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IDC East Africa CIO Summit 2023

Enabling the Digital Economy's Leaders

IDC

In 2023, we are going further, together!
Join us for the 10th Edition.

The digital economy continues to expand in scale and sophistication at an unprecedented rate, driving the transformation of citizen, customer, and employee experiences and the rise of digitally enabled services such as remote healthcare, distance learning, remote work, and mobile banking.

Overview
Digital-native firms, equipped with new business models and armed with substantial venture capital funding, have disrupted supply chains in numerous industries, fueling growth in areas such as ecommerce, direct-to-consumer services, digital payments, and cloud kitchens. With the metaverse and Web3 paradigms on the horizon, further disruption is expected to individual, enterprise, and industrial digital experiences.

As the share of the digital economy becomes increasingly significant, major governments around the world are beginning to develop dedicated strategies to enable its measurement and further development. Creating suitable regulatory environments and enriching the talent pool will be critical to the success of these strategies. Today, technology is playing an ever-increasing role in enabling, measuring, and reporting on sustainability initiatives and diversity and inclusion drives, and government and business leaders are moving these issues to the top of their digital agendas.

The IDC East Africa CIO Summit 2023 will bring together the country's foremost IT and telecom leaders, digital government pioneers, digital regulators and authorities, and industry thought leaders.

Hosting East Africa's most prominent CTOs, and CIOs, the event will examine the current state of the digital economy, assess its ongoing impact on citizens, customers, employees, and operations, address the key challenges that need to be overcome, and outline proven best practices and strategies for driving future success.
Why Attend?
• Receive critical insights from leading industry experts
• Discover solutions to pressing business challenges
• Get hands on with the industry's latest innovations
• Interact with the brands and specialists on your short list
• Engage in workshop-based technology discussions
• Share knowledge and network with your peers
• Take part in a series of fun, exciting, and memorable activities

Key Topics

Impact of Sustainability on Technology Vendor

Application Modernization strategies

Effective Hybrid Cloud Deployment

Developing an AIOps strategy and practices

Full stack Observability

Leveraging Low Code / No Code platforms

Orchestrating Digital Infrastructure for hybrid environments

Charting a Data-driven digital strategy

Intelligent automation

Predictive analytics strategies

Zero Trust security approaches

Cybersecurity Policies & Regulations and Compliance

5G impact – network architectures, market strategies and use cases

IDC East Africa Advisory Council 2023

Julius Orayo

Group Chief Information Officer, Jubilee Holdings Limited

Hartnell Ndungi

Chief Data Officer, Absa Bank Kenya

Bernard Rono

Head of ICT, Kenya Tea Packers Limited (KETEPA)

Kenneth Ogwang

Head of Digital and Technology, Eastern and Southern Africa, Diageo

Martin Mwarangu

Group General Manager of ICT, Kenya Tea Development Holdings

Emma Ngute Kimwemwe

Director ICT, County Government of Kitui, Kenya

Gilbert Mutai

Head of ICT, Car and General Plc

Delegate Journey

Don't miss out on an extraordinary and unparalleled experience at the IDC East Africa CIO Summit 2023

Venue

Radisson Blu Hotel, Nairobi Upper Hill
Elgon Road, Kenya

Agenda

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Tuesday June 27, 2023
8:00

Registration and Networking
9:30

IDC Welcome Address
9:35

Opening Address by ICT Authority, Kenya
9:50

Felicitation
9:55

IDC Opening Keynote: The Future of Enterprise Innovation
10:25

Charting a Data-Driven Digital Strategy

Ask Questions, Rate Sessions & Stand a Chance to Win Coffee Mug Warmer Set
10:45

Simplifying Security Through Consolidation

Ask Questions, Rate Sessions & Stand a Chance to Win Coffee Mug Warmer Set
11:05

Culture and Data in the Cloud World

Ask Questions, Rate Sessions & Stand a Chance to Win Coffee Mug Warmer Set
11:25

Tea/ Coffee & Networking Break
11:55

Talent Development & the Demand for New Skills: How to Structure Your Team Optimally
12:40

IDC Overview: Shaping CISO Strategies for the Digital-First Organization
12:45

Living on the Edge: The Future Outlook for Security Access Service Edge (SASE)

Ask Questions, Rate Sessions & Stand a Chance to Win RFID Gift Set
12:55

IDC Overview: Data and Platform-Led Strategies for Realizing Digital Outcomes
13:00

