CIO SUMMIT 2026
The IDC CIO Summit UK 2026 brought together technology and business leaders in London to explore the evolving role of the CIO in the era of agentic AI. Through expert presentations and panel discussions, the programme addressed IT modernisation, technical debt, cyber resilience and digital sovereignty, with a focus on translating technology investments into measurable business value. IDC analysts and industry speakers shared perspectives on scaling AI responsibly, strengthening digital trust and aligning technology strategy with business priorities.
Highlights from the 2026
Speakers
Shivika Singh
Event Sessions
One Day Event 10:40 am
Opening Panel Discussion: From Cyber Risk to Digital Trust: The CIO’s Role in Security, Sovereignty and Strategic Control
As organisations become increasingly data-driven and cloud-dependent, CIOs sit at the centre of a growing web of cyber risk, regulatory pressure and strategic accountability. Moving beyond traditional security models, this panel explores how CIOs are redefining digital trust not just through technology, but through governance, supplier choices and control over critical data and systems.
The discussion will examine the CIO’s role in navigating digital sovereignty, managing third-party and geopolitical risk, and balancing innovation with resilience. Listen to CIOs sharing practical insights on the decisions they are making today to protect their organisations, maintain autonomy, and build trust with boards, regulators and customers in an increasingly complex digital landscape.
Jonathon Valentine
Nic Granger
Rajesh Jethwa
Ekua Cant
Giorgia Prestento
Hasani Jess
Giles Lindsay
Lauren Dally
Lauren is a forward-thinking strategist with a deep passion for cultivating client-centric IT capabilities and launching innovative digital products. With a proven track record spanning over a decade, she has consistently achieved strategic objectives by leading cross-functional teams in diverse sectors, including finance, insurance, healthcare, and corporate wellness.
Lauren thrives in fast-paced, complex environments and excel in senior and executive-level managerial roles, specializing in key IT-related functions such as Product Management, IT Delivery, Programme Management, and Project Management. She has a successful history of implementing Agile methodologies, including SAFe and ‘Tribe’ models, within various organizations, earning recognition as an Agile Champion.
Her leadership experience extends to managing teams of varying sizes, from small groups to large teams of 250 members, to effectively deliver products and projects across the entire IT development lifecycle. She is passionate about driving positive change, optimizing processes, and achieving excellence in client-centric solutions.
Her commitment to excellence has earned several notable awards and recognitions, including the esteemed Next CIO 2023 Award.
Chris Leong
Event Sessions
One Day Event 4:15 pm
Closing Panel: Agentic AI: Strategic Opportunities and Operational Challenges for CIOs
Agentic AI – systems capable of autonomous decision-making is no longer a distant concept: it’s becoming a critical tool for enterprise innovation. But with strategic opportunity comes operational complexity. How can CIOs harness these technologies to drive efficiency, insight, and competitive advantage while managing risk, compliance, and ethical considerations?
Join this panel to discuss the real-world implications of agentic AI in the enterprise. IDC states that only 13% of proofs-of-concept (PoCs) make it to production, which highlights the execution gap CIOs must close. This panel will explore how to evaluate AI adoption, integrate autonomous systems into existing operations, and ensure responsible use, all while maintaining control and delivering measurable business impact whilst practical insights into how CIOs are balancing innovation with accountability in this rapidly evolving landscape.
Basit Tanveer
Event Sessions
One Day Event 4:15 pm
Closing Panel: Agentic AI: Strategic Opportunities and Operational Challenges for CIOs
Agentic AI – systems capable of autonomous decision-making is no longer a distant concept: it’s becoming a critical tool for enterprise innovation. But with strategic opportunity comes operational complexity. How can CIOs harness these technologies to drive efficiency, insight, and competitive advantage while managing risk, compliance, and ethical considerations?
