The World's Most Important Gathering of
CIOs and Senior IT Executives
5 - 7 March 2013   Dubai, UAE

Mr. Mohamed Akoum, graduated in 1988 from the University of Moncton – Canada in Computer Science. He subsequently pursued postgraduate studies in MIS and Project Management at the University of Quebec in Montréal (UQAM) and George Washington University in Washington DC. Mr. Akoum joined Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Oil Operations (ADCO) in January 2003 as Project Manager after spending more than 12 years working between Canada, USA, Europe, and South America providing consultancy services and implementing business solutions across various industry verticals. In ADCO, Mr. Akoum occupied many key positions in IT, Finance, and General Services & Relations divisions. Appointed Vice President (CIT) in 2009, he has since successfully implemented IT transformation, business alignment, and business enablement strategies. IT is now realized as a credible business partner and reliable solution provider capable of enabling the business towards achieving its corporate objectives.

As part of Gartner's IT Infrastructure and Operations group, Tapati Bandopadhyay covers the following: - All IT operations and ITSM topics - global coverage across sectors; I&O cost optimization and ITIL; communicating IT service value to business - Balanced Scorecards, Strategy Maps and Capability Maps; IT services metrics; service catalog and portfolio; I&O people-process capabilities; ITSM frameworks-ITIL 2011; ITIL and cloud-I&O readiness and transition management; ITIL BRM, SLM processes and PBA - demand management - ITScore: benchmarking and prioritization in I&O and DC - ITPA and IT operations management tools (in Asia/Pacific)

As a Research Vice President, Mark A. Beyer is the co-lead for Big Data research where he researches practical use cases in this area. He also covers traditional data warehousing, data integration and information management practices. Mr. Beyer's work in information management, big data and data warehouse/analytics allows him to complete cooperative research in the business process management, SOA and application integration fields. With all of this cross-over, he also covers metadata management to a depth well beyond design time documentation and research the use of "active" metadata.

Alexa Bona is a vice president and distinguished analyst in Gartner Research, where her research currently focuses on IT management. As part of the IT asset management research practice, Mrs. Bona is responsible for coverage of future trends in software licensing and pricing practices, as well as maintenance and support models for business applications. She is also a generalist for software asset management trends and issues. In addition to looking at how models will evolve, Mrs. Bona advises organizations on deal negotiation strategies to help them achieve best-in-class, sustainable and flexible deals with major business application software vendors and SaaS providers, such as Google, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, salesforce.com, Workday and SAP.

Brian Burke is an Analyst for Gartner, specializing in enterprise architecture and more recently developing research on the emerging gamification trend. His groundbreaking work in the development of federated architectures has been implemented in hundreds of organizations in both the public and private sectors. He is also a prominent researcher and speaker in the areas of IT strategy, IT organizational structures and business/IT alignment.

Miriam Burt is a Research Vice President in the Gartner Retail Industry Advisory Services team, where she is responsible for identifying potential growth and research opportunities by following global retail business trends, consumer technology markets and trends and application of technologies in retail. Her areas of expertise include multichannel retailing, cross channel execution and in-store retail technologies, in particular customer-facing applications, such as point of sale. Mrs. Burt also researches customer processes, retail business processes, business and IT strategy, international retailing and application development and delivery topics such as Services Oriented Architecture and Cloud Computing.

David J. Cappuccio is a Managing Vice President and Chief of Research for the Infrastructure teams with Gartner, responsible for research in data center design, construction and cost models, data center futures, servers, power/cooling, green IT, and data center consolidation and migration strategies. Mr. Cappuccio's experience extends more than 43 years in the technology arena, including financial services, IT operations, market research and management consulting. Starting in 1992, he spent 10 years at Gartner in various research and executive roles, including Group Vice President and General Manager of Gartner's worldwide Research organization.

Carsten Casper is a Vice President with Gartner Research, responsible for the Privacy Key Initiative and for the security role in Gartner for IT Leaders in Germany. He advises clients on privacy and security strategies and technologies, in particular regarding European privacy regulations, data protection, managed security services in Europe and selected areas of compliance.

David Cearley is a vice president and Gartner Fellow in Gartner Research and is a leading authority on information technology. As a member of Gartner Research, Mr. Cearley analyzes emerging business and technology trends and explores how these trends shape the way individuals and companies derive value from technology. His current research is focused on cloud computing and how Internet and Web technologies, standards and business models are impacting the IT landscape.

