January 17, 2017: As part of its ‘Digital Future Tour’, Software AG recently  held its marquee event, the ‘Digital Business Day,’ in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in association with the Kingdom’s National Information Center (NIC). Executives from leading Saudi organizations gathered for the one-day event to learn how to effectively harness the power of cutting-edge technologies to fast-track their Digital Transition. 

Held at the Four Seasons Hotel with Devoteam as the Platinum event partner and Scheer Consulting as the Gold event partner, this year’s ‘Digital Business Day’ focused on how digital business is reshaping the industry and dramatically altering the expectations of the private and public sectors. Ahmad Salama, Vice President Saudi Arabia, Software AG, delivered a welcome speech to officially kick off the program.

The event  comes at a time when majority of C-level management is recognizing the importance of digitalization in their organizations’ development but they are still looking for an effective digital strategy to build a new digital ecosystem. İn the Middle East, many countries have now been aggressively pursuing numerous Digital Transformation opportunities to meet modern-day business requirements. As digitalization becomes part of many organizations’ operating DNA, Middle Eastern  countries are now stretching their boundaries to leverage a broader digital ecosystem. 

Eric Duffaut, Chief Customer Officer, Software AG, said: “The recently concluded ‘Digital Business Day’ in Riyadh highlighted the growing significance of Internet of Things (IoT), connectivity, and digitalization in today’s business landscape. Needless to say, it is risky for any organization to ignore this growing trend and take on the business-as-usual attitude amidst the tremendous technological innovations all over the world. The event served as an opportunity for us at Software AG to encourage our customers to join the bandwagon of digitalization and how we can help them navigate and explore the many opportunities available to them.” 

Duffaut, one of the event’s key speakers, spoke at length about Digital Economy and the all-encompassing impact of the digital revolution on private enterprises, governments, and individuals. During his talk, he shared insights on the benefits of digitalization and why businesses must adapt a consumer-to-business model in order to extract value from the now empowered consumers. 

NIC’s Director Gerneral Dr. Tariq Al-Sheddi was also the event’s keynote speaker. In his speech, he discussed the strategic directions that NIC seeks to puusue with respect to the achievement of the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 at the national level. Dr. Al-Sheddi has as well as showcased the common mission and views of the National Information Center and Software AG on digitalization.  

Vijay Jaswal, CTO Middle East, Software AG, said: “Digitalization is about building a strategy and an architecture for the unknown as nobody can predict what will be needed in two, three or five years from now. We highlighted this during the event as well as other essential topics, including optimizing value from big data, making better decisions with streaming analytics, designing and implementing better processes, and improving insight into businesses’information technology (IT) portfolio.” 

A series of ‘Walk the Talk’ sessions with Software AG customers also took place during which the Minstry of Interior, NIC, STC, and Arabsat shared their experiences in using Software AG solutions and overcoming business challenges. Other topics of discussions were the globally trusted ‘Digital Business Platform;’ the best mechanisms to quickly build digital business applications in effective means to accelerate an organization’s transformation into a digital enterprise; as well as the  proper implementation of digital transformation projects. 

Other highlights included a workshop on ‘Digital Leadership: Service Visibility Platform’ led by Jaswal and a panel discussion on ‘Enabling Vision 2030 through Digitalization’ led by Dr. Abdullah Al-Ghamdi and Eng. Abdullah Alotaibi from NIC; Philipp Schoenbrunn-Knapmann, Head of Economic Affairs, German Embassy; David Milot, VP, PreSales & Solution at  Software AG; and Eric Roovers, Senior Director Transformation Solutions.

Software AG. Software AG’s Digital Business Platform (DBP) is at the center of the digitalization journey. Some of the leading brands that have utilized the Platform are the German engineering firm Bosch, Italian insurance service provider Octo Telematics, and the French utility company EDF. In Saudi Arabia, there are the NIC, STC, ArabSat and Tawuniya Insurance.