Cisco Plus Canada – one of Canada’s leading IT and thought leadership conferences – will be hosted on Wednesday May 16th in Toronto’s Congress Centre. The event is designed for end-user customers and Cisco partners (Value-added Resellers, System Integrators…) to explore the synergies between business strategy and technology. This year, we have carved out some time to co-host a series of industry break-out sessions for C-Suite business decision makers, to make the conversation even more strategic and business relevant.
Gartner (2012) predicts that “by 2015, 35% of IT expenditures will be managed outside IT department’s budgets”. This means that IT is increasingly recognized for the impact it can have on addressing real business issues, as opposed to being merely a cost centre and resource for necessary tools and software applications. As companies are looking for strategic ways to stay ahead, take on competition, and innovate products and services, IT will become increasingly part of the business decision making process (moving out of the Server Room and into the Board Room)—as it should be.
With this shift in mind, IDC shows that end-user customers “complain about their technology vendors in relation to their vertical or industry strategy”. Vendors and suppliers lack the industry expertise, a true understanding of the business needs, and don’t have specific industry solutions.
Cisco is moving from the Server Room to the Board Room. We’re embracing business value for industry transformation and are building industry teams, with deep vertical industry expertise, and matching industry solutions and value-added industry relationships.
The Cisco Plus Canada industry break-out sessions (by invitation only) will gather senior business decision makers in the Education, Healthcare, Energy, Real Estate/Communities, and Financial Services sectors for moderated discussions on trends of change, innovation, and productivity. Each of the parallel session are hosted by one of Cisco’s foremost thought leaders and experts in the respective industries, and moderated by our Canadian Industry business development leaders.
Exclusive executive participation will allow for intimate and open conversations about the real issues that matter most to the representative companies and industries. Though innovation can be found at all levels within these companies and industries; the mandate for it has to be propagated by its executive leadership.
Sustainable and lasting change starts at the top: and the conversation starts … at Cisco Plus Canada.
If you are attending Cisco Plus Canada, be sure to register for the Business Session “Managing Unprecedented Change with Business Transformation” by Sandy Hogan (Cisco Vice President of Americas Business Transformation) on Wednesday, May 16th at 11am EST.
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