Strategic ICT Partner
Technology Partners
60 Mins Show dates: 14-18 October 2012, Dubai World Trade Centre
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| AT GITEX TECHNOLOGY WEEK | Exhibition hours: 11am -7pm
IBM makes social media push Enterprises in the Middle East need to realise that social media can be as influential to their business as it was to the Arab Spring, according to Christopher Crummey, Executive Director of Global Sales, IBM Social Business and Web Experience. Crummey pointed to the Arab Spring as a key example of the sheer power of social media and said those tools can also be powerful to an organisation. “Corporations are starting to realise that one of the powers of social media in a personal sense also applies to business - and that’s speed. The reason why the social media was so influential in the Arab Spring was speed, so why wouldn’t you utilise that same tool for business?” Crummey said. IBM possesses the number one social product, its worldwide IBM Connections platform, according to IDC, and it is the biggest champion of the power of social in enterprise. “Organisations can bring a product to market 20% faster when implementing social business. It’s the flow of information across conventional barriers that allow that to happen. It’s a different way of working and it’s far more productive,” Cremmey said.
14 -16 MAY 2013, QATAR
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“Our platform gives an organisation a social platform and the key is this is a major factor in attracting young talent. We call it the Sunday to Monday experience – where you’re at home on Sunday night checking you social media and you want the same experience on Monday morning when you come into work. So it’s a way to maintain and attract really good talent, as part of that strategy.” Whilst social business may not be directly noted to on CIOs’ lists of priorities, it definitely links in with other significant focuses, according to Cremmey. “We’ve seen that social is on the
list of CIO priorities, but what flushes out is other things like innovation. So you may not see social business on a CIO’s list of priorities but there are aspects like innovation where it links heavily in. “Social business is all about taking social media and applying it to both externally and internally. So it’s not just LinkedIn and Facebook, but it’s how do organisations actually behave differently on the inside. They can do micro blogging securely on the inside and they reduce their email usage. It’s applying the success of social media, but to 4 CONTINUED ON PAGE 3