Mark Darbyshire joined TIBCO in October 1997 and is TIBCO’s Chief Technology Officer for EMEA. Prior to TIBCO, Mark obtained a PhD in Physics at the University of Bristol. Since joining TIBCO, Mark has worked with in a number of industries including Financial Services, Energy, Logistics and Telecommunications. From 1997 to 2007, Mark had a number of roles from professional services, architect, and pre-sales. From 2007 to 2011, Mark served as Director of Industry Solutions before assuming his current role.

Kiran Desai is the VP and Business Head for Infrastructure Management Services Business, Global Infrastructure Services (GIS), Wipro Infotech. Infrastructure Management Services (IMS) is the services arm of Wipro, focusing on providing Infrastructure Management Services including End User Computing, Cloud and Data Center Services. With 12000 plus employees, it is one of Wipro’s largest divisions and contributes strongly to Wipro’s leadership position in the region. Kiran’s responsibilities span across India and Middle East geographies. He has overall 25 years of experience in IT Industry and has been with Wipro for the last 14 years. He has performed several roles ranging from Sales, Practice, Service Delivery & Heading a Business Unit. Prior to his tenure at Wipro Infotech, Kiran has worked with leading IT Companies like DCM Data Products, Modi Olivetti Ltd and Unicorp Industries. Kiran Desai holds a Bachelor's degree in Engineering and Masters in Marketing Management from Mumbai University.

Andrea Di Maio is a vice president and distinguished analyst in Gartner Research, where he focuses on the public sector, with particular reference to e-government strategies, Web 2.0, open government, cloud computing, the business value of IT, open-source software, green IT and the impact of technology on the future of government.

Sue Evans is an Executive Partner with Gartner Executive Programs based in Dubai (UAE).

KEITH FERRAZZI, the world’s foremost expert on relationship development, is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Who’s Got Your Back. His first book, Never Eat Alone, redefined professional networking today. As founder and chairman of the consulting, training, and research firm Ferrazzi Greenlight, Ferrazzi counsels the world’s top enterprises on how to dramatically accelerate the development of business relationships to drive sales, spark innovation, and create team cohesion. Ferrazzi created myGreenlight, an online learning academy for “people skills” that delivers an exclusive program aimed at sales people and business professionals. Ferrazzi has been published in The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Inc., and Fast Company, and has appeared on The Today Show, Good Morning America, CNBC, Larry King, and other national TV. Ferrazzi’s foundation, Big Task Weekend, is an impactful, invitation only event that brings together a diverse group of visionary leaders from top organizations to facilitate partnerships to solve the world’s biggest challenges. He lives in Los Angeles and New York, and can be found online at keithferrazzi.com and myGreenlight.com.

Donna Fitzgerald focuses her research on strategies and approaches for using program and portfolio management as a way to create unique business value. As a Silicon Valley trained former CFO she brings firsthand experience with making the right investments at the right time in order to realize strategic benefits. As the former partner in a program management consulting firm she has also dealt with the complexities of delivering mission critical programs using an adaptive/agile approach. She has over 30 years experience in a mix of industries including high tech, higher education, health care and software development.

Gene Hall joined Gartner, Inc. as chief executive officer in August 2004. Since then, his focus has been on publishing market-leading research, developing differentiated offerings tailored to clients' individual needs and expanding the company's sales capacity and capability. These initiatives have resulted in all-time high levels of revenue, EBITDA and contract value. Hall came to Gartner from ADP, a Fortune 500 global technology and services company with over $7 billion in revenue, where he was a senior executive. As president of Employers' Services, Major Accounts division, Hall headed up a $2 billion human resources and payroll services business, overseeing 8,000 associates. During Hall's tenure, this business accelerated sales to new clients, achieved record client retention and delivered unprecedented quality scores. Concurrently, he led a 1,600-person software development and IT operations organization that introduced several new, high-growth products. Prior to this role, Hall was responsible for technology, strategy and new business development across the company. Before joining ADP, Hall was a director and senior partner with McKinsey & Company, a leading global management consulting firm. In his 16 years there, he focused on developing business strategies for leading technology companies and organizations where technology played a central role in the business. Hall graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and received a master's degree in business administration from Harvard Business School.

