IDC Turkey CIO Summit Convened

The 7th IDC CIO (Chief Information Officer) Turkey Summit 2016 held in Çeşme Izmir organized by the International Data Corporation (IDC) Turkey, the leading market research company centered in the USA. Over 180 senior executives of the distinguished companies of Turkey gathered in Izmir for this 3-day activity. This year, IDC has prepared a tense agenda focusing on the new trends regarding the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in Turkey. The program of the activities aimed to share experiences of companies which have achieved their digital transformations conveyed by specialized speakers in their fields.

IDC Turkey has continued its growth since the beginning of the year 2010 and has organized the 7th CIO Summit this year. IDC CIO Summit accommodates the leading IT companies in their sector and is well known for its format, structure and style. The summit is specially organized to create business partnerships and serves this purpose with its presentations, main sessions, parallel sessions, panels, success stories and with question-answer sessions and tries to eliminate the most critical concerns of the senior executives.

The severe macroeconomic conditions of the recent years brought along particular difficulties to all companies in Turkey. Despite the financial oppression of the IT budgets, CIOs are all aware that all businesses rely on the support and success of the CIOs who will implement the possibilities to supply their digitalized products to the market by the fastest and easiest means. This new trend intensely discussed and negotiated during these activities because according to the new trends, IT departments will have to convey their efforts and expenditures towards income earning fields and will turn into business-oriented units. It is observed that such a transformation has already been triggered in various business models.

In her opening speech, Nevin Çizmecioğuları, Country Manager of IDC Turkey explained that: “The re-organization of the BT infrastructures which will facilitate the new business models are certainly among the primary targets of the Turkish CIOs but is not their priority. On the contrary, the re-organization of the BT departments and their transformation into innovation centers carries more strategical importance among the CIOs of our country. All IT divisions are planning to form R&D units with employing engineers to support such as Big Data, Mobility, and Internet of Things and to use all these devices and cross-technological facilities to achieve this mission.”

The award ceremony of CIO Summit 2016 Turkey was the substantive moment to crown the efforts of the companies spent to empower their leadership in the IT sector. Over 60 nominees in the field of vertical marketing, including state, retail, production, social services, professional services, telecommunication, transportation and healthcare companies participated in the summit and applied to summit to present their successful projects to be awarded and the winners were announced on the first evening of the opening day.

After the opening ceremony and various panels, winners in the “Most Innovative Project of the Year”, “Best Change Management of the Year”, “Best IT Governance Project of the Year”, “Best IT Contribution for Corporate Objectives of the Year”, “Best IT Cost Reduction Project of the Year” and “The CIO of the Year” categories were announced. Their awards were presented in the due ceremony.

The press conference which continued with a question-answer session was held with the participation of the executives’ of Netaş, Cisco Turkey, IBM Türk, IDC, Koç Sistem and Microsoft. All the participants agreed on the changing role of the CIOs and the concern of digital transformation of all business units and the common targets they expect to benefit from the IDC CIO Summit. They further shared their views on the new concept of a need for a CDO (Chief Digital Officer) position in companies.

Please feel free to watch our video concerning the unique views of Nevin Çizmecioğulları, Country Manager of IDC Turkey for “The Percept”.