IDC Directions 2019, Saudi Arabia

The global ICT industry has entered an era of multiplied innovation, where the emergence of new digital business models will see more than half of the global economy become digitalized by 2021.

Multiplied innovation represents the next chapter of the digital transformation journey, and the new imperative is to keep pace with the unprecedented rate of business change while increasing the speed of business operations, the speed at which changes are delivered, and the speed and scale of innovation. The forces of multiplied innovation are powering up, and we are seeing an explosion in digital innovation platforms and ecosystems to facilitate this transformation.

Developing an effective digital transformation platform that can sustain, advance, and scale business operations may be the most important task facing the kingdom’s decision makers over the next few years. Many future applications will be developed by AIs without human supervision, and beyond that, augmented humanity – the fusion of digital technologies and humans – for improved mobility, sensing, and cognition will start to become routine.

As a result, the future workplace will become far more collaborative. However, while new technologies are transforming key aspects of the modern business, legacy systems are holding others back, limiting innovation, opportunity, and engagement. Indeed, end-user organizations from every sector are now facing up to the challenge of having to balance traditional systems and next-generation technologies.

To this end, IDC Directions 2019 provides an exclusive forum for senior executives from the region’s pre-eminent technology firms to engage with experienced local and regional IDC analysts on their predictions for Saudi Arabia and evaluate the industries and technologies where opportunities for future growth lie.