Want to hear a dozen of the world's top CIOs discuss global strategies, top priorities, and board-level issues? Join us online this Wednesday, July 29, for the Global CIO Summit virtual event for a day-long program that lets you attend the panel discussions, ask questions, meet and network with peers. Click ahead to register and for more info on speakers and the agenda.You can register here and also get full information on the agenda, speakers, and our easy-to-use virtual-event format.

Called "The Global CIO Summit: Driving Business Value and Customer Value in the Global Economy," this day-long online-only virtual event will offer huge insights into some of the world's top CIOs are outflanking their competitors in the following areas:

--Giving their companies the ability to design, source, build, market, sell, and support products around the globe and around the clock;

--Offering their global customers an expanding set of options for engaging with those companies on product ideas, self-service approaches, and customized experiences; and --Leading global IT teams that must balance the need to control costs with the equally powerful need to continue to find new and better ways to help increase revenue, find new customers, reduce cycle times, and optimize business processes.

More than even before, business technology is helping CIOs drive customer value and business value in what has truly become a global economy. And we've brought together a superb set of CIOs and other thought leaders from around the world to share their ideas for how they're making that happen:

--Ramon Baez, CIO at Kimberly-Clark --Christiaan De Backer, CIO at TomTom --Peter Hinssen, author of "Business/IT Fusion" --Andrew McAfee, Associate Professor at Harvard Business School --Jai Menon, CIO of Bharti Enterprises --Patty Morrison, CIO at Cardinal Health --Steve Phillips, CIO at Avnet Inc. --JP Rangaswami, Managing Director of Strategy and Innovation at BT --Toby Redshaw, Global CIO at Aviva plc --Manjit Singh, CIO at Chiquita Brands --and keynoter Ralph Szygenda, Corporate CIO at General Motors

For full speaker information, click here.

Here are the featured sessions from our daylong online event (you can register here): -- Ralph Szygenda's keynote discussion of how he and his team at GM have developed and executed the concept of "Precision IT" that's driven by standardization, simplification, and collaboration; --"CIOs and Productivity: How Social Media Motivates and Inspires Innovation"; --"Should Global CIOs Help Drive The Business, Or Align With The Business?" --"The Global CIO's Strategic Role in the Market and in the Boardroom"; and, --sessions led by our sponsors. For the full agenda, click here.

While it might be appealing to think about just keeping our heads down for a while and focusing on cost-cutting until the economy improves, today's strategic global CIOs are instead helping transform their organizations into externally focused and global enterprises that enhance business value by first enhancing customer value. Please join us on July 29 and share in the discussion.