IT departments used to be responsible for reducing, controlling and managing costs, as well as ensuring its organization's critical information was secure. But with the IT industry constantly evolving, cloud and mobile technologies are forcing most organizations to modernize and integrate their core business applications with new standards which enhance the end user's experience. As all Saudi public services aim to move online, citizens will expect no delays or difficulties accessing these services. The public sector therefore has the responsibility to serve its citizens, and so this requires business managers to undertake a regular company assets assessment in order to make any necessary improvements. Even in their development phase, all applications should be tested during each specific development step. This testing and analysis of steps allows the application's performances and functionalities to be improved. One company providing innovative software allowing companies to develop, test, assess and modernize business-critical enterprise applications is Micro Focus. The UK company, which has 34 offices in 20 different countries, is bringing its 37 years of experience to Saudi Arabia at the 4th Annual Kingdom e-Government Summit as a gold sponsor. They have managed to achieve a 65 percent cost reduction and improvement in service levels for clients by re-hosting via a more cost-effective UNIX platform. Pierdomenico Iannarelli, Micro Focus Regional Manager I&GME, noted: “In order to ensure the highest quality of enterprise applications in terms of development and business driver's requirements, functional and performance testing are the worldwide way of how enterprise applications can be supported and integrated cross-market.” The summit is hosted by French deal facilitation group naseba and supported by Yesser, the Kingdom's e-government program. Eng Ali Bin Soma, Director General of the program will be opening the summit. Experts speakers include Eng Ayman Aboabah, Deputy Director General – Human Resource Development Fund, Dr Khaled Al Ajmi, General Manager of Safeer Program - Ministry of Higher Education, and Dr Tomasz Janowski, Founding Director of Centre of e-Governance – United Nations University. – SG
