More than 200 experts, IT managers and technology leaders gathered this year to the National Conference of IT Managers from Romania to discuss a new vision of the business world in the Digital Age, whose main pillars are Cloud services, new technologies, productivity, mobility, and data analysis.  

Organised by CIO Council Romania and Cariere magazine on 30 March, at Radisson Blu Hotel Bucharest, the CIO Council National Conference 2017 was moderated by Yugo Neumorni – President CIO Council Romania and IT Director Hidroelectrica, Carmen Adamescu – Partner, Head of IT Advisory Services at EY Romania and Gianrodolfo Tonielli – Managing Director at Accenture Technology Services in CEE. Great topics contributed to the fifth edition of the conference success, driving the main conference sessions and discussion panels like “Digital Transformation: from technical to business strategies and mindsets Capabilities”, “Cybersecurity. Open SI vs. Secure IT. The Dark Side of the Cloud” or  “Innovation is the sole future of business “.

A digital economy is based first of all on a smart society, focused on people, where business and social revolutions are more than relevant. The everyday impact of technology on people’s lives is not only related to the level of experience. Is related to everyone change. “Digitisation is not a phenomenon of which we speak in the future tense. It is here and comes with unprecedented challenges for CIOs in companies. We are in the digital age, in the era of robots and artificial intelligence, and in the cognitive era,” said Yugo Neumorni, President CIO Council Romania in the Conference opening speech. „Companies, businesses and the whole society turn in a manner difficult to predict in a few years ago. CIOs must be the right hand of executives and should be included on the boards of companies as their role is decisive, both for remodelling business and for prevention and protection against cyber-attacks.”

Every IT professional is interested today in megatrends that dominate business climate. “We must think how to prepare and how to help our customers, looking not only at our industry but also what others do”, said Emin Alper Karacar, Partner at Advisory Services EY Central & Southeast Europe in the first keynote speech from the Conference. Looking to the main IT trends, Marius Antonie – Technology Consulting Manager to Accenture, said “Technology must adapt to our needs, not vice versa. There must be a partnership between us and technology, we must make technology to work for us “. The statement was supported by a robot live demonstration with a machine ready to understand and to execute human commands and to assign a task to other intelligent devices. You can watch the robot demo below.

Looking to the human position in this relationship with intelligent technologies, we have to recognise that disruptive technology put great pressure on people’s position from the current job market. “Surprise, people are the most important. We recognise that technology shapes the world, but the key is still represented by people, what matters most is the man “, highlights Corina Gonteanu Strategic Marketing Director of ManpowerGroup Europe. Cristian Paţachia-Sultanoiu, Development & Innovation Manager at Orange Romania presented the company’s vision on new innovations, with a comprehensive review of the Alba Iulia smart city project, the first big smart city project in Romania, based on public Wi-Fi hotspots with secure Internet access in public areas, public transport smart solution, media and communication platforms and reporting municipality system based on LoRa WAN infrastructure with communicating devices connected to the Internet and public lighting management solutions.

In the security and safety for the digital environment panel Catalina Dodu, Country Manager at Atos IT Solutions and Services Romania pointed out some essential things. “When it comes to cybersecurity, there are two types to organisational: those who have been attacked and those that don’t know they have been attacked. Hacking is no longer the work of a bored teenager; it has become an economy supported by companies and in some cases, state actors,” warned Catalina Dodu.

The third session of the conference entitled “Innovation Is the Sole Future of Business” was opened by Bogdan Tudor, Vice President CIO Council Romania, CEO of Startech Team, who explained the concept of “Digital Transformation Company for Exponential Growth”. “It’s the best time to work in IT because you are connected to huge opportunities opened by the changes brought by technology. We must take advantage of a world in constant change. Every revolution is a great opportunity … for those who are prepared to take advantage of it,” said Bogdan Tudor.

Dragoş Dincă, IT Director at the Romanian Post tried to offer an answer to sensitive questions: “Will Robots destroy jobs?” “Is Romania ready for such a revolution?” Dragos Dincă believes that will create jobs, but that “we must build a trusted environment, both at the country level and organisational level. In addition, it can provide alternative jobs for those who might lose jobs as a result of automation, using retraining programs.”

Finally, Cristian Cucu, CIO at Romanian Government CIO Office said that the overall situation is delicate and we must look to the CIO from a perspective of Business Intelligence. “CIO’s need to be on the board of management to solve problems and to point out some other things really is a gap, but we must take advantage of the huge accelerator technology.”