NBAD bags top honours at ACN awards

The technology chief at National Bank of Abu Dhabi (NBAD) has won the coveted CIO of the Year award at the second annual ACN Arab Technology Awards on Monday night.

Srood Sherif was presented with the award during a ceremony at the Westin Hotel in Dubai in front of 300 members of the Middle East IT community.

The awards honoured the region’s finest vertical projects, vendors, individuals, integrators and service providers. In total, fourteen awards were presented.

Other big winners included Dubai Aluminium, who’s CIO Ahmed Al Mulla took home the award for Manufacturing & Construction Implementation of the Year for the second year in succession, and Saudi telecom Mobily, which secured Telecoms Implementation of the Year for its work in creating in-game advertising targeted at video game enthusiasts in Saudi Arabia.

PerformICT took the crown for Enterprise Integrator of the year, beating joint-runners-up ITQAN and EMW, while eHosting Datafort snagged Enterprise Service Provider of the Year.

One of the hardest-fought contests of the night was for Enterprise Vendor of the Year. The competition between the top two contenders, Sun Microsystems and SAP, was so fierce that it required two tie-breaks for the judges to eventually declare a result, which went in Sun’s favour.

"The ACN Arab Technology Awards were a great success and build on the two decades of IT publishing acumen behind ACN,” said Walid Akawi, CEO of ITP Publishing Group, organiser of the event.

“The very best projects and individuals were honoured, and the service providers and supplies of the year acknowledged. We are already looking forward to next year’s award."

The awards were judged by Mohammad Shah from Knowledge Economic City, Vineet Chhatwal from PA Consulting, Todd McGregor from Forrester Research and Mohammad Al Khatib, CIO of the Amman Stock Exchange and 2007 CIO of the Year.

The awards programme was sponsored by Etisalat, Dubai Internet City, HP, EMW, Hitachi, Leviton, Xerox, Avaya and Oracle Utilities.

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