, while expressing confidence on partners support to make the event a huge success.