Your Modernized Infrastructure as a Platform for Data-Driven insights

Ask Questions, Rate Sessions & Stand a Chance to Win RFID Gift Set
13:15

Accelerate Innovation with a Cloud-Smart Strategy

Ask Questions, Rate Sessions & Stand a Chance to Win RFID Gift Set
13:30

Lunch & Networking
14:25

IDC Overview: Cyber Protection for Today, and Tomorrow’s Threats: Dynamic Security Strategies to Minimize Risk

Start of Session Raffle-Gift Set
14:30

Cyber Immunity – The Key to Safe and Secure Digital Transformation

Ask Questions, Rate Sessions & Stand a Chance to Win a gift hamper
14:45

Unlocking the Power of Data: Enabling Data-Driven Enterprises

Ask Questions, Rate Sessions & Stand a Chance to Win a Raffle Voucher
15:00

How to Save 2000 IT Team Work Days per Year

Ask Questions, Rate Sessions & Stand a Chance to Win a gift hamper
15:15

The Sweet Spot of Modern Enterprise Computing

Ask Questions, Rate Sessions & Stand a Chance to Win RFID Gift Set
15:30

Sustainable Strategies & Technologies: Operationalization, Impact Measurability, Business Value Creation
16:15

Felicitation of Advisory Council
16:30

Summary & Close
16:35

Close of Summit

Speakers

Jyoti Lalchandani

Group Vice President & Regional Managing Director (META), IDC

Stanley Kamanguya

CEO, ICT Authority

Joseph Mutua

Senior Solutions Architect, AWS

Ross Templeton

System Engineering Manager, Palo Alto Networks

Manav Daby

Customer Engineer, Google Cloud

Neeraj Anand

Head – IT Applications SBM Bank Kenya Limited

Shikuku Shituma

East Africa ICT Director, Aga Khan University Hospital

Catherine Jeruto

Assistant Manager, Information Security, Commercial International Bank

Jonah Kuria

Chief Data Officer, Diamond Trust Bank

Bernard Rono

Head of ICT, Kenya Tea Packers Limited (KETEPA)

Edwin Sutherland

Principal Solutions Architect, Cloudflare

Hartnell Ndungi

Chief Data Officer, Absa Bank Kenya

Tunde Abagun

Sub-Regional Sales Manager WECA, Nutanix

Bridget Kaate

Partner Business Manager, VMware

Yash Pal Dogra

Associate Conference Director, IDC

Moses Munguti

Pre-Sales Manager East Africa, Kaspersky

Veerakumar Natrajan

Country Manager, Kenya, Zoho

Christopher Saul

Territory Sales Lead, East Africa, Red Hat

George Agu

MD, ActivEdge Technologies

Kenneth Ogwang

Head of Digital and Technology, Eastern and Southern Africa, Diageo

Martin Mwarangu

Group General Manager of ICT, Kenya Tea Development Holdings

Georgina Mukami Odhiambo

Head of ICT Channels Operations, National Bank of Kenya

Gilbert Mutai

Head of ICT, Car and General Plc

John Wachira

Group IT Manager, The Safal Group

View All Speakers

Partners

Strategic Partner
Summit Partner
Summit Partner
Summit Partner
Platinum Partner
Platinum Partner
Platinum Partner
Technology Focus Group Partner
Technology Focus Group Partner
Technology Focus Group Partner
Technology Focus Group Partner
Exhibit Partner
Exhibit Partner
Association Partner
Media Partner

Proceedings

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Knowledge Hub

Analyst Spotlight
A New Approach to Security in the Post-Pandemic World

Frank Dickson
Group Vice President, Security & Trust, IDC

As we enter 2023, we can finally, for the most part, put reactionary moves due to COVID-19 behind us as the disease moves from a pandemic to an endemic part of daily life. We have accepted that digital transformation moved at a feverish pace, transitioning our enterprises to digital first years before we anticipated. The possibilities of remote work gave way to the reality that hybrid work is here to stay. These are truths that we have accepted.

Analyst Spotlight
A New Approach to Security in the Post-Pandemic World

Frank Dickson
Group Vice President, Security & Trust, IDC

As we enter 2023, we can finally, for the most part, put reactionary moves due to COVID-19 behind us as the disease moves from a pandemic to an endemic part of daily life. We have accepted that digital transformation moved at a feverish pace, transitioning our enterprises to digital first years before we anticipated. The possibilities of remote work gave way to the reality that hybrid work is here to stay. These are truths that we have accepted.

