Agenda

Agenda

Our agenda is designed to inspire, challenge, and connect. From keynote sessions with industry leaders to interactive workshops and networking opportunities, each part of the event is built to spark ideas and provide practical insights. Explore the schedule and start planning your experience.

Agenda

FutureTech Summit

Thu, Nov 5

9:30AM

IDC FutureTech Summit UK Opening Remarks

Hannah Dowie

Hannah Dowie

Senior Event Manager, IDC

9:40AM

IDC Keynote: The AI Platform Imperative: Architecting for Scale, Speed, and Autonomy

In the fast-evolving AI economy, mastering platform innovation is key to unlocking transformative business value. This presentation offers a strategic roadmap for building AI-ready technology foundations and leadership capabilities. We’ll explore critical building blocks for scalable, secure AI workloads, followed by designing resilient cloud-native and hybrid infrastructures for sustainable AI innovation. Finally, we’ll examine the rise of agentic AI systems enabling autonomous decision-making across IT operations, governance, development, and observability. This presentation equips the C-suite and technology leaders to recalibrate their platform strategy and confidently lead their organizations into the AI economy.

Archana Venkatraman

Archana Venkatraman

Senior Director Research, Cloud Data Management, IDC

10:05AM

AI Can Scale Software Creation. Can You Scale Trust?

AI is transforming how software is created, tested and secured, enabling organisations to build at unprecedented speed and scale. But as development moves from AI-assisted to increasingly autonomous, a new challenge emerges: how do you trust what AI creates? This session explores why discovery alone is no longer enough, and what it takes to secure software at machine speed. We’ll examine how deterministic analysis and AI reasoning can work together to improve coverage and confidence, why context and prioritisation are critical to cutting through growing security noise, and why independent governance matters when AI is both writing and assessing code. As AI scales software creation, security must evolve from finding more vulnerabilities to providing the evidence, context and control needed to scale trust.

Emma Datny

Emma Datny

Senior Product Manager, Checkmarx

10:25AM

AI Has a Data Problem

AI is only as good as the information it receives, and most of that information is lost before AI ever sees it.

This session looks at why, and what to do about it, We’ll cover:

  • Why AI results depend on how information is created, not just how it’s cleaned up afterwards
  • How ordinary business processes quietly leak the context that decisions need
  • What changes when documents, workflows and decisions are connected in one governed layer
  • One question to ask of any process, to see what AI is missing

Bring a real process to the IDC Connect roundtable and we’ll test it together

James Cross

James Cross

CEO, Colibri Digital

Filippo Vanara

Filippo Vanara

Research Manager – European CloudOps and ESG, IDC

10:40AM

Why are we running our networks in physical colocations when our applications and data are increasingly situated in the cloud?

Enterprise networks were built for a different era of static data centres and predictable traffic, and they are struggling to keep pace with a business landscape that is multi-cloud, distributed, and constantly evolving.

This session shares real customer use cases showing why enterprise organisations are turning to Networking On Demand to modernise – and the business value they’re seeing in return: faster time to market, stronger resilience, and the flexibility to scale without being slowed down by infrastructure.

Ian Plummer

Ian Plummer

Director, International, Alkira, A Lumen Connect® Solution

10:55AM

Opening Panel Discussion: Data Resilience and Cyber-Preparedness in the AI Era

As AI transforms the enterprise landscape, organisations face a new generation of cyber risks alongside unprecedented opportunities for innovation. This panel will explore how businesses can strengthen data resilience, modernize cyber-preparedness strategies, and build trust in an increasingly AI-driven world. Industry leaders will discuss evolving threat vectors, the role of AI in both cyber defense and attack, regulatory and governance considerations, and practical approaches to safeguarding critical data and operations. Attendees will gain insights into how organizations can move beyond reactive security models toward resilient, adaptive frameworks fit for the AI era.

Shanthi Nachiappan

Shanthi Nachiappan

Ex LSEG

Jean Carlos

Jean Carlos

Head of Information Security, Checkatrade

Dominic Redmond

Dominic Redmond

Group Chief Information Officer, PageGroup

Graham O’Sullivan

Graham O’Sullivan

Chief Information Officer, RiverStone International

Archana Venkatraman

Archana Venkatraman

Senior Director Research, Cloud Data Management, IDC

11:20AM

The AI Value Equation: How to stop it going wrong?

Demonstrating value from AI is hard. Scaling it is harder. As adoption grows, cost, performance and business outcomes start pulling in different directions, and most organisations lack a clear strategy to handle the trade-offs. Drawing on Capacitas’ work as a technology optimisation partner to a global travel platform and a leading consumer app, both operating at global scale, this session sets out the equations that will shape company growth in the AI era: where value leaks away, why it gets harder at scale, and what the organisations getting it right are doing differently.

