CIO Xchange UAE
The CIO's New Mandate
Empowering People, Driving Value, Leading with Resilience
In a world of relentless technological disruption, agility defines success. For CIOs, the challenge lies in cutting through the AI noise to identify what truly transforms their organizations. The UAE edition of CIO Xchange, taking place at Taj Exotica Resort, The Palm, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, on June 25, brings together visionary leaders who are mastering this shift – by driving the AI Pivot to Scale.
IDC Research show that over 51% of organizations worldwide are currently in the “AI Pivot” stage of maturity, working to scale AI initiatives responsibly. In UAE, the AI landscape is advancing progressively, backed by visionary government investments and a high level of digital maturity across enterprises. CIOs in the country are emerging as the architects of AI-driven transformation – enabling business units to scale AI, ensuring measurable ROI, and collaborating with CHROs to build an AI-ready workforce.
With 58% of UAE organizations still deploying AI in silos, CIOs will play a critical role in driving cohesive, enterprise-wide adoption that strengthens readiness and deliver greater strategic impact. This indeed is their opportunity to step forward as orchestrators of transformation.
UAE CIO Xchange 2026 will explore key strategic imperatives around leadership, culture, collaboration and much more to help CIOs direct adaptable tech agendas. Through interactive sessions and peer-driven discussions, Xchange will uncover how leaders are enabling high-impact use cases while embracing governance, trust, and responsibility in AI adoption. Join us at Xchange 2026 where we build a community rather than just a network. Because in an AI-driven world, the real differentiator is not technology itself, but the mindset that powers it.
Why Attend?
The IDC CIO Xchange 2026 is the premier gathering for UAE’s CIOs and IT leaders, designed to address the rapidly evolving landscape of digital business strategy, technology leadership, and enterprise transformation. This event will bring together CIOs, digital innovation leaders, and industry experts for immersive dialogue, peer benchmarking, and hands-on workshops, focusing on aligning technology investments with business goals, navigating regulatory complexity, and driving sustainable growth in a dynamic digital era.
Building adaptive, resilient technology foundations that empower organizational agility and sustained growth.
Leveraging AI and agentic AI to drive intelligent automation, elevate productivity, and enable data-driven decision-making.
Addressing the complexities of legacy modernization, technical debt, and fragmented IT environments.
Embedding trust, security, and compliance as core principles in every technology and business decision.
Leading with vision by aligning digital investments to strategic business outcomes and delivering measurable stakeholder value.
Expert Perspectives
Hear from thought leaders and visionary CIOs, redefining technology, leadership, and innovation across the region.
IDC Keynote: The Evolving Role of the CIO: From IT Leader to Business Strategist
As organizations navigate rapid digital transformation, the role of the CIO is undergoing a fundamental shift. No longer confined to overseeing IT operations, today’s CIO is a strategic business leader driving innovation, growth, and competitive advantage.
This session will explore how CIOs are expanding their influence beyond technology, aligning digital initiatives with core business objectives, and leveraging emerging technologies such as AI, cloud, and data analytics to deliver measurable value. Attendees will gain insights into how modern CIOs collaborate across the C-suite, shape customer experiences, and lead organizational change.
Harish Dunakhe | IDC
Senior Research Director, Software & Cloud (META)
Harish Dunakhe
Harish Dunakhe leads IDC’s research & advisory practice for the software program in the Middle East, Africa, and Turkey (META) region.
He is responsible for a team of research analysts and manages the delivery of insights in IDC’s software program and syndicated research. Harish and his team have expertise in studying technology trends to provide our clients with thought leadership and actionable insights. He is based in Dubai.
Harish has a strong understanding of leveraging technologies to solve business problems in the public sector, travel & transportation, hospitality, IT, and retail. He has significant knowledge of emerging technologies such as blockchain, RPA, artificial intelligence, and cloud. He works with clients to understand the intricacies, opportunities, and challenges involved in their technology transformation journeys.
Harish brings more than 17 years of experience working with leading system integrators and other technology companies across the Middle East, South Asia, and India. Prior to joining IDC, he held senior roles spanning technology sales strategy, program governance, and large account business planning at Global MNCs such as Wipro, DXC Technology, and Sonata Software.