The economic headwinds we are experiencing have re-energized a trend that was muted by the pandemic. The C-suite appreciates the value and importance of security both now and into the future. C-level executives are actively planning continued investments in security to ensure the viability of their enterprises. However, C-level executives are growing tired of the continually growing financial appetite of security and are looking to reduce spending when and where possible. They are demanding accountability for the spend; in essence, they are looking for secure outcomes that are measurable and meaningful.

The result of this security confluence is a migration of approaches. The breach detection mindset of the past is giving way to a view that positions security as a way of improving an organization's cyber-risk posture, a posture that is tightly coupled with the goals of the organization and decreasing business risk. In its 2023 Future of Trust FutureScape, IDC predicted that by 2025, 45% of CEOs, fatigued by security spending without predictable ROI, will demand security metrics and results measurement to assess and validate investments made in their security program.

The IDC West Africa CIO Summit 2023 will look to address security in this new reality. We will help guide you in working with the CEO and boards of directors as we transition to delivering secure outcomes and a trusted organization to our executive constituencies.

Analyst Spotlight
Thriving in the Digital-First Economy

Ranjit Rajan,
Vice President, Research (META), IDC

The pandemic-driven pivot to digital-first strategies by organizations across the Middle East continues well after the pandemic has subsided. Indeed, many leading organizations are now making the transition from enabling digital transformation to actually running a digital business.

Analyst Spotlight
Thriving in the Digital-First Economy

Ranjit Rajan,
Vice President, Research (META), IDC

The pandemic-driven pivot to digital-first strategies by organizations across the Middle East continues well after the pandemic has subsided. Indeed, many leading organizations are now making the transition from enabling digital transformation to actually running a digital business.

In line with this shift, they are increasingly focused on deriving a larger share of revenues from digital products, services, channels, and platforms, with 50% of the CIOs surveyed by IDC across the Middle East saying this is now a major priority for their organizations.

The same survey revealed that 70% of Middle East CIOs will be prioritizing the digitalization of operations (process automation, reengineering, and productivity improvements) over the next 12-18 months, while more than half will also be focused on delivering insights at scale across their organizations by building capabilities in data and enterprise intelligence.

The region will continue to face several headwinds throughout 2023, including volatile demand, high inflation, interest rate hikes, supply chain uncertainties, and currency fluctuations. In order to navigate these storms of disruption, organizations will need to invest in strengthening their digital resiliency so they are better positioned to not only survive but thrive in new market environments as conditions continue to change.

Giga/Mega projects that envision futuristic, highly digitalized cities and communities — such as NEOM in Saudi Arabia — will provide a blueprint for accelerated digitalization across the region in 2023 and beyond. Such projects will set the pace as they develop greenfield digital infrastructure and platforms, leveraging advanced technologies like AI/ML, IoT, edge, and 5G to create innovative tech-enabled use cases and customer experiences.

The rise of the digital economy and the emergence of digital-native firms in segments such as fintech, ecommerce, D2C (direct to consumer), aggrotech, and edtech, among others, have accelerated the disruption of supply chains in several industries, driving the development of new business models, digitally augmented customer experiences, and automated operations.

At the same time, governments across the Middle East have launched numerous strategies and policies to support the growth of the digital economy, with a focus on developing the infrastructure, innovation platforms, skills, and regulations required to support the expansion of digital businesses.

One such example is the UAE government's 'Digital Economy Strategy'. Launched in 2022, this initiative aims to double the contribution of the digital economy to the UAE's GDP from 9.7% to 19.4% over the next 10 years, and it is already bearing fruit.

Indeed, the number of digital companies operating in the country is expanding significantly, with the fintech, ecommerce, and D2C segments leading the charge. These companies are disrupting business models and value chains, driving incumbent players to develop new innovation models, engage in ecosystem partnerships, and launch or acquire digital spin-offs.

In order to thrive in this new world, a digital-first mindset is essential, coupled with a vision to build a data-driven organization that is ingrained with a culture of innovation. Leveraging cloud as a foundational platform, developing a data and intelligence plane powered by AI and advanced analytics, and enabling ubiquitous, consumption-based digital infrastructure will all become critical technology priorities.

