18/07-05   -   Pressmeddelande

Media invitation: The 15th annual European IT forum 2005

This year´s IDC European IT Forum, to be held in Paris on September 26 and 27, will focus on the strategic role of ICT and the management of technologies supporting business strategies.

Under the banner The Business-Oriented IT Agenda: IT Innovation and Business Transformation, the event offers CEOs, CIOs, and senior executives from leading European companies a unique opportunity to discuss IT innovation issues with top-level IDC analysts and the industry´s key IT and business experts. The forum will look at the future of the European and worldwide economies, with a particular focus on comparisons between the evolution of the U.S. and European markets.

Keynote speakers at the forum include:

- Thierry Breton, minister of economy, finance, and industry, French government.
- Nicholas Negroponte, founder and director of the Media Laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
- Jeremy Rifkin, president of the Foundation on Economic Trends and author of 17 books on the impact of scientific and technological change on the economy, the workforce, society, and the environment.
- Lester Thurow, professor of management and economics, Sloan School of Management, MIT.
- Peter Weill, director of the Center for Information Systems Research, Sloan School of Management, MIT, and one of the leading experts on the role of IT governance in enterprises.
- Luc Soete, director of the United Nations University Institute for New Technologies (UNU-INTECH) and the Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
- John Gantz, chief research officer and IDC senior vice president.
- Frank Gens, IDC senior vice president, research.

Top management from the following sponsor companies will also attend the event: Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, SAP, Sun Microsystems, Cognos, Ericsson, Symantec, Foundry Networks, Novell, Secuware, and Xerox.

The forum will be held at Le Meridien Montparnasse, 19 Rue du Commandant Mouchotte, 75014 Paris.

To confirm attendance and arrange interviews with keynote speakers, please contact:

Francesca Saronni or Roberta Lo Leggio at Burson-Marsteller
francesca_saronni@it.bm.com, roberta_loleggio@it.bm.com
Tel. +39 02 721431