Event Sessions
Day 2 10:05 am
Fireside Chat
Day 2 12:00 pm
CIO Masterclass Workshop: Designing the Global Enterprise of 2028
As UAE enterprises expand globally and accelerate AI adoption, CIOs are being asked to balance innovation with resilience, sovereignty, and trust at an unprecedented scale. This interactive strategy workshop will place participants in the role of leadership teams across industries such as banking, manufacturing, healthcare, digital platforms, and infrastructure. Working in groups, participants will design their organization’s 2028 operating model by allocating investments across AI transformation, digital platforms, cyber resilience, workforce evolution, ecosystem governance, and regulatory readiness. Along the way, they will confront real-world trade-offs driven by emerging risks, global compliance pressures, and the growing complexity of AI-enabled enterprises. The session is designed to spark board-level thinking, peer exchange, and practical insight into how leading CIOs can architect growth, trust, and resilience simultaneously in the next phase of digital transformation.
Day 2 9:35 am
IDC Keynote: The Evolving Role of the CIO: From IT Leader to Business Strategist
As organizations navigate rapid digital transformation, the role of the CIO is undergoing a fundamental shift. No longer confined to overseeing IT operations, today’s CIO is a strategic business leader driving innovation, growth, and competitive advantage.
This session will explore how CIOs are expanding their influence beyond technology, aligning digital initiatives with core business objectives, and leveraging emerging technologies such as AI, cloud, and data analytics to deliver measurable value. Attendees will gain insights into how modern CIOs collaborate across the C-suite, shape customer experiences, and lead organizational change.
Speakers
Jyoti Lalchandani
Head of WW Events & MD – META, Central Asia, India
IDC
Read Bio
Harish Dunakhe
Senior Research Director, Software & Cloud (META)
IDC
Read Bio
Humayun Muhammad
Regional Sales Director
BMC Software
Read Bio
Maik de Wolf
Regional Director
Dynatrace
Read Bio
Faisal Ameer Malik
Chief Technology Officer
Huawei Enterprise Business Group, Middle East
Read Bio
Rajesh Nagpal
Vice President of Sales (UAE)
Huawei Enterprise Business
Read Bio
Haitham Saif
Chief Technology Officer | Regional Sales Leader | AI-Driven Networking, Cloud & Cybersecurity | Middle East
HPE
Read Bio
Sherif Medhat
Lead Solutions Engineer
Dynatrace
Read Bio
Shahin Hashim
Associate Research Director (META)
IDC
Read Bio
Shilpi Handa
Associate Research Director (META)
IDC
Read Bio
Jyoti Lalchandani
Jyoti Lalchandani is a seasoned business executive with more than 25 years of experience in emerging markets across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). In his role as IDC’s Group Vice President and Regional Managing Director for the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa (META), he has been instrumental in establishing IDC’s presence in the region – first, through the initial expansion of the Dubai headquarters and then by spearheading the development of IDC offices in Johannesburg, Istanbul, Riyadh, Casablanca, Lagos, Nairobi, and Cairo.
Jyoti is responsible for the planning, development, implementation, and coordination of IDC’s market intelligence and advisory services, sales, conferences and events, go-to-market services, and office development activities across the META region. As a respected authority on emerging market tech trends, he is also regularly invited to speak at major industry events throughout the region and is frequently quoted by both the national and international media.
His field of expertise includes key tech areas such as cloud, analytics, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things, and he is well known for providing guidance on digital transformation strategies for the entire C-suite. He is a trusted advisor to senior executives in the supplier/enabler space across the ICT ecosystem, as well as to tech buyers from the CIO and line-of-business communities.
Starting at IDC’s CEMA (Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa) headquarters in 1995 in Prague, the Czech Republic, Jyoti served as IDC’s regional consulting manager. In this role, he headed several country-based project teams that advised local and multinational IT vendors on issues relating to entry strategy, competitor analysis, ROI analysis, distribution and partner evaluation, and market segmentation. He later took on the additional responsibility of overseeing the CEMA software practice, in which he was responsible for overseeing all related research (applications, system infrastructure, and tools) and advisory work across emerging EMEA countries.