Analyst Spotlight
Cloud Overspend and the Role of CloudOps and FinOps

Matt Eastwood,
Senior Vice President, Worldwide Research, IDC

Over the past few years, IDC has seen investments in cloud grow rapidly as enterprises build their digital footprints. In many cases, this growth has occurred without the proper governance necessary to ensure resources are optimized appropriately. And the impact on budgets has been significant, with cloud now representing 35-40% of a typical IT budget. Additionally, the typical enterprise is reporting that their cloud overspend can be upwards of 25-35% today. Customers are clearly struggling to understand how to best optimize cloud spend for architectural and business benefit while also allocating cloud costs to the correct team.

Analyst Spotlight
Cloud Overspend and the Role of CloudOps and FinOps

Matt Eastwood,
Senior Vice President, Worldwide Research, IDC

Over the past few years, IDC has seen investments in cloud grow rapidly as enterprises build their digital footprints. In many cases, this growth has occurred without the proper governance necessary to ensure resources are optimized appropriately. And the impact on budgets has been significant, with cloud now representing 35-40% of a typical IT budget. Additionally, the typical enterprise is reporting that their cloud overspend can be upwards of 25-35% today. Customers are clearly struggling to understand how to best optimize cloud spend for architectural and business benefit while also allocating cloud costs to the correct team.

One of the ways that enterprise IT customers are tackling this challenge is through the implementation of CloudOps and FinOps. CloudOps is the practice of optimizing and managing the use of cloud resources, while FinOps is the practice of managing financial aspects of cloud operations. Together, these practices allow customers to better understand their cloud usage and costs, and to identify areas where they can reduce expenses effectively.

For example, by using CloudOps tools, customers can monitor and adjust their usage of resources such as storage and computing to ensure they are only paying for what they need. Additionally, FinOps techniques such as forecasting and budgeting can help customers plan and control their spending, preventing unexpected or unnecessary cloud charges.

As a result of these efforts, many enterprise IT customers are seeing significant reductions in their cloud expenditures and can more effectively allocate their IT budgets to other areas of the business. This can mean the difference between a project being viable or not. It also allows these users to have a better understanding of what they pay for and predict future costs, which can help them avoid financial surprises and make more informed decisions. And as many organizations deal with financial headwinds in the market, the time to implement or augment internal CloudOps and FinOps functions is now.

Analyst Spotlight
The Three Core Pillars of Efficient Digital Infrastructure

Shahin Hashim,
Associate Research Director, IDC

Pandemic-induced transformation has enabled governments and enterprises across all industries to deliver their products and services through digital channels. The sheer pace of this transformation has been a once-in-a-lifetime experience worth living through. As we move forward into 2023, the digital world has become the norm for most industries and organizations.

Analyst Spotlight
The Three Core Pillars of Efficient Digital Infrastructure

Shahin Hashim,
Associate Research Director, IDC

Pandemic-induced transformation has enabled governments and enterprises across all industries to deliver their products and services through digital channels. The sheer pace of this transformation has been a once-in-a-lifetime experience worth living through. As we move forward into 2023, the digital world has become the norm for most industries and organizations. This requires them to constantly innovate and improve their digital offerings to meet changing customer expectations, making a digital-only approach the default strategy for many. Indeed, three out of five UAE organizations surveyed by IDC rank the need to digitalize their operations as their utmost digital priority.

The implementation of highly responsive, resilient, and agile infrastructure is the foundation for any digital-first/only organization. IDC defines this as digital infrastructure, and our Future of Digital Infrastructure Framework helps technology suppliers to position their infrastructure products and services. It also assists technology buyers in defining their road maps for infrastructure transformation, enabling them to attain their ultimate digital infrastructure goals.

The framework is built around three core pillars:

Cloud-Native Technologies: This refers to any modern network, compute, and storage infrastructure, as well as software solutions and technologies delivered at cloud scale and with cloud attributes. These technologies enable frictionless governance, data management and mobility, and security compliance for enterprise workloads across the edge, core, and cloud, thus proactively preparing enterprises to face the interconnected uncertainties of the new world order.

Autonomous Operations: This is a model that allows organizations to run their infrastructure services in a highly automated and self-sufficient manner. This enables more efficient and reliable operations, freeing up resources and enhancing the overall customer experience. To achieve the most advanced level of autonomous operations, organizations can use a combination of modern programmable infrastructure with an API-enabled automation control plane coupled with a suite of cloud-native tools such as full stack observability, intelligent monitoring, asset management, configuration management, application performance management, and end-user experience management. Such an API-driven control plane enables DevOps teams to increase their developer velocity. Additionally, the IT service management function can be enhanced by adopting a proactive approach using AIOps augmented with AI/ML models, helping to significantly reduce the time to detect, respond to, and resolve incidents.