Join this panel to discuss the real-world implications of agentic AI in the enterprise. IDC states that only 13% of proofs-of-concept (PoCs) make it to production, which highlights the execution gap CIOs must close. This panel will explore how to evaluate AI adoption, integrate autonomous systems into existing operations, and ensure responsible use, all while maintaining control and delivering measurable business impact whilst practical insights into how CIOs are balancing innovation with accountability in this rapidly evolving landscape.
Alpesh Doshi
Event Sessions
One Day Event 4:15 pm
Closing Panel: Agentic AI: Strategic Opportunities and Operational Challenges for CIOs
Agentic AI – systems capable of autonomous decision-making is no longer a distant concept: it’s becoming a critical tool for enterprise innovation. But with strategic opportunity comes operational complexity. How can CIOs harness these technologies to drive efficiency, insight, and competitive advantage while managing risk, compliance, and ethical considerations?
Join this panel to discuss the real-world implications of agentic AI in the enterprise. IDC states that only 13% of proofs-of-concept (PoCs) make it to production, which highlights the execution gap CIOs must close. This panel will explore how to evaluate AI adoption, integrate autonomous systems into existing operations, and ensure responsible use, all while maintaining control and delivering measurable business impact whilst practical insights into how CIOs are balancing innovation with accountability in this rapidly evolving landscape.
Aaron Kalvani
Aaron Kalvani serves as an Independent Global AI Strategist and Advisor on Multilateral AI Governance for the United Nations.
He guides how data and advanced AI are introduced into large-scale intergovernmental and institutional systems, with a focus on building trusted data foundations, regulatory integrity, and long-term structural resilience.
Through partnerships with international organisations, governments and cross-border initiatives, he shapes governance frameworks and institutional architectures that turn policy into practice, supporting responsible use of AI across borders, sectors, and public missions.
Silky Vaidya
Event Sessions
One Day Event 10:40 am
Opening Panel Discussion: From Cyber Risk to Digital Trust: The CIO’s Role in Security, Sovereignty and Strategic Control
As organisations become increasingly data-driven and cloud-dependent, CIOs sit at the centre of a growing web of cyber risk, regulatory pressure and strategic accountability. Moving beyond traditional security models, this panel explores how CIOs are redefining digital trust not just through technology, but through governance, supplier choices and control over critical data and systems.
The discussion will examine the CIO’s role in navigating digital sovereignty, managing third-party and geopolitical risk, and balancing innovation with resilience. Listen to CIOs sharing practical insights on the decisions they are making today to protect their organisations, maintain autonomy, and build trust with boards, regulators and customers in an increasingly complex digital landscape.
Amy Jones
Amy Jones is Chief Transformation Officer at Emerald Publishing, where she brings people, process and technology together to accelerate real world impact. In 2025, Amy was named to the CIO 100 UK list and received the Visionary Leadership in Technology award, recognising her people first approach to purposeful transformation. At Emerald, her remit spans delivery excellence, IT operations and modern engineering. Amy focuses on building resilient platforms, clearer ways of working and a culture where change sticks—so teams can move faster with confidence. A committed advocate for women in tech, she mentors emerging leaders and is hands on about making inclusion practical, not performative. She’s also a proponent of ethical AI, championing transparent governance, human in the loop design and tools that augment judgement while protecting trust.
Manuj Sarpal
David Harding
David Harding is the CEO of MagicOrange, the market’s first cloud-native IT financial management and FinOps platform. Prior to MagicOrange, David was a Managing Director and Technology COO at Morgan Stanley for 15 years and has more than two decades’ experience in technology management. Prior to Morgan Stanley, David spent 6 years at Credit Suisse where he launched and led the firm’s first global technology cost transparency initiative, a program which he also subsequently led at Morgan Stanley. As a career-long practitioner, David has developed and continuously drives a strong culture of accountability in the business, delivering value through cost transparency, so our clients can know their numbers and make their investment decisions confidently. David is a Fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants. He also holds a certificate in Digital Innovation for Finance and a Bachelors degree in Modern Languages from the University of Southampton in the UK
Andrew Simpson
Andrew has worked in the computer software industry for over 30 years starting off as a programmer to development manager, moving to technical consulting and then to a pre-sales engineering role. Andrew is currently a Principal Solutions Architect at Rocket Software after being with Rocket for over 20 years, focussing on application and data modernisation, optimisation and process improvement solutions for enterprises across the EMEA region.