Before joining IDC, Jyoti served on the national board of international non-profit organization AIESEC, where he managed the association’s partnership agreements with leading Indian conglomerates. He graduated from Loyola College, India, where his studies focused on strategy management and business policy. He later attended a corporate-sponsored program at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts.
Harish Dunakhe
Harish Dunakhe leads IDC’s research & advisory practice for the software program in the Middle East, Africa, and Turkey (META) region.
He is responsible for a team of research analysts and manages the delivery of insights in IDC’s software program and syndicated research. Harish and his team have expertise in studying technology trends to provide our clients with thought leadership and actionable insights. He is based in Dubai.
Harish has a strong understanding of leveraging technologies to solve business problems in the public sector, travel & transportation, hospitality, IT, and retail. He has significant knowledge of emerging technologies such as blockchain, RPA, artificial intelligence, and cloud. He works with clients to understand the intricacies, opportunities, and challenges involved in their technology transformation journeys.
Harish brings more than 17 years of experience working with leading system integrators and other technology companies across the Middle East, South Asia, and India. Prior to joining IDC, he held senior roles spanning technology sales strategy, program governance, and large account business planning at Global MNCs such as Wipro, DXC Technology, and Sonata Software.
Event Sessions
Day 2 10:05 am
Fireside Chat
Day 2 12:00 pm
CIO Masterclass Workshop: Designing the Global Enterprise of 2028
As UAE enterprises expand globally and accelerate AI adoption, CIOs are being asked to balance innovation with resilience, sovereignty, and trust at an unprecedented scale. This interactive strategy workshop will place participants in the role of leadership teams across industries such as banking, manufacturing, healthcare, digital platforms, and infrastructure. Working in groups, participants will design their organization’s 2028 operating model by allocating investments across AI transformation, digital platforms, cyber resilience, workforce evolution, ecosystem governance, and regulatory readiness. Along the way, they will confront real-world trade-offs driven by emerging risks, global compliance pressures, and the growing complexity of AI-enabled enterprises. The session is designed to spark board-level thinking, peer exchange, and practical insight into how leading CIOs can architect growth, trust, and resilience simultaneously in the next phase of digital transformation.
Day 2 9:35 am
IDC Keynote: The Evolving Role of the CIO: From IT Leader to Business Strategist
As organizations navigate rapid digital transformation, the role of the CIO is undergoing a fundamental shift. No longer confined to overseeing IT operations, today’s CIO is a strategic business leader driving innovation, growth, and competitive advantage.
This session will explore how CIOs are expanding their influence beyond technology, aligning digital initiatives with core business objectives, and leveraging emerging technologies such as AI, cloud, and data analytics to deliver measurable value. Attendees will gain insights into how modern CIOs collaborate across the C-suite, shape customer experiences, and lead organizational change.
Humayun Muhammad
Humayun Muhammad is a Regional Sales Director at BMC Software, based in Dubai, UAE. He leads strategic growth across key Middle East accounts, driving large-scale digital transformation initiatives and building executive-level partnerships with enterprise customers. With a strong focus on business outcomes and value-driven engagement, Humayun brings deep expertise in aligning technology with customer priorities, enabling organizations to improve operational resilience, accelerate innovation, and deliver measurable impact.
Event Sessions
Day 2 10:05 am
Fireside Chat
Day 2 9:50 am
Automation for the AI Era
Discover how AI-powered automation is transforming business operations, enabling smarter decisions, greater efficiency, and accelerated innovation. Learn how organizations are leveraging intelligent automation to drive agility and competitive advantage in the AI era.
Maik de Wolf
Event Sessions
Day 2 10:20 am
Digital Performance Is Business Performance: The Observability Imperative
In today’s digital-first economy, business success is directly tied to the performance of applications, infrastructure, and customer experiences. This session explores why observability has become a strategic imperative—enabling organizations to gain real-time visibility, accelerate issue resolution, optimize digital operations, and drive measurable business outcomes.
Faisal Ameer Malik
With more than 26 years of experience in the ICT sector and working for various organization from satellite communication, broadband operators and technology vendors. Faisal holds a very hands on knowledge and experience in multiple technology domains and their implementation across different industry verticals.