Ubiquitous Consumption: This refers to the utilization of digital infrastructure building blocks based on business objectives, regardless of the location of consumption or the method of delivery. This can include the consumption of resources at the edge, core, or cloud, as well as whether they are shared or dedicated. Essentially, it is about being able to consume the necessary digital resources in a flexible and adaptable manner so that they can be used to achieve desired business outcomes.

The future of digital infrastructure is an exciting one, and it will be interesting to see how organizations continue to leverage these developments to drive their digital-only journeys.

Partner Spotlight
Digitally Transform Your Customer Experience with Cloud

Niral Patel,
Director (Africa), Google Cloud

To be future proof, every organization must become a tech organization or be disrupted. In recent years, many organizations in Africa and around the world have been striving to digitally transform their businesses with the latest cloud technologies. They are looking for trusted innovation partners who can help them implement this transformation and accelerate the process.

Partner Spotlight
Digitally Transform Your Customer Experience with Cloud

Organizations can accelerate digital transformation by adopting a cloud-first approach. This can be done by making data more accessible to everyone, modernizing applications and infrastructure, and putting the customer at the center of everything they do. By taking advantage of the power of cloud computing, organizations can innovate faster, generate new revenue streams, and respond to market changes more quickly. Pepkor Group, one of the largest retailers in Southern Africa, leverages Google Cloud's data analytics solutions to transform its in-house logistical processes, enabling the company to help more households across Africa access value-for-money products. Pepkor turned to Google Cloud in order to be able to leverage data analytics solutions that will help the retailer transform its logistical processes, placing the right product in front of the right customer at the right time. Similarly Syft Analytics, a South Africa–based financial reporting application, decided to partner with Google Cloud to run its online platform and application that reviews, analyzes, and predicts financial data quickly. Running on Google Cloud, Syft Analytics platform is able to provide data visualizations that bring deep insights of financial data to life and make information comprehensible for their organizational staff. In another such industry example from Africa, Twiga Foods implemented Google Cloud as part of its core technology to run an efficient food value chain that connects farmers directly with vendors to bring high-quality, locally harvested fresh produce to people every day — increasing accessibility to food items in Kenya.

Modernized Infrastructure as a Platform for Data-Driven Insights

Babatunde Abagun,
Sub-Regional Sales Manager (West, East & Central Africa), Nutanix

To truly modernize IT, we must reimagine how data-centric platform services are architected and delivered. The cornerstone of this is to unshackle data services from the underlying infrastructure on which they run, enabling true application portability. Not an easy problem to solve.

Modernized Infrastructure as a Platform for Data-Driven Insights

Data-centric platform services, such as database-as-a-service (DBaaS), give developers and ops teams easy and fast access to the data processing capabilities needed to support modern applications and improve developer productivity, offer easier database and data services management, and bring new software solutions to market quicker — a need driven by the fact that most customers are adopting or exploring a hybrid multicloud architecture. But while today’s organizations want the ease of application portability and access to data-centric platform services, they currently can't have both — as application data is often linked to specific clouds. For example, a European business builds a container-based retail application AWS and leverages AWS RDS to manage customer data. Now they want to scale this to South Africa, but the data sovereignty requirements are different. Sure, they can take the container instance and lift and shift it, but they can’t do the same with Amazon RDS. They must rewrite and rework the instance for the local database. The way forward is to move to a world where the same data-centric platform services are available in the major public clouds, private datacenters, and colocation facilities, managed from a single control plane. This requires a push towards ubiquitous access to the data services developers need to build the best applications without having to rewrite aspects for different use cases. It’s this type of modernized infrastructure that will start to work as a platform for data-driven insights.

Contact Us

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Senior Conference Director, META Events

+91 981874 7089

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Senior Sales Manager, IDC South Africa

About IDC

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International Data Corporation (IDC) is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. With more than 1,300 analysts worldwide, IDC offers global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends in over 110 countries. IDC's analysis and insight helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community to make fact-based technology decisions and to achieve their key business objectives. Founded in 1964, IDC is a wholly-owned subsidiary of International Data Group (IDG), the world's leading media, data and marketing services company. To learn more about IDC, please visit www.idc.com.