CIO2CIO Interviews
Gautam Sinha - Sharjah Islamic Bank
Mr Sinha started his career in 1984-85 at a leading private sector bank in India where he worked in various departments (Retail, Corporate, Finance, Treasury, and Trade Finance) before ultimately settling down in IT then he gradually moving up the ladder until he was assigned as head of IT at a newly formed subsidiary of the bank. Later on Gautam joined a software development company (Banking & Finance) where he held several Key management positions before moving to Misys Banking Systems, the leading banking software company where he worked for about 14 years in various positions and oversaw the deployment of Misys banking solutions in many banks around the world including Sharjah Islamic Bank.
In 2008 Mr Sinha joined Sharjah Islamic Bank and in 2010 he was promoted to the CIO position.
Saji started his career in India working for a cybernetics research company for about three years. Then he joined AGMC (the BMW distributor in the UAE and a member of Al Batha Group) as an IT Manager in 1988. . Between 1988 and 1991 Saji worked with his small IT team to modernize and streamline the IT systems at AGMC. In 1991 he was asked to move to the group head office to establish an enterprise wide IT department spanning the group’s 28 different companies. His primary task was to put all the group companies on one consolidated IT platform. Saji started building his team, deployed a group wide network infrastructure and focused on automating those group companies that were not already automated. In 1998 Al Batha Group made a decision to adopt SAP ERP as its information backbone. The implementation commenced immediately, and the project was completed successfully in 1999. 
Mr Bastaki started his career with Dubai Petroleum Company (DPC) 28 years ago in the geology department, later on he relocated to the United States where he was studying and working for Conoco (which was then the mother company of DPC). He lead a project for Conoco/DPC to standardize documentation and data elements. After the completion of this project Abdulsalam joined the IT department at DPC back in Dubai as a full time database administrator, then he joined the SAP project team as a Basis specialist when the SAP implementation started at DPC. In 1999 Abdulsalam moved to Dubai Aluminum (Dubal) as a DBA and became part of the Oracle Financials implementation team. Later on he was promoted to head IT security and subsequently to IT services manager at Dubal.
A fresh computer engineering graduate of the University of Arizona Ahmad joined Dubai Aluminum in 1988 as an RPG programmer on IBM System 38. Then he moved to the process computing department as a systems engineer developing in Fortran and designing control systems that interface with the aluminum smelter. In 1997 Ahmad became responsible for IT services including user support, infrastructure, security and quality assurance. In 2001 Mr Al Mulla was promoted to IT Manager reporting to the general manager of corporate services. Between 2003 and 2005 Ahmad left IT to manage Dubal’s procurement and supply before moving back to IT as the company’s CIO and later on VP of IT and a member of the company’s executive committee. He is managing some 85 people in the IT department. 
“I’m one of those who sort of accidentally found themselves in the profession that they’re in”. Ramersh always wanted to be a doctor but after securing his degree in biology he didn’t manage to get a place in the particular medical school that he wanted, so he changed direction and did an MBA in the USA. Following that he worked for a year at manufacturing company in the US and then returned home to India where he joined a consultancy firm – Datamatics Consultants who sent him to Dubai Duty Free as an external consultant to help them set up their IT infrastructure. At that time Dubai Duty Free did not have any IT infrastructure the company was about 4 years old and was lead by Mr McLoughlin who is still the Managing Director till today.
Alok is a qualified chartered accountant who started with Ballarpur Industries while they were selecting their ERP package. In 2000 he accepted an offer from Satyam and later on moved to Wipro. Four years later he joined Emaar the Dubai-based property development giant just after they went live on Oracle E-Business Suite. At Emaar Alok took a special interest in the IT side of the real estate business which paved the way for him to join Oracle Consulting and work on the massive ERP implementation project at Dubai World. In 2006 Alok had the opportunity to join Emaar again after gaining the experience of ERP implementation working on the vendor’s side. At Emaar Alok worked on many exciting projects including Dubai Mall which is said to be the largest shopping mall in the world. 
From India to Canada and from Saudi Arabia to the United Arab Emirates, Thameem who started his IT career in 1994 worked in education, training and consulting. In 2002 as Thameem was finishing a consulting assignment for Kamal Osman Jamjoom Group in Saudi Arabia, he was asked to join the company to head its IT department; later on he relocated to Dubai as the group expanded its business into the UAE.
Always cool and in control, Jawad started in 1983 as a programmer at Juma Al Majid Group until 1985 when he moved to a European software house. In 1988 Jawad joined Emarat (then known as Emirates General Petroleum Company – EGPC) as a systems analyst and later on he was promoted to a project manager and was heavily involved in the first implementation of Oracle Financials in the Middle East.More Articles ...
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