"As digital transformation continues to reshape the global economy, innovation will multiply, platform wars will intensify, and data will increasingly be used for competitive advantage," says Jyoti Lalchandani, IDC's group vice president and regional managing director for the Middle East, Africa, and Turkey. "And with market leadership ranks being disrupted, a new ICT world order is taking shape, built around innovative technology offerings, evolving business models, and emerging DX use cases. Given this unprecedented disruption, it's imperative that organisations make the right decisions today to ensure they remain competitive tomorrow."

By 2020, IDC expects at least 55% of the world's organisations to be digitally determined, transforming markets and re-imagining the future through the implementation of new business models and the provision of digitally enabled products and services. And with global DX investments forecast to total $5.9 trillion for the three years between 2018 and 2021, this topic continues to be a central area of business leadership thinking.

As such, it will sit at the heart of the IDC Middle East CIO Summit 2019 in Dubai next February, as more than 200 of the region's most influential ICT leaders gather to discuss strategies for succeeding in an era of multiplied innovation and automation. Combining a varied mix of informative presentations, panel discussions, and workshops, the Summit's agenda for 2019 has been designed to help the region's CIOs rethink the way they leverage information, harness emerging ICT solutions, and facilitate organisation-wide innovation, with the aim of making their enterprises more agile, efficient, and productive than ever before.

The rise of disruptive automation will feature prominently, with an agenda that centres on the transformative powers of innovation accelerators such as robotics, artificial intelligence, big data analytics, next-gen security, and the Internet of Things. The Summit will also include a series of dedicated sessions focusing on the unique challenges and opportunities that are shaping the region's key country markets, as well as separate focus groups that will explore the industry’s latest developments in an intimate round table setting, thereby enabling attendees to tailor their Summit experience to their own individual needs.

In a new twist for 2019, IDC will be hosting a Tech Startup Zone on the sidelines of the Summit to showcase the region's facilities for incubating digital startups, while a dedicated Innovation Center will explore recent advances in the areas of robotics, smart cars, AR/VR, 3D printing, artificial intelligence, and hologram technology. And with the Middle East being home to such a diverse range of markets, the main exhibit hall will feature a series of individual Country Pavilions designed for IT associations and trade organisations to promote the unique business services offered within their respective geographies.