Khaleej Times concludes a successful edition of ‘Banking Transformed’ in association with Riverbed

Khaleej Times, in association with Riverbed Technology, an organization that enables enterprises in a range of industries including financial services, to maximize performance and visibility for networks and applications, concluded another successful edition of its virtual webinar series focused on the Banking Sector of Kuwait and Qatar on Tuesday, 15th June.

As critical service providers that cater to an increasingly digital-native consumer base, Banks are under immense pressure to constantly adapt their digital transformation strategies. While the sector has always been at the leading edge of the digital maturity curve, new and ever evolving requirements continue to push CIOs and their IT teams to embrace more rapidly deployable, efficient cloud solutions that can support growth and innovation initiatives. The rise of customer-led computing has translated to both customers and employees now expecting the same level of performance and intuitiveness from their banking services as they have become accustomed to with other consumer-centric apps.

To deliver such experiences, CIOs and their IT teams have a clear mission: transform processes, data centres, departments, and even entire businesses paradigms through the use of technology. The role of the modern CIO has evolved into a position that prioritises innovation, rather than just managing IT. There is an expectation that they stay abreast of new and emerging technologies, and select the best solutions for the good of the company.

As a platform to expertly explore and address these pressures, this high profile webinar drew the participation of top banking leaders from Kuwait & Qatar: Burgan Bank, Qatar Development Bank, Ahli United Bank, Boubyan Bank, Al Khalij Commercial Bank (al khaliji), Doha Bank, Qatar Islamic Bank, Qatar International Islamic Bank, Al Ahli Bank of Kuwait, Industrial Bank of Kuwait, Al Masraf, and National Bank of Kuwait. Over the course of the hour-long discussion, these attendees discussed their experience and understanding of rapid transformation, barriers to its adoption such as data security, best practices on aligning stakeholders with investments in operations efficiency and resiliency, as well as the effective utilisation of allocated budgets.

A highlight of the event was the presentation by Frederick Yanos, Senior Network Infrastructure Administrator, at Ahli United Bank detailed how his organization is utilising Riverbed’s NPM solution to advance the IT team’s performance monitoring capabilities thereby improving the Mean time to resolution (MTTR), enhancing application and network performance, and their security posture. This has consequently elevated the user experience for the bank’s critical digital services.

Speaking about the way forward for the Banking Industry, Salman Ali, Technical Manager at Riverbed Technology, said, “Banks today must digitize and modernize to help employees adjust to new ways of working, while simplifying and accelerating the customer journey. As they roll out new digital and mobile financial services, shortening deployment and troubleshooting windows; protecting against new and evolving threats; and constantly delivering an exceptional customer experience will become their top IT priorities. To achieve these, CIOs and their IT teams need to invest in full-fidelity visibility that can provide them with insight in all aspects of application and network performance.”

Riverbed delivered a comprehensive agenda highlighting many useful business cases that address the pain points and priorities of the modern Banking CIO.

To be a part of KT Connect Programs, please contact events@khaleejtimes.com.