Event Sessions
One Day Event 9:50 am
AI Isn’t the Foundation for Modernization. Trust Is.
Build the shared trust layer first—where data and security come together—and every team moves faster.
AI is accelerating modernization efforts, but it’s not the foundation of long-term success. Trust is. Trust is built on the “shared trust layer,” where data and security work together to form the backbone of a resilient, future-ready IT ecosystem. Without robust security, your data is vulnerable; without actionable data, your security measures lack precision. Together, they enable innovation, agility, and long-term impact.
IDC research shows nearly 40% of CIOs expect to overspend on digital infrastructure in the next 18 months, driven by technical debt and initiatives that stall before delivering results. Operational friction—rework from quick fixes, access exceptions from workarounds, inconsistent controls, reactionary audit scrambles, and untested recovery plans—undermines progress.
This keynote introduces the Shared Trust Layer as the foundation beneath every modernization initiative. Build it first, and teams move faster everywhere: delivery cycles shrink, resilience improves, compliance gets easier, and AI scales with confidence.
You’ll leave this session with:
- A practical model to align data and security strategies for IT modernization.
- Steps to reduce operational friction and accelerate delivery cycles.
- A focused 90-day action plan to benchmark your maturity with the IDC Modernization Index and build a resilient, future-ready IT ecosystem.
Michael McKay
Michael McKay is a senior engineer at Rocket Software, specialising on Mainframe Storage, Resiliency and Security technologies. Michael has a background in Storage Infrastructure and eventually became a Sysprog at a leading UK bank, before transitioning to Rocket Software where he is now working with various customers to implement solutions to better manage and secure their Mainframe environment.
Event Sessions
One Day Event 9:50 am
AI Isn’t the Foundation for Modernization. Trust Is.
Build the shared trust layer first—where data and security come together—and every team moves faster.
AI is accelerating modernization efforts, but it’s not the foundation of long-term success. Trust is. Trust is built on the “shared trust layer,” where data and security work together to form the backbone of a resilient, future-ready IT ecosystem. Without robust security, your data is vulnerable; without actionable data, your security measures lack precision. Together, they enable innovation, agility, and long-term impact.
IDC research shows nearly 40% of CIOs expect to overspend on digital infrastructure in the next 18 months, driven by technical debt and initiatives that stall before delivering results. Operational friction—rework from quick fixes, access exceptions from workarounds, inconsistent controls, reactionary audit scrambles, and untested recovery plans—undermines progress.
This keynote introduces the Shared Trust Layer as the foundation beneath every modernization initiative. Build it first, and teams move faster everywhere: delivery cycles shrink, resilience improves, compliance gets easier, and AI scales with confidence.
You’ll leave this session with:
- A practical model to align data and security strategies for IT modernization.
- Steps to reduce operational friction and accelerate delivery cycles.
- A focused 90-day action plan to benchmark your maturity with the IDC Modernization Index and build a resilient, future-ready IT ecosystem.
Manoj Kumar
Gokul Ramasubramanian
Bukky Yusuf
Bukky Yusuf is a senior leader, leadership coach and author, working with educators on a national and international basis. She has undertaken several leadership roles within mainstream and special school settings.
Beyond the classroom, Bukky is a Trustee and an Ed Tech Thought Leader with a variety of experiences that includes serving as an Advisory Council member for Good Future Foundation. In 2019, she was appointed by the Department of Education as co-chair for the EdTech Leadership Group to support the Government’s EdTech strategy.
Bukky has been awarded fellowship status within the industry in particular the Chartered College of Teaching (FCCT) and the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) for her work in education.
