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6. GITEX Global 2025 (Dubai) | October 5-9, 2025 GITEX Global is renowned as one of the largest and most influential technology exhibitions in the world. In 2025, the event will once again showcase a wide range of emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and blockchain. It will feature exhibitions, conferences, and workshops where tech leaders can explore the latest innovations and trends that are transforming industries across the globe. With global participation, GITEX Global is an essential meeting point for those shaping the future of technology. 7. The UAE Innovation Summit 2025 (Sharjah) | November 2-4, 2025 Sharjah will host the UAE Innovation Summit in 2025, focusing on the region’s innovation ecosystem and its role in driving economic and technological growth. The summit will highlight the latest trends in sustainability, startup culture, and cutting-edge technologies, with a particular focus on how innovation is transforming industries like healthcare, education, and manufacturing. The event will provide a platform for startups, investors, and tech leaders to collaborate and explore new opportunities for growth and development. In conclusion, the UAE is emerging as a leading force in the global tech landscape, with 2025 set to offer an exciting array of events that will showcase the latest innovations in artificial intelligence, blockchain, digital transformation, and more. These events provide tech leaders with the opportunity to explore the future of technology, network with industry peers, and gain insights into the trends and challenges shaping the tech ecosystem. For anyone looking to stay at the forefront of technological advancement, the UAE in 2025 will be the place to be. source

Change and transformation. Everyone talks about it and knows how necessary it is to adapt quickly to permanently changing conditions. And yet change is difficult. This is shown by examples such as the Mann-Gulch disaster, in which experienced firefighters died because they were unable to discard what they had learned and spontaneously change their behavior. We also saw this in the COVID-19 pandemic, and at the same time we learned that change is possible if it is perceived as necessary. The following article provides an overview of the most important change management methods and models.  What is change management?  Change management encompasses “all tasks, measures and activities that are intended to bring about a comprehensive, cross-departmental and far-reaching change in an organization — to implement new strategies, structures, systems, processes or behaviors.” But what exactly does change management address? Change has become an integral part of everyday business life: changing market conditions, increased customer demands and technical progress require new structures and better processes. The human factor plays the central role – even in digitalization. The economist Peter Drucker stated more than 50 years ago: “We are becoming aware that the major questions regarding technology are not technical but human questions.”  And it is precisely this human factor that change management addresses. As humans, we find change difficult. Our brain is programmed for survival. It wants to ward off danger and is always looking for reward. However, danger prevention plays the more dominant role. It is additionally activated in the case of changes that cannot be foreseen in their effect: analytical thinking is suppressed, making change difficult. Change management methods ensure that changes can still be implemented because they guide you through the change process stringently and effectively, defining fields of action and individual tasks.  source

“The idea for this germinated when we learned a group of credit unions approached their core vendor asking for them to add 100 different small and large features so they could better compete with other players in the market and provide niche services,” says Pradhan. “The core vendor’s response was it would take up to 50 years to do this. We wanted to speed up the innovation cycle for our members, and also provide services to them at a cheaper rate by making connections seamless.” So not only does the data orchestration hub reduce operating costs and streamline onboarding for Corporate One members, it also boosts customer satisfaction because their money moves faster. But onboarding members in itself was a major challenge. In their first year of the orchestration hub, only one member went along with it. “We were extremely thankful for the first credit union that trusted us and came along on this journey with us because it was something so new,” he says. But this journey wasn’t without its hurdles. This first credit union was fairly large, which means they handle a lot of transactions every day.  “When we first turned the data orchestration hub on, the volume of transactions was high, as were rejection rates for these transactions,” he adds. “So we had to turn it off immediately and figure out what was happening.” What they discovered was the credit union’s core wasn’t fast enough, which meant that the transactions were timing out. “So, we had to take a break, fix the core, and then try again,” he says. “When we originally tested it, we didn’t have this scale of transactions. So when we went live, the core wasn’t ready.” So every day throughout this process was a learning experience. Once they ironed out these issues, though, Corporate One spent about a year going around the US, talking to members and educating them about what they were doing. Within six months, up to 40 members were onboarded, and today, Corporate One has over 60 members on the orchestration hub. source

This year we’ve seen AI move from pilots into production use cases. In 2025, they’ll expand into fully-scaled, enterprise-wide deployments. source