Faisal has led numerous ICT transformation projects of enterprise and national scale across Middle East ranging from smart city, safe city, network transformation, cloud & data centers.
As Chief Technology Officer, Faisal is responsible for the alignment and implementation of Huawei’s Middle East business strategy and technology vision and translate it to business success.
In his 20 years at Huawei, Faisal has been part of both Carrier business and Enterprise division and has always been recognized as one of top achievers in the organization.
Event Sessions
Day 2 10:30 am
Empowering Industry to Address AI Transformation Challenges
As organizations accelerate their AI journeys, many face challenges around strategy, data readiness, governance, talent, and scaling successful initiatives. This session explores practical approaches to overcoming these barriers and turning AI ambitions into measurable business outcomes.
Rajesh Nagpal
Rajesh Nagpal oversees Huawei’s Enterprise Business in the UAE, with direct accountability for strategy, revenue growth, and ecosystem development across financial services, government, energy, transportation, and retail, hospitality & healthcare (RHH). He brings over 20 years of enterprise technology and business leadership experience, with a proven record of delivering large-scale digital transformation programs across the Middle East.
In his current role, Rajesh drives adoption of Huawei’s cloud, AI, data, and resilient infrastructure and platform solutions, positioning organizations across all key verticals to meet the demands of the UAE’s national digital priorities.
Event Sessions
Day 2 10:30 am
Empowering Industry to Address AI Transformation Challenges
As organizations accelerate their AI journeys, many face challenges around strategy, data readiness, governance, talent, and scaling successful initiatives. This session explores practical approaches to overcoming these barriers and turning AI ambitions into measurable business outcomes.
Haitham Saif
Event Sessions
Day 2 10:40 am
The Self-Driving Network: Redefining What Enterprise AI Can Deliver
Self-driving networks use AI to automate operations, strengthen security, and optimize performance—creating the intelligent, resilient foundation enterprises need to accelerate AI-driven innovation and business outcomes.
Sherif Medhat
Sherif Medhat is a Lead Solutions Engineer at Lead Solutions Engineer, working with enterprise and government organizations across the Middle East on observability, cloud transformation, and digital resilience. With over 14 years of experience spanning observability, cloud, and enterprise applications—including roles at Microsoft, Cisco, and IBM—he brings a strong blend of technical depth and business insight.
Shahin Hashim
Shilpi Handa
Knowledge Hub
Getting Your Data AI Ready
It has become a common refrain – getting data governance right is key to a successful AI strategy! This conventional wisdom is very true, but it is not a new problem. For as long as I have been involved in IT, both as an analyst and as a CIO, companies have struggled with wrangling the various data sets across the applications running at the organization.
Bob Parker
| IDC
SVP, Software and Services Research
Read More
Vision to Reality: How Governments are Empowering the Middle East’s AI Future
IDC predicts that AI will have a cumulative global economic impact of $19.9 trillion by 2030, driving 3.5% of global GDP growth. Governments will play a strategic dual role – both shaping policies for secure, impactful, and responsible adoption of AI across industries, and acting as major buyers of AI to transform public programs and services, enhancing operational efficiency and achieving mission outcomes.
Massimiliano Claps
| IDC
Research Director
Read More
Navigating the AI Realm with Huawei: Staying Focused on What Truly Counts
For the past several years, we have all been watching enterprises pour significant capital into AI infrastructure, whether it is data centers, compute clusters and sophisticated models. The ambition is real, and in many cases, so is the investment. Having worked at the intersection of technology and enterprise strategy for Huawei in this region, I find myself returning to one question: Are we building AI that actually works for the people and industries it is meant to serve?