Thomas Barns

Thomas Barns

Service Design Director, Capacitas

11:30AM

Networking Break

12:05PM

Parallel Sessions

Track 1: Future-Ready Infrastructure: Sustainability, Edge, and Innovation
Track 2: AI Readiness: Skills, Sovereignty, and Strategic Control

Parallel Sessions

12:05AM – 12:30PM

Track 1 – ESG and Sustainable IT: Aligning Modernization with Business Values

Ray Stephens

Ray Stephens

Managing Director, Reuben Digital Ltd

Mark Buss

Mark Buss

Senior Digital Sustainability Manager, OVO

Filippo Vanara

Filippo Vanara

Research Manager – European CloudOps and ESG, IDC

12:05AM – 12:30PM

Track 2- Closing the Skills Gap: Building AI-Ready Teams and Culture

Nimmi Patel

Nimmi Patel

Associate Director – Skills & Talent Policy, TechUK

Igor Kovalev

Igor Kovalev

Director Site IT – Europe, Ford Motor Company

Tyler Lowe

Tyler Lowe

Founder & Director, Loving Life

Archana Venkatraman

Archana Venkatraman

Senior Director Research, Cloud Data Management, IDC

12:30PM

Parallel Sessions

Parallel Sessions

12:30PM – 12:40PM

Track 1: Data You Can Stand Behind: Rebuilding a Challenger Bank’s Platform for the AI Era

James Cross

James Cross

CEO, Colibri Digital

12:30PM – 12:40PM

Track 2: AI Is Accelerating. Are We Resilient Enough?

Ilkka Turunen

Ilkka Turunen

Field CTO, Sonatype

12:40PM

Parallel Sessions

Parallel Sessions

12:40PM – 1:00PM

Track 1: Edge Computing for Real-Time Intelligence and Operational Efficiency

Nick Beer

Nick Beer

Director – Development and Strategy, BFBS

Ryan Preece

Ryan Preece

Trustee, Aston Martin Heritage Trust

Heamanth Raina

Heamanth Raina

Global Head of Data Management, SEB

Filippo Vanara

Filippo Vanara

Research Manager – European CloudOps and ESG, IDC

12:40PM – 1:00PM

Track 2: Digital Sovereignty: Strategies for Compliance and Data Control

Dave Michels

Dave Michels

Researcher in Cloud Computing Law, Queen Mary University of London

Duncan McTavish

Duncan McTavish

Head of GRC & Technology Governance, Ocado Group

Simon Lewis-Jones

Simon Lewis-Jones

Founder of Data by Design, Formerly Standard Chartered Bank

Archana Venkatraman

Archana Venkatraman

Senior Director Research, Cloud Data Management, IDC

12:50PM

Networking Lunch Break

2:00PM

IDC Connect Roundtables

IDC Connect 1 : Scaling AI Development: Are You Building Speed on a Foundation You Can't Secure?

IDC Connect 2 : Colocation or Cloud: Is Your Network Architecture Stuck Between Two Worlds? – Alkira

IDC Connect 3 : AI-Infused Architecture – AI-driven ITOps/FinOps automation, self-healing systems, trust in AI decision-making, observability

IDC Connect 4 : Scalable Building Blocks – open source, containers, DevOps at scale, secure API and microservice orchestration

IDC Connect 5 : Rebuilding the Software Lifecycle Around AI – Using tools like Kiro, Claude Code to generate code faster, what happens to sprints, stories and agile rituals? Where do human approval gates sit as agents plug into engineering tools? How do roles and skills change?

IDC Connect 6 : What cloud and AI skills gaps are holding back your investments, and how are you closing them through upskilling, hiring and partnerships?

IDC Connect 7 : The AI Value Equation: How to stop it going wrong?

3:30PM

Networking Break

3:55PM

IDC Research Insight: Agentic AI: The Next Frontier in Automation and Orchestration

Agentic AI is emerging as the next evolution of enterprise automation, enabling intelligent systems to make decisions, coordinate actions, and execute complex workflows with increasing autonomy. This presentation will explore how organisations are leveraging agentic AI to transform orchestration across IT operations, business processes, customer engagement, and decision-making. IDC will present on the technologies driving this shift, including multi-agent systems, generative AI, and autonomous workflow management, as well as the opportunities and risks associated with greater AI autonomy. This presentation will also examine governance, trust, and operational considerations organizations must address to successfully scale agentic AI initiatives and unlock measurable business value.

Filippo Vanara

Filippo Vanara

Research Manager – European CloudOps and ESG, IDC

4:15PM

Closing Panel: Designing AI-Native Architectures: Agility, Openness, and Resilience

As organisations accelerate AI adoption, traditional IT architectures are being reimagined to support the scale, speed, and complexity of AI-driven operations. This panel will explore what it means to design AI-native architectures that are agile, open, and resilient by design. Industry leaders will discuss strategies for integrating AI across hybrid and multi-cloud environments, enabling interoperability through open ecosystems, modernising data and application infrastructures, whilst building resilience against evolving operational and security challenges.

Naomi Garratt

Naomi Garratt

Chief Technology Officer & Co-Founder, Shine AI

Krishnan Chandrasekharan

Krishnan Chandrasekharan

IT Director, IQVIA

Claire Lebarz

Claire Lebarz

Chief Technology Officer, Malt

Priti Mhatre

Priti Mhatre

Chief Product & AI Officer, WPP

Filippo Vanara

Filippo Vanara

Research Manager – European CloudOps and ESG, IDC

4:40PM

Closing Remarks and Key Takeaways

Hannah Dowie

Hannah Dowie

Senior Event Manager, IDC