Track 4
Beyond the Hype – Driving Exponential Value through AI & Human Ingenuity
Efficiency is often mistaken for “doing less,” but the economic reality of AI is the opposite: as innovation becomes more efficient, we unlock the capacity for higher-order problem-solving. This track explores how to turn that capacity into exponential value.
IDC predicts that by 2030, 50% of new economic value in digital business will be created by organizations investing in scalable AI and data capabilities.
This economic value can only be realised with a right, sustainable foundation that helps organizations capitalize effectively on their valuable data, people and application assets.
Today, IDC research points that over 50% of AI-driven digital initiatives fail to meet ROI targets due to unclear outcomes, weak data foundations, silos, and lack of human-AI synergy.
We will dive into the core of this transformation, integrating software engineering with robust data management, to ensure your AI and technology initiatives are supported by seamless application performance. By aligning data, applications, and people across the entire value chain, you can empower your teams to act as architects of innovation. Join us to discover how to move past the hype and create a scalable, human-centric foundation that fosters long-term market resilience.
Discussion Topics
- How will the shift to agentic commerce—where AI autonomously manages end-to-end transactions—impact legacy e-commerce systems, data silos, workflows, and governance, and what best practices are needed to address these challenges?
- How can organisations accelerate AI maturity—overcoming key hurdles, improving readiness and governance, and focusing on quick wins—to move from early-stage adoption to delivering measurable business value?
- How can organisations build a data-centric culture—across technology, leadership, and governance—to accelerate AI success while balancing regulatory requirements, data sovereignty, and access?
Archana Venkatraman
Senior Director Research, Cloud Data Management
IDC
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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.
Jamie Mahmut‑Emerson
Senior Product Practitioner
Amdaris, an Insight company
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Jamie Mahmut‑Emerson
Jamie Mahmut‑Emerson is a Senior Product Practitioner at Amdaris with close to a decades experience working across enterprises, startups, and scale‑ups. With a background in the automotive industry, he now works closely with organisations to shape product strategy, guide decision‑making, and remains actively involved in execution to ensure ideas translate into real outcomes.
Jamie has spent the last six years working with AI‑enabled products, combining strategic thinking with hands‑on product leadership to help teams apply emerging technologies in practical, commercially grounded ways. He is known for an outcome‑focused approach to product development, operating comfortably between advisory work and delivery to drive meaningful, measurable impact.
Neil Priestley-Wall
CTO
PPL
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Neil Priestley-Wall
Neil Priestley-Wall serves as CTO at Phonographic Performance Ltd (PPL), where technology and creativity meet to champion the value of recorded music. PPL pay hundreds of thousands of members for the use of their recorded music through licensing in the UK and collecting royalties from around the world. Ensuring their members’ talent and investment is fairly rewarded. Technology and the intelligent use of data sit at the heart of this mission, powering the systems that help protect, represent and reward their members.
With nearly two decades at PPL, Neil brings deep experience across development and operations. Today, he leads a specialist team of developers, engineers, product managers and operations experts to deliver & maintain a blend of bespoke and package solutions. Together, they are navigating the shift from legacy systems and project-based delivery to a product and outcomes driven approach, working closely with business partners and exploring the emerging role of AI in shaping the future of PPL’s technology landscape