Richard Hunter is vice president and Gartner Fellow in Gartner's CIO Research Group, where his recent work has focused on issues of interest to CIOs, including risk and value. Mr. Hunter is the author of the acclaimed books "World Without Secrets" (Wiley, New York, 2002) and "IT Risk" (with George Westerman, Harvard Business Press, Boston, 2007). His most recent book, "The Real Business of IT," also co-authored with George Westerman, was published by Harvard Business Press in October 2009, and was named by CIO Insight Magazine as the best business/IT book of 2009 in December of that year. Mr. Hunter is in much demand as a speaker and advisor to CIOs.

Partha Iyengar is VP and distinguished analyst in Gartner's "CIO Research - Service and Operational Technology Management" team. He is also the Country Manager - Research, India, with responsibility for managing the India research agenda. His research interests cover areas of strategic interest to CIOs and their direct reports, including service management and sourcing issues, and the newly emerging areas of IT-OT integration management. In addition he covers the areas of business and IT strategy, business value of IT, IT measurement (ITScore), CIO leadership issues and the changing role of the CIO in a globalized world. He also researches India and China issues in terms of the business, technology and innovation impact these countries have on the global marketplace, and also on how global enterprises can succeed with their IT and business initiatives in these markets. His recent reports have focused on "On Demand: From Capacity to Capability," "The Entrepreneurial CIO" and "Managing Strategic Partners." Mr. Iyengar is a frequent and sought-after speaker and presenter at numerous Gartner and external forums, as well as for various government organizations in India, China and other countries. He is extensively quoted in the local, national and international press; was interviewed on the U.S. CBS News show "60 Minutes"; was a panelist on a CNN International panel discussion on the future of IT; and also participated in the BBC panel discussion on IT in emerging markets. He is the co-author of a book published by Harvard Business School Press on India and China strategies, titled "IT and the East: How China and India Are Altering the Future of Technology and Innovation." Mr. Iyengar is a non-executive director on the board of directors of State Bank of India, India's largest bank and one of the world's largest financial institutions. He is also on the advisory board of Symbiosis Center for IT, a leading management school in India.

Rob Jenkins leads VMware’s Advisory Services across EMEA. The Accelerate Program collaborates with customers on a global basis to define and communicate their IT strategy with strong alignment to business goals. VMware Accelerate Advisory Services has emerged as an authority on cloud benchmarking, solution value analysis and client cloud strategy. Rob has a background in sales, development, support, consulting and solutions team development and management within Systems Integrators, hardware and software vendors. He was previously the director of PSO for VMware, where he was responsible for ensuring that VMware customers are successfully implementing their business plans from adoption all the way through to a fully functioning virtualized data centre. Rob has spoken at industry and media events on a number of topics including solution architecture, scalable delivery and scientific and collaborative visualization.

Hanns Koehler-Kruener is Research Director in Gartner Research, covering enterprise content management strategies, systems and vendors, taxonomy and metadata strategies, text analytics, and enterprise search.

Andy Kyte is a Vice President and Gartner Fellow in Gartner Research and is a member of the Application Strategy and Governance team. With more than 30 years of experience in the applications arena, his research now concentrates on the challenges facing CIOs and business management teams in maximizing the return on assets for the application portfolio. This involves developing an understanding of best practices in application strategy and application life cycle management, covering both packaged applications and application development. His work on application strategy is centered on the major theme of application overhaul, and encompasses Application Total Cost of Ownership, the unfashionable but vitally important discipline of Application Maintenance and the need for strong application design. As a senior member of the Gartner Research community, Mr. Kyte is in great demand as a keynote speaker, having participated in events in 45 different countries during the last 16 years.

Steve Lachowski is an executive partner with Gartner Executive Programs. He has 29 years of experience as a transformation leader with several global multibillion-dollar enterprises in telecommunications, managed services and heavy industry.

Péter Lakhegyi is the general manager of the Middle Eastern operations of Atoll, the Enterprise Architecture Management skills and tool house. His aim is to support clients in establishing down-to-earth, yet business value driven architecture management practices that help organizations to achieve their business objectives. Prior to his current position Péter managed projects on an international scale. He gained broad experience in enterprise systems management and in international business development in Europe, the Middle East and Australia.

Debra Logan is a vice president and distinguished analyst in Gartner Research. She covers information governance, e-discovery, legacy information management and strategic information management, along with new and emerging roles in the digital economy. She is currently working on topics including information archiving, information retention management, strategic information management and e-discovery market trends.

