Inaugural CXO DX Future Workspace Summit & Awards witnesses a fitting grand finale

An engaging Virtual Summit highlighted the defining  role of technology in enabling and securing the future of work,  followed by a physical awards ceremony applauding IT stalwarts

A spectacular Awards gala brought up a fitting grand finale to the inaugural Future Workspace Summit & Awards, held on the 28^th of July at the Mandarin Oriental in Jumeriah, Dubai. The event organized by Leap Media Solutions, publishers of CXO DX, the region’s leading content platform for the CXO community, was a hybrid format event with a virtual summit in the day followed by a physical Awards ceremony in the evening.

The virtual summit held via an engaging online platform through the course of the day and through several sessions of keynotes and panel discussions addressed the significant topic of the role of Technology in reimagining the future of work, at the office or from anywhere as the workforce becomes more distributed. The virtual 3d event Platform also featured exhibitor booths and several other features, enhancing the opportunities for interaction between attendees and speakers as well as exhibitors.

The Panel discussion ‘Workspace Transformation – Best Practices and Challenges’ looked at how workspace transformation is a long term change being accelerated by the unprecedented challenges since the initial days of the pandemic. The speakers of the discussion included Piyush Chowhan, CIO, Lulu Group; Alisagar Bohari, Senior Director IT, Zulekha Hospital; Umesh Moolchandani, Group IT Head, Bin Dasmal Group; Mubarik Hussain, Director of IT, Bloom Holding; Vaidy Panchabikesan, Regional Sales Director, Kissflow and Prem Anand, Regional Manager, MEA at Zoho Corporation.

The panel discussion on ‘Strategies for Multi-cloud Adoption’ highlighted how organizations are looking at leveraging the best of the cloud by cherry picking best cloud services from different cloud vendors and how they are implementing and consolidating their multi cloud infrastructure. The speakers of the session included  Dr. Nasser Almurqab, COO, University Of Dubai; Gigi Mathew Thomas, Group Head – IT & Digital Transformation, Ittihad International Investment LLC; Vinay Sharma, Group IT Director, Gulftainer; Jaleel Rahiman, Director – IT & PRIME Digital, PRIME Healthcare Group LLC and Amjad Boka, Systems Engineer at Pure Storage.

The panel discussion ‘Role of Edge Computing in disrupting Key Industries’ brought into focus how Edge Computing with its distributed computing topology helps eliminate some of the bottlenecks of cloud computing and also addressed various aspects of how edge computing will a potential game changer for many industries in extending their services. The speakers at this session included Tamer Hamed, Group CIO, Ducab; George Akhras, CIO, AMSI; Arun Tewary, Strategy Advisor and Director, Finesse; Claude Schuck, Regional Sales Director Middle East, Veeam and Saymaad Mansoor, Head of IT, Siddco

The 4^th and final panel discussed ‘Role of SASE, ZTNA and XDR in Redefining Security’ and the speakers at this session included Sultan Al-Owais, Director IT, Ministry of Cabinet Affairs; Dr.Lt.Col. Hamad Khalifa Al Nuaimi, Head of Telecommunications division, IT Center, Abu Dhabi Police General HQ; Dr. Mohammad Khaled, Safe Digital Though Leader  and Abhinav Guha, Senior Security Architect, Mindfire Technologies.

The keynote speakers were Ben McDonald, Middle East Marketing Lead, Dell Technologies; Ali Shabdar, Regional Director MEA, Zoho; Sameer Semaan, Channel Manager Middle East, Pure Storage; Claude Schuck, Regional Sales Director Middle East, Veeam; Vaidy Panchabikesan; Regional Sales Director, Kissflow; Ajay Nawani, Director Sales Engineering, MEA, Sophos; Abhinav Guha, Senior Security Architect, Mindfire Technologies; Rakesh Mathiselvan, Lead Solutions Engineer, Freshworks.

The Summit sponsors included Dell Technologies and Mindware as the Platinum sponsors. The event’s Gold sponsors included Pure Storage & VAD Technologies, Kissflow, Zoho, Sophos, Microsoft, Veeam, Redington, Mindfire Technologies as well as Freshworks. HCL, Knowlarity & Infoblox were the silver sponsors. D-Link was the Networking Partner, Finesse, the Awards partner and the Exhibition partners included Human Logic and Gamalearn.

Following the virtual summit, in the evening, awards were presented to stalwarts from the IT domain who are spearheading the IT initiatives of their respective organizations at the glittering ceremony.

Winners List: