Karachi – The First Annual CXO Verve Congress 2017 was held in Karachi, with a gathering of over 150 people from senior corporate technology management and business leaders from the vendor side.

This enterprise technology event was the first of its kind congress that discussed the changing roles of the CXO and how CIOs have to rise out of technology roles and into executive responsibilities.

The session that wrapped up promptly in three hours, gave a chance to “talk the talk” with key stakeholders, C-suite members, and executives in large-scale organizations. From what a CIO has to say, to the view a CISO has and where a CFO or COO stands, the event had something in store for everyone, including technology vendors.

The aim was to kick start the year with an event that actually assists in developing a stronger business foundation by the knowledge sharing made available to the ultimate holistic understanding of the business principles that drive enterprises.

In attendance were top CIOs, CISOs, CFOs and CXOs from cross industry verticals including FSI, Manufacturing, FMCG, Pharma and Textile. Along with this, technology vendors including Lenovo, Oracle, IBM, Cisco, Hitachi, and local players including RapidCompute, Trillium Information Security Systems, ArcPoint, PTCL, Wavetec attended the event.

Technology Sessions

In addition to two Case Files by those representing the ‘new-age’ designations in large corporations, Mr. Atyab Tahir (Head of Digital, HBL) and Mr. Faizan Laghari (Chief Disruption Officer, TCS), four back-to-back sessions of about 20 minutes each were carried out.

Moderated by Zaeem Arshad from Rapidcompute, the first to kick off was the CIO Tablet that included Yousuf Nasir (CIO HBFCL), Khawaja Tanveer (CIO Engro Corp) and the two case files speakers who joined in.

The next segment; CSO Tablet, was moderated by Mahir Mohsin Sheikh, CEO Trillium – where the conversation was led by Faiq Sadiq (Head of Internal Audit HBL), Hussein Hasanali Haji (CISO Bank Al Habib) and Syed Fahd Azam (CISO Meezan Bank).

The final session was a CXO Tablet, where a variety of industry verticals and C-suite members including those from finance, operations, administration and operations sat down to discuss the role of the C-suite and CXOs of the modern enterprise. Sohaib Irfan, Lenovo, moderated this session.

The closing note was delivered by senior thought leaders; Senior Vice Chairman P@SHA & CEO TPS Mr. Shahzad Shahid, Kashif ul Haque (CGM Cisco Pakistan), Asim Khusro (MD Oracle Pakistan) and Shariq Rehman (Software Head – IBM Pakistan), who spoke of the evolving, and very promising technology enterprise landscape for Pakistan.

The sessions also explored how organizations are managing digital disruption or what new designations that are quickly evolving and their roles to play, and ended with a networking dinner for all attendees.