As many of you know, HCLSoftware annually attends the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Davos is well known as a ski resort and the home of the World Economic Forum, which is known simply as WEF. The conference is attended by 3000 people, including the world’s investors, business leaders, political leaders, and economists.
As an exhibitor, HCL aims to foster meaningful dialogue to help shape the global technology landscape that align with the issues identified for each year’s conference. This year’s conference theme was “Collaboration for the Intelligent Age.” Being at WEF reinforces KK and Rajiv’s belief in the power of “AI and Tech in this era of the Intelligent Age.” It highlights the critical role HCLSoftware can play in shaping that future. If you are interested, here’s an excellent summary, the "Five Takeaways from the 2025 World Economic Forum.” Outside of the conference, the exhibitors are the “whos who” of consulting services, trade delegations from countries such as Saudi Arabia and ISVs from IBM to Meta to Google. Exhibit space includes converted shops, hotels, and even a church, up and down Davos’ Promenade and the main high street through the centre of Davos.
Alongside the media reporting about WEF, HCL held discussion panels with thought leaders from business, technology, education, and government on various topics related to AI, tech, and the intelligent age. Here’s my favourite panel led by Ray Wang (on the left) from Constellation Research, who knows HCLSW well.
We were honoured to have visitors ranging from heads of financial institutions, NGOs, CEOs of banks, government ministers, and more in our exhibition space. One of the interesting discussions in other HCL panels was overcoming the “Digital Divide”, i.e., the increasing inequity of access to digital services, available skills and literacy of the population. Something through Government partnerships, HCLSW is well positioned to help solve.
Next, I travelled to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, for the HCL Executive Summit. It is the second in the series and the first outside of India. Francois Nasser, our Middle East and Africa (MEA) sales leader, opened the event to announce HCLSoftware’s investment in Saudi Arabia to major customers, partners, and new potential customers. Plus, it was the venue to announce HCL Total Experience, led by Richard Jefts, our EVP and GM, and Christian Barnes, our head of Technical Advocacy, to the Saudia Arabian market.
Aligned with the Saudi Government’s Vision for 2030 for developing non-oil-related industries and improving healthcare services, education, recreation, and public services through digitisation, working with HCL is an excellent fit. After KK and Rajiv spoke, we were honoured to hear from a three-woman panel led by Dr Basma S. AlBuhairen, managing director of the Saudi Arabia Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, about how women in their country are fostering the technical innovation economy.
Incidentally, Saudi Arabia will host the 2034 FIFA World Cup, hopefully driving demand for new and existing solutions built on HCLSW’s Govtech stack, namely HCL TX. They are the second Arabian Peninsula country to do so. Lastly, I found everyone I met very welcoming and gracious.
My final visit on the Govtech journey was to one of our TX customers, the Ministry of Interior (MOI), in Qatar. Over the years, this agency in Doha has separately invested in HCL DX and HCL Volt MX to deliver over 200 digital services to citizens, residents and visitors via web and mobile channels.
For example, their mobile app is used by over 8 million people annually and was featured in the news when the app was refreshed recently. As they upgrade their DX deployment in the coming months, the IT leadership were excited about our TX vision that brings DX, Leap and MX together, especially how it could reduce their IT complexity, enable them to tap into new skills, and build once and deploy everywhere. For MX v10, which is coming soon, our investments in AI and design-led integration with Figma were two hot buttons for keeping their investment in HCL current and forward-looking.
Travel is always a privilege; however, it was great to hear the excitement for the HCL Digital Solutions portfolio, reinforcing our confidence in our TX roadmap plans. Plus, we have enormous opportunities to win in Govtech, including TX and Sovereign Collaboration worldwide.
Andrew Manby
VP Product Management