29 Apr 2026
Kaagman & Kortekaas
IDC, AWS & Rackspace Executive Dinner
Future-Ready IT Foundation: Blueprint for Modernization and Infrastructure Readiness
Register Now
Of organizations IDC surveyed in September 2025 (IDC Multicloud Strategies Survey, EMEA), only 12% identified themselves as having an IT architecture that is mature, optimized and tightly aligned to business value or innovation.
A peer-to-peer dinner roundtable
C-suites across verticals and company sizes 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. Adopting a “wait-and-see” approach or maintaining status quo is a risky strategy.
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. 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?
Key topics
Why you should attend?
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:
- Assessing present application strategy and business drivers for change
What is the current application strategy and what are the risks, challenges, and limitations of status quo? How to convince stakeholders? - Rolling up the sleeves
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? - The Art of Possible and Best practices
What can we learn from successful practitioners? What are the metrics and KPIs for success at different stages of the modernization journey? How to maximise the benefits for a long-term?
Speakers
Archana Venkatraman
Archana Venkatraman is a Senior Director for IDC’s European Datacenter Research. She covers datacenter technologies including software-defined infrastructures, storage and data management, virtualization, containers, hyperconverged infrastructure, infrastructure performance monitoring, systems management, application development, and cloud services.
Archana also leads IDC’s European thought leadership program on open source technologies. She also contributes to European Digital Transformation, DevOps, Blockchain and IoT research practices.
Before joining IDC, Venkatraman was the datacenter editor at Computer Weekly, the digital magazine and website for IT professionals based in London, where she focused on datacenters, server virtualization, storage, open source technologies, software-defined infrastructures, and cloud computing, liaising with enterprise CIOs and technology vendors to develop deeper insight into the enterprise IT industry. Venkatraman has a master’s degree in journalism from Mumbai University.
Event Sessions
Wednesday, April 29 2026 10:00 pm | Location:
Summary of discussions and key takeaways
Wednesday, April 29 2026 6:50 pm | Location:
IDC, AWS & Rackspace Welcome Address
Agenda
IDC, AWS & Rackspace Executive Dinner
One Day Event
Champagne Reception
Guest arrival with welcome drinks and networking
IDC, AWS & Rackspace Welcome Address
Archana Venkatraman
Senior Director Research, Cloud Data Management, IDC
Starter Courses – First Discussion Topic
Assessing present application strategy and business drivers for change.
- What is the current application strategy and what are the risks, challenges, and limitations of status quo? How to convince stakeholders?
Main Course – Second Discussion Topic
Rolling up the sleeves.
- 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?
Dessert – Third Discussion Topic
The Art of Possible and Best practices.
- What can we learn from successful practitioners? What are the metrics and KPIs for success at different stages of the modernization journey? How to maximise the benefits for a long-term?
Summary of discussions and key takeaways
Archana Venkatraman
Senior Director Research, Cloud Data Management, IDC
Event close
Sponsors
AWS
Rackspace
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