Faisal Ameer Malik
| Huawei's Enterprise Business
Chief Technology Officer
Read More
From Reactive to Autonomous: Why Critical Business Orchestration Are the CIO’s Most Urgent Agenda Items
Across the Middle East, enterprises are making bold, capital-intensive commitments to artificial intelligence. Budgets have been approved, pilots have been launched, and boardroom conversations have shifted decisively toward AI-driven transformation. According to IDC, AI is expected to contribute $19.9 trillion to the global economy through 2030, driving 3.5% of global GDP, and every dollar spent on AI solutions is projected to generate $4.60 in economic impact through indirect and induced effects.¹ It is little surprise, then, that IDC research shows 89% of worldwide IT leaders are prioritizing AI-led initiatives within stable or increased budgets.²
Abdullah Smadi
| Magnoos
General Manager, DSM & AI
Read MorePartners
BMC | Magnoos
BMC
BMC works with 86% of the Forbes Global 50 and customers and partners around the world to create their future. With our history of innovation, industry-leading automation, operations, and service management solutions, combined with unmatched flexibility, we help organizations free up time and space to become an Autonomous Digital Enterprise that conquers the opportunities ahead.
Magnoos
Established in 2012, MAGNOOS is a leading Software Value Added Reseller and Technology Implementation company in the Middle East and Africa. With headquarters in Abu Dhabi, UAE, it serves diverse sectors like Banking, Telecoms, and Government. MAGNOOS has a team of 100+ skilled professionals and a strategic network across Saudi Arabia, India, Egypt, Pakistan, and Greece, offering comprehensive consulting services and end-to-end project management. It provides tailored solutions and impartial advice, helping clients maximize business benefits from modern technology investments.
AWS | Zero&One
Since 2006, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud. AWS has been continually expanding its services to support virtually any workload, and it now has more than 240 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, media, and application development, deployment, and management from 123 Availability Zones within 39 geographic regions, with announced plans for 7 more Availability Zones and 2 more AWS Regions in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and Chile. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS, visit aws.amazon.com.
Privacy Policy: https://aws.amazon.com/privacy/
Zero&One
Zero&One, Part of NTT Data, is a leading AI & Cloud Solutions Expert that leverages the innovative capabilities of the cloud to help customers build new revenue streams, increase efficiency, and deliver incredible experiences.
Privacy Policy: https://zeroandone.me/privacy-policy.html
Dynatrace
Dynatrace exists to make the world’s software work perfectly. Our unified software intelligence platform combines broad and deep observability and continuous runtime application security with the most advanced AIOps to provide answers and intelligent automation from data at enormous scale. This enables innovators to modernize and automate cloud operations, deliver software faster and more securely, and ensure flawless digital experiences. That is why the world’s largest organizations trust the Dynatrace® platform to accelerate digital transformation.
Curious to see how you can simplify your cloud and maximize the impact of your digital teams? Let us show you. Sign up for a free 15-day Dynatrace trial.
Redington | Huawei
Redington
Our increasingly digitised world, connected and surrounded by technology and innovation, has transformed the way we live and work. While this intersection between the digital and physical world has opened doors to limitless possibilities, it has also brought several challenges in its wake. The most significant challenge being Technology Friction – the gap between the rate of technological innovation and the speed of its adoption.
At Redington, we seek to eliminate this challenge by helping brands, channel partners and customers across emerging markets mitigate the barriers that delay technology adoption through a unique amalgam of technology, innovation and partnerships.
Privacy Policy: https://redingtongroup.com/privacy-policy/
Huawei
Founded in 1987, Huawei is a leading global provider of information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure and smart devices. We have approximately 195,000 employees and we operate in over 170 countries and regions, serving more than three billion people around the world.
Huawei’s mission is to bring digital to every person, home and organization for a fully connected, intelligent world. To this end, we will drive ubiquitous connectivity and promote equal access to networks to lay the foundation for the intelligent world; provide diversified computing power to deliver ubiquitous cloud and intelligence; build powerful digital platforms to help all industries and organizations become more agile, efficient, and dynamic; redefine user experience with AI, offering consumers a more personalized and intelligent experience across all scenarios, including home, travel, office, entertainment, and fitness & health.
Privacy Policy: https://www.huawei.com/en/privacy-policy
Alpha Data | HPE
HPE | Your essential partner for the AI era
We use the power of AI, cloud, and networking to help you move faster, work smarter, and achieve more. With deep expertise and bold ingenuity, we empower organizations to turn data into foresight, elevate performance, and drive real-world impact at scale www.hpe.com
Venue
Taj Exotica Resort, The Palm
Royal Ballroom
East Crescent, The Palm Jumeirah
Dubai, United Arab Emirates