C-suites are looking to architect a digital foundation to meet their three core goals: innovation with AI, cost optimization, and ensuring resilience and control. A well-architected infrastructure, data maturity and application modernization are the backbone to meet these business objectives.

But only 12% of organizations IDC surveyed in September 2025 (IDC Multicloud Strategies Survey, EMEA) identified themselves as having an IT architecture that is mature, optimized and tightly aligned to business value or innovation.

It is no surprise that IT modernization and data transformation are consistently among top three areas where organizations are increasing IT budgets despite economic and geopolitical uncertainties, according to IDC research.

App, data and IT modernization imperatives will continue to play ever greater, and even dominant, role in businesses. A “wait-and-see” approach is a risky strategy. Join IT and business leaders, and IDC and industry experts to discuss how to get it right.

In fact, workload modernization has become a high or top priority for 7 out of every 10 organizations between now and 2026, according to IDC research. The key question is to make the transformation and migration strategy a success and make the organization AI-ready.

How to mitigate the risks, how to shift from a big-bang approach to continuous and incremental transformation strategy, how to deliver business value throughout the project? Can AI potentially address the significant risks and challenges such as shortage of skills, documenting application estates, generating new code to simplify modernization tasks and so on?

By 2028, 35% of enterprises will prefer to work with service providers that have integrated tech stack modernization & AI capabilities to drive faster value realization at scale. Don’t be left behind!

Hosted and moderated by IDC, and sponsored by AWS and Rackspace, this roundtable offers a unique opportunity to engage with industry experts, exchange perspectives, and, most importantly, share your own experiences and challenges for a confident way forward to meeting business objectives. During this exclusive event, we will address:

• Are We Truly AI-Ready? Assessing Cloud, Data & Governance Foundations
  What is the current application strategy and what are the risks, challenges, and limitations of status quo? How to convince stakeholders?
• Building the case for AI-ready Operating Models featuring AI Value Mapping, Optimization & Governance in Practice
  How can IT leaders deliver on the modernization strategy and what are the key considerations across data, processes, people and budgets? How to de-risk the project? What are the principles of AI-ready operating model – aligning investments to business outcomes, delivering continuous value, infused governance and optimization? What are the metrics and KPIs for success at different stages of the modernization journey? How to maximise the benefits for a long-term? What can we learn from successful practitioners?
• Future Outlook: Carving the Path for Success in leveraging AI technology stack and building maturity in application and business value strategies.
  How do we progress and make AI an impactful long-term initiative to deliver continuous success? Which uses cases in the mid- and long-term will be the biggest benefactors of AI and agentic AI. How to anticipate, plan for and address themes such as sovereignty, governance, skills and cost issues when scaling AI.

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