Lydia Nicola
Event Sessions
One Day Event 10:40 am
Opening Panel Discussion: From Cyber Risk to Digital Trust: The CIO’s Role in Security, Sovereignty and Strategic Control
As organisations become increasingly data-driven and cloud-dependent, CIOs sit at the centre of a growing web of cyber risk, regulatory pressure and strategic accountability. Moving beyond traditional security models, this panel explores how CIOs are redefining digital trust not just through technology, but through governance, supplier choices and control over critical data and systems.
The discussion will examine the CIO’s role in navigating digital sovereignty, managing third-party and geopolitical risk, and balancing innovation with resilience. Listen to CIOs sharing practical insights on the decisions they are making today to protect their organisations, maintain autonomy, and build trust with boards, regulators and customers in an increasingly complex digital landscape.
Carl Davis
Carl Davis is CTO of Keensight Capital’s Performance Team, partnering with portfolio companies on tech value creation and AI across cybersecurity, post-merger integration, software architecture, cloud strategy, and scaling engineering organisations. He was recognised in the CIO 100 UK in 2025 and 2022.
Sharon Parmar
Alex Butler
Event Sessions
One Day Event 10:40 am
Opening Panel Discussion: From Cyber Risk to Digital Trust: The CIO’s Role in Security, Sovereignty and Strategic Control
As organisations become increasingly data-driven and cloud-dependent, CIOs sit at the centre of a growing web of cyber risk, regulatory pressure and strategic accountability. Moving beyond traditional security models, this panel explores how CIOs are redefining digital trust not just through technology, but through governance, supplier choices and control over critical data and systems.
The discussion will examine the CIO’s role in navigating digital sovereignty, managing third-party and geopolitical risk, and balancing innovation with resilience. Listen to CIOs sharing practical insights on the decisions they are making today to protect their organisations, maintain autonomy, and build trust with boards, regulators and customers in an increasingly complex digital landscape.
Abdullah Masud
Abdullah Masud is a senior sales engineer at Ping Identity. He is a motivated and driven individual who possesses great communication skills. Abdullah has a passion for technology and a desire to pursue a career that operates within the field. He has a proven track record of working as part of a team and leading business units.
Event Sessions
One Day Event 10:10 am
The Rise of Non-Human Identity
The ratio of non-human to human identities is exploding. From service accounts and automated bots to the rapid emergence of agentic AI, these “digital workers” now perform critical business tasks, access sensitive data, and make autonomous decisions. However, this shift has expanded the attack surface, leaving organizations vulnerable to over-privileged service accounts, secret-sprawl, and AI-driven threats that traditional, human-centric IAM systems were never built to handle.
In this session, Ping Identity and Ensono explore why non-human identity (NHI) has become the new frontier of cybersecurity. We will dive into the unique challenges of managing machine-to-machine interactions and the necessity of a unified identity fabric.
James Peet
Event Sessions
One Day Event 10:10 am
The Rise of Non-Human Identity
The ratio of non-human to human identities is exploding. From service accounts and automated bots to the rapid emergence of agentic AI, these “digital workers” now perform critical business tasks, access sensitive data, and make autonomous decisions. However, this shift has expanded the attack surface, leaving organizations vulnerable to over-privileged service accounts, secret-sprawl, and AI-driven threats that traditional, human-centric IAM systems were never built to handle.
In this session, Ping Identity and Ensono explore why non-human identity (NHI) has become the new frontier of cybersecurity. We will dive into the unique challenges of managing machine-to-machine interactions and the necessity of a unified identity fabric.
Ollie Cheal
Chris Weston
Event Sessions
One Day Event 4:15 pm
Closing Panel: Agentic AI: Strategic Opportunities and Operational Challenges for CIOs
Agentic AI – systems capable of autonomous decision-making is no longer a distant concept: it’s becoming a critical tool for enterprise innovation. But with strategic opportunity comes operational complexity. How can CIOs harness these technologies to drive efficiency, insight, and competitive advantage while managing risk, compliance, and ethical considerations?
