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EDITOR ’ S NOTE
Greetings to the readers of Intelligent CIO Middle East . The regulation of crypto instruments has always been and continues to be a challenge for many countries in the world . Regulate too much and the country will fall behind in its ecosystem of startups and innovation . Regulate too little or without oversight and you have scams leading to bankruptcies .
The Kingdom of Bahrain , once the financial capital of the Gulf , has always been innovative and adopted forward looking regulations for its banking and finance industry . The Central Bank of Bahrain was one of the first regulators globally to issue regulations governing crypto activities .
And in March this year , Central Bank of Bahrain introduced amendments to the CRA Rules to introduce provision for digital tokens . The recognition of such tokens has the potential to spur innovation and efficiency in raising capital .
This is a major development as previously regulations in Bahrain only allowed activities with respect to payment or exchange tokens such as Bitcoin or Ethereum . With utilisation of blockchain and smart contracts as infrastructure for digital tokens , it presents several advantages over traditional securities .
Turn these pages to our case study section to access the snapshot of 10 + takeaways around Bahrain ’ s digital token announcement and the 3-page deep dive feature .
In our cover feature this month we present Saudi Arabian FOODICS that offers a cloud-based restaurant management platform and operates in other countries including UAE , Egypt , Jordan , and Kuwait . It has opted for Darwinbox ’ s human resource management to manage its employees and local labour regulations embracing the upcoming field of people analytics . Turn these pages for more on the implementation and its benefits .
In our well-thumbed Editor ’ s Question section , industry executives from ManageEngine , HP , Cloud Box , NetApp , Liferay , share their suggestions on how CIOs need to relook at their annual and quarterly spending plans across hardware , software , security , cloud , and IT operations .
All of this and our range of thought leadership blogs , news , and trends in the pages ahead . Happy reading .
Arun Shankar Managing Editor arun @ lynchpinmedia . com
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