Today, anyone can access state-of-the-art models: you can rent the model, but you can’t rent the competitive advantage.

The real advantage lies in the data that only the company possesses, and in the ability to make that data available to AI in real time—not as it was yesterday. Yet many architectures feed AI with data that lags behind the reality of the business. That may be sufficient for a report; for an agent that blocks fraud, approves a refund, or responds to a customer, it is not. In this session, we’ll explore why scaling agent-based AI is first and foremost a matter of data architecture, and how a single platform that combines real-time operational data, semantic search, and agent memory—with built-in security and data sovereignty—reduces complexity and technical debt, making AI accurate, governable, and production-ready.

From the excitement of the prototype to enterprise-wide results: let’s explore how to identify the right use cases, build reliable knowledge, and manage agent-based AI over time. Using proprietary tools and accelerators, we’ll show you how to speed up the introduction and adoption of artificial intelligence while reducing risks and complexity.

Key Takeaways:

• Driving adaptive and responsible innovation

• Governance in the Agentic Era: Risks, Compliance, and Accountability

• Digital Sovereignty and Infrastructure

Join us for an informative session exploring how application delivery is becoming an increasingly critical IT capability as hybrid environments evolve, data sovereignty requirements tighten, and AI expands both application landscapes and user demands.

The session will highlight the importance of flexible workload placement, reducing vendor lock-in, and embedding security through isolated and auditable access. Discover how Parallels provides a simple, flexible, and secure approach to application delivery across on-premises, cloud, sovereign, and device-based environments.

AI is moving from experimentation to action: autonomous agents can now reason, make decisions, and act on enterprise data. For CIOs, the challenge is no longer whether to adopt them, but how to bring them into production securely, with proper governance and measurable business impact.

In this session, we will share Snowflake’s vision alongside real-world experiences from companies that have already made this transition. We will explore how a unified data platform, where AI operates directly on enterprise data, enables organizations to scale AI agents while maintaining control over security, compliance, and data quality.

Lessons in Innovation from Countries You Wouldn’t Expect

There are countries we don’t typically associate with innovation that have already pioneered solutions we still consider part of the future.
Drawing on a journey through 160 countries, five surprising stories of innovation reveal how the most revolutionary ideas sometimes emerge from the most unexpected places.

Five passport stamps to explore unfamiliar territories and discover how, sometimes, getting further ahead doesn’t mean following every step along the way, but having the courage to skip a few.

At the heart of these stories lies an idea that challenges many of our assumptions: those who start first don’t always finish first. Sometimes, the advantage lies in having no established path to follow, no existing infrastructure to protect, and no entrenched models to replicate.
And one question for those leading technology within organizations: is the real barrier to innovation technology itself, or the legacy of the systems we have already built?

A journey designed to help you return to the business with a fresh perspective on what to build—and what to let go.

Speaker tba, Datadog

Each table seats a moderator and a small group of pre-registered delegates. Each session takes place simultaneously and is about increased interaction, experience sharing and peer discussions relevant across companies and industries.

• IDC Connect 1 – Agentic AI: Strategic Opportunities and Operational Challenges for CIOs – Chaired by Camunda
• IDC Connect 2 – Cybersecurity: Embedding cyber risk management into enterprise strategy and governance – Chaired by Mimecast
• IDC Connect 3 – Building the Data Foundation for the AI-centered Enterprise – Chaired by MongoDB
• IDC Connect 4 – The Integration on the CIO’s Strategic Agenda: From the hype around AI to delivering value through true integration
• IDC Connect 5 – Beyond Data Residency & Compliance: How digital and AI sovereignty can strengthen strategic autonomy – Chaired by Suse
• IDC Connect 6 – Digital Infrastructure and Business Transformation: What Are the New Priorities for CIOs? – Chaired by Sangfor
• IDC Connect 7 – Intelligent Automation and Productivity: reshaping business processes and workforce value – Chaired by Konecta
• IDC Connect 8 – Managing Data in the Age of Agents: Visibility, Control, and Trust – Chaired by Snowflake
• IDC Connect 9 – The Evolving Role of the CIO: From IT Leader to Business Strategist – Chaired by Planisware

Three real-world cases, presented in anonymized and aggregated form, show how a misconfigured EDR can leave a path to domain privileges, how to distinguish potential findings from genuinely exploitable attack paths, and how new access points or permissions can open up additional attack routes. In 15 minutes, we’ll explore how to assess risk, decide what to remediate first, and verify that the remediation has successfully closed the attack path.

Alessandro Talotta, Managing Director, Digital Realty

“The Future of IT Infrastructure in 5 Minutes: Strategies for Modern and Resilient Virtualization”
A cura di Simone Protano, Senior Presales Manager, Sangfor

“Governing Modernization in the Age of Agentic AI”
Marco Bertini, European Professional Services VP, OpenText

The Courage to Change the Rules

For years, we have imagined technological progress as a race: more powerful computers, faster algorithms, increasingly intelligent systems. But physics tells a different story. In complex systems, increasing the power of a single component can change the behavior of the entire system in unpredictable ways. And an extraordinary technology, when placed in the wrong context, can produce disastrous results.

Gabriella Greison, physicist and storyteller of quantum mechanics, takes audiences beyond the familiar narratives surrounding artificial intelligence to explore some uncomfortable questions.

What if the problem facing businesses is precisely their obsession with efficiency? What if automating everything means losing the ability to recognize what truly matters? And what if real innovation lies in understanding which decisions must remain human?

Drawing on the great scientific revolutions and the insights that have transformed our understanding of reality, Greison shows why the future emerges from interactions, from the complementarity of different technologies, and from the ability to recognize what happens when different elements begin to work together.

Because the CIO of the future will have to do something far more challenging than choosing the best technology: understand how that technology will transform people, organizations, and the very possibilities of the business itself.

The most dangerous technology is the one that works perfectly while no one stops to ask why we are using it.