Join this panel to discuss the real-world implications of agentic AI in the enterprise. IDC states that only 13% of proofs-of-concept (PoCs) make it to production, which highlights the execution gap CIOs must close. This panel will explore how to evaluate AI adoption, integrate autonomous systems into existing operations, and ensure responsible use, all while maintaining control and delivering measurable business impact whilst practical insights into how CIOs are balancing innovation with accountability in this rapidly evolving landscape.
Richard Cassidy
Clare Hickie
Event Sessions
One Day Event 11:30 am
The New Work Day: Architecting the Agentic Enterprise
The CIO’s mandate has shifted: you are no longer just the custodian of uptime, but the primary architect of the agentic enterprise. As AI redefines the economics of work, the CIO must bridge the gap between probabilistic AI and the deterministic rigor required for HR and Finance data and processes.
In this session, we explore how Sana, Workday’s AI superintelligence, empowers CIOs to lead this transformation. We move beyond disconnected “copilots” toward AI “teammates” that operate with built-in governance and deep context.
Join us to discover how to scale intelligence while maintaining the absolute trust and compliance that define the modern enterprise.
Tom Girdler
Kae Khan
Kae Khan leads Okta’s Business Value Consulting Practice in the UK, partnering with CXOs to transform identity into a strategic “value-accelerator”. As organisations bridge the “trust gap” from GenAI pilots to Agentic AI production, Kae helps leaders decipher the new agentic world balancing the economics of autonomous systems with the need for resilient identity governance.
Previously, Kae was at Accenture Strategy’s London office helping companies across Europe and the US with M&A and technology strategy. Before jumping into tech, Kae started his career as a CPA before taking up economic advisory roles for the Government of Canada’s digital innovation programs. Kae is from Ottawa, Canada, where he studied Financial Economics at the University of Ottawa, and holds an MBA from INSEAD.
Justin Campbell
Justin Campbell is Client CTO at Insight and owner of the Insight AI Enterprise Architecture for EMEA, working with clients across the public sector, energy, digital platforms and financial services on AI strategy, architecture and product development.
Building internal AI solutions for the Insight business, to assist with onboarding, project delivery and operational performance improvements.
With 20+ years as a global CTO, architect and platform engineer, he has led major transformation programmes at financial services organisations, worked for HPE on their cloud portfolio.
Driven strategy, architecture and product development as a CTO in the following industry verticals
• Public sector digital services and platforms.
• Energy sector (including operational data and SCADA-related applications).
• Telecoms billing and large-scale BSS transformations.
• Biosciences and regulated industries adopting utility and cloud services.
• Financial services trading, risk and grid-compute environments.
Justin combines deep business context with hands-on engineering in modern development languages, cloud-native and serverless architectures, and ML/AI on AWS and Azure, underpinned by a long track record in application, infrastructure and cloud architecture, strategy development and large-scale platform delivery.
Event Sessions
One Day Event 10:25 am
Building an AI Value Playbook: From a Practitioner’s Perspective
Most organisations have AI projects running. Few can answer the question that matters most: what are we getting for the money?
This presentation tackles that problem directly, drawing on real experience building and operating an AI governance framework across a live enterprise portfolio. It is not a theoretical model or a vendor pitch. It is an account of what was built, why, how it works in practice, and what proved harder than expected.
The session covers the core components of an AI value playbook: a tiered classification model that applies proportionate governance to both new and existing projects, a four-checkpoint governance gate that must be passed before any AI initiative moves forward, a three-layer measurement framework that distinguishes between adoption, performance and value metrics, and a reference architecture layer that keeps the technology landscape legible and prevents tool sprawl.
Philip Wortrich
Residing within GTT’s Product & Technology Group, Phil supports the adoption of GTT’s key strategic initiatives, including GTT’s Envision platform. Prior to this posting, Phil led a team of Solutions Consultants at GTT, in addition to having held a number of Senior Pre-Sales roles at both Level 3 Communications and Arelion. Drawing on the themes of this summit, Phil has a specific interest in the human/machine relationship, and how the use of artificial intelligence has allowed us to create value and meaning elsewhere in the workplace.
Marc Dowd