Riyadh –King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) recently revealed that Saudi investments in Information Technology reached $29.6 billion in 2014, which is more than what member states of GCC spend all together.

According to the CEO of KACST, Anas Fares IT investments are expected to increase in the years 2016 and 2017.

He revealed that cost of IT investments in 2014 reached SR111 billion. He added that the total amount of IT investments in Saudi Arabia exceeds what the other five GCC countries spend in total in this field.

Fares reiterated that Saudi Arabia considers investing in IT vital due to the importance of this sector.

Fares spoke on the occasion of the 4th Saudi International Conference on Information Technology: “Big Data Analysis”, held in KACST headquarters in Riyadh between 6-9 November.

This four-day intensive event is an opportunity for big-data practitioners and academics to present the latest research and innovations in the compilation and use of big data sets. It provides an opportunity to gain an inter- and multi-disciplinary perspective on the research and development of big data.

Fares added that KACSTIT 2016 conference focuses on big data related issues, including capture, storage, transmission, visualization and analysis. The conference submissions and talks will cover three main streams: big-data processing, big-data analytics, and big-data applications.

He added that KACST established many important facilities including the Saudi supercomputer “SANAM” which ranked second in the worldwide list of the most energy-efficient computers. He stated that KACST will develop SANAM furthermore for increased capacity and better performance.

Head of scientific committee at the conference, Fares al-Qunaieer said that data is important for all fields including economics, politics, and military. He stated that giant corporations of capital estimated to be of billions of dollars depend in its primary work on data collection and data analysis.

Qunaieer said that the tremendous development in IT contributed to better and faster data collection.

According to Qunaieer, data processing is important in many fields including energy, transportation, health, security, social media, and many others.