Bahrain Mumtalakat Holding Company held its first chief information officer (CIO) forum for its portfolio companies to discuss the future role of the CIOs.

The forum brought together the CIOs responsible for the IT strategies and platforms for Mumtalakat's portfolio companies, such as Gulf Air, Alba, Batelco, NBB and McLaren, as well as contributors from some of the world's leading IT companies, including Cisco, Microsoft and Oracle.

The role of the CIO has become increasingly significant as today's businesses seek to use IT as a strategic business tool to deliver better services to customers at lower cost, whilst reducing the growing complexities of doing business in a knowledge-driven, global economy.

Speakers at the forum not only examined the role of the CIO in their own business, but, also discussing industry themes such as the challenges facing organisations moving to increasingly customer centric strategies.

As the owner of 35 companies based in Bahrain, Mumtalakat intends to create specialist working forums for key service areas such as IT.

The forum was Mumtalakat's first step towards the creation of shared service platforms for its portfolio companies.

"As the active shareholder of 35 companies in Bahrain, we are keen to create cost synergies and efficiencies across our portfolio as much as we can," said Mumtalakat chief executive Talal Alzain.

"The CIO Forum was the first step in getting the leading IT experts from across our portfolio together to start to discuss and think about how they can help Mumtalakat's strategy of creating value for Bahrain,"he added.-TradeArabia News Service