EMC announced on Wednesday the successful launch of the flagship EMC Forum and Exhibition in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The one day technology conference, hosted at the Hilton Hotel aimed at helping IT departments leverage the powers of third platform technologies, cloud, mobile, social and big data, to drive new cost efficiencies, agility and performance.

The EMC Forum held under the theme “Redefine Next” brought together an audience of nearly 500 senior IT decision makers and professionals to highlight the strategic role of IT departments to help organizations effectively meet the demands of an ever competitive and changing business environment.

Following a series of three successful editions of the event in Riyadh, the event now comes to Jeddah as the Kingdom’s government continues to focus on enhancing economic diversification through key investments.

The EMC Forum and Exhibition in Jeddah was opened with a keynote by Brian Gallagher, president, Cloud Management Division at EMC on the benefits that organizations can avail from the effective deployment of a hybrid cloud model to broker services from private and public clouds, enabling visibility and control over the best location to run business applications.

Mohammed Amin, senior vice president, Turkey, Eastern Europe, Africa and Middle East, at EMC, said: “The combined forces of cloud, social, mobile and big data have led to the emergence of what we like to call the ‘Information Generation’. These digital citizens are always connected and engaged online, and have the world’s information at their fingertips through their smartphones and other Internet enabled devices.

Mohammed Talaat, vice president, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and Libya, at EMC, said: “IT organizations are tasked with striking the perfect balance between innovation and cost efficiency. We are proud to bring our flagship EMC Forum and Exhibition to Jeddah, to be closer to our customers and extend them the technologies, tools and learning resources required to ensure readiness to transition to the third platform of IT to drive competitive differentiation, enhance customer retention and boost business growth.”