Previously known as Common Data Services, Dataverse’s Power Pages, Power Portals, Power Apps, Power Automate, and Virtual Agents are all part of the Special Olympics’ program delivery solution, enabling the grassroots program staff to focus on important priorities such as getting out on the field, Cook says, adding that Microsoft has been a very generous benefactor to the organization’s digital transformation. Deploying services to the cloud will enable the organization’s participants and staff to “play more” and spend less time on paperwork, Cook says. “The more we can move that process out to the cloud, enable the end users to own and be empowered to manage themselves and their own data, the more we can reduce the amount of time and effort on our programs and get more people out onto the field and playing.” The multifaceted benefits of the cloud will better “respect the time” of all members of the Special Olympics community, including athletes, volunteers, coaches, administrators, donors, and fundraisers, the CTIO says. A well-designed CRM that participants can use to register and store their data once and not be asked to repeat for every event is a big win, he adds. source

“This can be developed through certifications like those that CompTIA or AWS [Amazon Web Services] provide,” he says. While previously many technology jobs demanded formal certifications, especially in industries such as cybersecurity and networking, today’s high demand for technology talent means many employers have become more lenient in their education requirements, he says. “Now, those hiring for tech talent are more willing to forgo their degree and certification requirements if candidates can demonstrate they have the necessary skills and experience to do the job,” Farnsworth says. “Candidates can showcase these by highlighting their previous relevant roles and projects, freelance work, skills and/or knowledge of specific tools or programs the role requires, or testimonials from their former employers or connections.” Larsen recommends obtaining and staying up to date on relevant certifications, such as those related to the major cloud providers. It’s a good idea to be familiar with common tools such as Git, Kubernetes, and Terraform, as well as Agile practices, she says. But ultimately, success in IT is about having the skills and the ability to perform the work, not necessarily having a particular formal education in IT, she says. source

Another realization enterprises had is just how important data is to AI initiatives, especially those composing their AI services.  Organizations are finding they have outdated data or incomplete data sets. Companies tend to invest heavily in the data plane — where data is stored, organized and managed. Now, they need to invest in data engineering to prepare data for grounding and fine-tuning their AI models.  Predictions around future growth and concerns for AI  There is a lot at stake for organizations. AI will reshape enterprises and industries. Within the enterprise, AI will act as an assistant, advisor, agent or all three, changing business processes, applications and daily work tasks. Industries will innovate, engage customers and deliver value in fundamentally new ways. But without a vision and enterprise AI strategy, backed with a use case roadmap and strong business cases, this cannot be recognized. We expect some organizations will make the AI pivot in 2025 out of the experimentation phase. In doing so, they will begin recognizing the exponential benefits of their collective AI use cases starting in 2027. For those organizations that do not pivot in 2025, their experimentation phase will slip into 2026 as they fall behind their competitors. The difference between these two paths will be significant, impacting productivity gains, speed of innovation, customer relationships and financials. It’s crucial to keep moving forward on this journey.  The good news for CIOs is that you have an opportunity to take a leadership role with AI, especially as organizations mitigate risk by keeping AI model development centralized. Don’t forget to consider the support employees will need to adopt AI and develop a change management plan to bring everyone along.  source

The workplace is disengaged and drowning in distraction. AI is the answer, not the threat. Learn how to flow with AI to unlock human potential and dominate the future of work. source

Earlier in the week, American Airlines was forced to ground flights for up to an hour on Christmas Eve, one of the busiest travel days of the year. American asked US Federal Aviation Administration to issue a “nationwide groundstop” at 6:50 am Eastern Time on Tuesday, preventing any of its aircraft from flying. The advisory was lifted an hour later. Vendor technology issue The airline blamed the problems on a “vendor technology issue” in a message sent from its official X/Twitter account. The issue was in networking equipment managed by DXC Technologies, according to an American Airlines statement cited by several news outlets. Neither DXC nor American immediately responded to our requests for comment. American has been working with DXC to modernize mainframe systems using a devops approach, according to a blog post by its in-house technology team. In a separate modernization initiative, it also transformed its analytics tools, so it should be well placed to evaluate the consequences of Tuesday morning’s outage. source