Biswajeet Mahapatra, a Research Director in the IT Systems Security and Risk group, has a career spanning more than 18 years in many large IT organizations across the globe. Mr. Mahapatra works closely with CIOs across the globe to assist them in defining their IT strategy, deriving metrics to help measure ROI in IT investments and to help charter future direction for maximizing returns in IT. He also works closely with IT vendors to help them understand the market, define a robust product road map, and effectively launch their products. With special focus on upcoming technologies like cloud, Mr. Mahapatra has been heavily quoted in both national and international media. Mr. Mahapatra is an advisor to many governments across the globe for forming their cloud strategy, helping them formulate data privacy and protection policy/laws.

John Mahoney is a vice president and distinguished analyst in the CIO research group at Gartner. An experienced strategic leader, coach and executive board member, Mr. Mahoney focuses his research on the development and transformation of CIO and IT leadership roles, the future of IT organizations and the developing internet of everything. His research and advice blend practical with strategic for all aspects of leadership for IT organizations and for IT-driven companies.

Richard M. Marshall is a Research Director in the Mobile and Client Computing group, focusing on enterprise mobility and especially mobile apps and mobile app development.

Mary Mesaglio is a Research Vice President with Gartner's CIO research team. She helps CIOs and leadership teams harness innovation to drive business value. Her research also includes work on global IT, gamification and the evolution of the CIO. Ms. Mesaglio's recent work has explored how to measure innovation, the impact of Apple on the enterprise, and how to organize to deliver innovation. Ms. Mesaglio is Canadian and is based in Barcelona, Spain. She has traveled extensively in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. She speaks English, Spanish and French fluently, is working on her Catalan and has a smattering of Italian.

Naveen Mishra is a Research Director with the data center research team at Gartner. He is the conference chair of the Data Center Summit in India and a regular speaker at Gartner events in the Asia/Pacific region and the Middle East, such as Symposium, Predicts and the Data Center Summit. Mr. Mishra is often consulted on the broad IT trends and their impact on the Indian landscape. He is often consulted by CIOs and IT leaders on a variety of technology issues, such as cloud, virtualization, IT infrastructure strategy, data center and server technologies. IT vendors also seek his advice while crafting their growth strategies for Asia/Pacific.

Alistair Newton is a research vice president in the Banking and Investment Services client vertical. Mr. Newton advises clients on key industry trends and developments across the areas of payment technologies and strategies, including mobile and NFC payments, mobile and digital wallet strategies and social commerce, customer retention and acquisition strategies, including social networking, ATM technologies, mobile financial services and branch development, as well as broader issues of innovation within the financial services sector.

Martin Plessow is a regional vice president in Gartner Executive Programs (EXP), where he manages Central Eastern Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean and the Gulf region. He also works as an executive partner with CIOs and their leadership teams on all CIO relevant topics.

John Roberts is a Research Vice President and Distinguished Analyst with Gartner's CIO and Executive Leadership research team. He specializes in helping CIOs and IT leaders develop effective IT strategies that contribute to business transformation. Mr. Roberts conducts research and provides advice and support for Gartner clients on IT strategies and governance, business value of IT, improving business processes, restructuring application portfolios, IT organization management strategies and skills, and IT performance metrics and satisfaction surveys. Mr. Roberts is based in Australia and travels extensively across Asia/Pacific.

Arup Roy is a Research Director with Gartner's Technology and Service Provider research organization and covers the IT services market in India. Key areas of research for Mr. Roy include business models, competitive strategies, go-to-market strategies, key trends and vendors. He is responsible for sizing and forecasting this market and understanding its key accelerators and inhibitors.

Katja Ruud is a research director and agenda manager in Gartner Research. Her personal research agenda focuses on the full aspects of provisioning or procuring voice services covering both the service provider and end-user perspectives. She is also one of Gartner's leading analysts in the area of fixed mobile convergence and substitution.

Peter Sondergaard is Senior Vice President, Gartner Research. His focus is on developing market-leading advice; developing a global organization of more than 900 experts across IT, supply chain and marketing; and expanding the client base to more than 13,300 organizations across more than 80 countries. These initiatives have resulted in all-time-high levels of revenue for Gartner Research of more than $1.3 billion in 2013.

Joao Tapadinhas is a research director at Gartner, focused on business intelligence (BI), analytics and performance management, and covering Mobile BI in detail. He also helps Latin America organizations create, implement and evolve their BI strategies.