Why Partner

Why Partner

Position your brand at the forefront of the country’s premier CIO community. This results-driven platform is designed to maximize engagement and ROI for solution providers.

become a partner
Why Partner

Access Key Decision Makers

Directly engage with 80+ qualified technology buyers and influencers from the country.

ROI-Focused Lead Generation

Unlock opportunities through power meetings, roundtables, and workshops designed to connect partners with active buyers.

Brand Elevation & Visibility

Showcase your solutions at the most premium CIO event in the country, amplifying your presence across the technology ecosystem.

Research-Backed Intelligence

Leverage exclusive IDC insights and CIO surveys to better understand market trends and strengthen your go-to-market strategy.

Host Partner

Strategic Partners

Technology Focus Group Partners

Roundtable Partners

Workshop Partners

Exhibit Partners

Why Attend

Why Attend?

The Summit is more than just a conference. It’s where the country’s technology leaders come together to shape the future of AI-driven enterprises.

Network with the Country’s Elite
Connect with CIOs, CTOs, and Heads of IT from across the country.

Learn from the Best
Hear directly from IDC analysts, global experts, and pioneering CIOs on how to scale AI, GenAI, and agentic systems across industries.

Discover Real-World Use Cases
Gain insights into how leading organizations are implementing AI-driven automation to improve agility, resilience, and customer value.

Future-Proof Your Strategy
Understand the long-term business implications of agentic systems, ensuring your organization thrives in a rapidly evolving digital economy.

Master AI Security & Trust
Explore strategies to tackle data privacy, AI observability, model integrity, and digital trust challenges.

Cloud as the AI Foundation
Discover how cloud platforms, edge computing, and 5G enable scalable, secure, and sovereign AI deployments

Key Themes

The summit this year will spotlight how innovation, intelligence, and resilience are reshaping enterprises through AI, cloud modernization, agentic architectures, and cybersecurity.

AI & Data-Driven Transformation
AI is transforming business reality, empowering intelligent automation, data-driven decisions, and human-AI collaboration to enhance productivity, innovation, and operational efficiency.

Cloud & Infrastructure Modernization
Hybrid and multi-cloud models, powered by edge and 5G, are driving agility, scalability, and modernization while ensuring compliance and data sovereignty.

Agentic Enterprise Architectures
Enterprises are adopting open, modular, and intelligent architectures where AI agents automate decisions, enabling adaptive, data-centric, and continuously evolving operations.

Cybersecurity & Risk Management
Zero Trust, automation, and AI-driven defense are fortifying hybrid ecosystems, ensuring resilience, proactive protection, and trust across increasingly connected digital environments.

CIO Summit Australia

CIO Summit Australia

The Rise of Agentic Systems

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Celebrating years of thought leadership, the IDC CIO Summit – Australia returns on 20 October in Sydney as the country’s premier gathering of technology decision-makers.

 

This year’s edition explores the rise of AI-native enterprises and the Agentic Stack — intelligent systems that enable real-time decision-making, adaptability, and innovation. With regional AI spending forecast to reach $11.4B by 2027, CIOs must balance bold innovation with governance, trust, and integration.

 

Bringing together CIOs, CTOs, Heads of IT, technology leaders, and global experts, the Summit offers strategic insights, real-world case studies, and practical guidance to help organisations architect the next generation of digital enterprises.

 

IDC Australia Advisory Council 2026

Brett Wilson

Brett Wilson

Chief Information Officer

Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP)

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Stevie-Ann Dovico

Stevie-Ann Dovico

Group Chief Technology Officer

Australian Financial Complaints Authority

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Dr Angela Coble

Dr Angela Coble

Executive Program Director

Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO)

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Maria Paz

Maria Paz

Chief Technology Officer

Epworth Health

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Noel Toal

Noel Toal

Chief Technology and Transformation Officer

Repurpose It

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Dr Tom Gao

Dr Tom Gao

Chief Information Officer

City of Sydney

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Expert Perspectives

Hear from thought leaders, visionary CIOs, and celebrity speakers redefining technology,
leadership, and innovation across APAC.

8:40 am

IDC Keynote: The AI Moment: Strategies for CIOs in Australia

AI is transforming business strategy, and CIOs must act decisively. This keynote explores practical strategies for adopting, scaling, and governing AI across the enterprise. Attendees will gain insights on infrastructure, talent, and risk management, as well as actionable approaches to drive innovation, operational efficiency, and measurable business impact in today’s AI-driven landscape.

Linus Lai | IDC

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Linus Lai

Our Partners

Venue

Observability Summit 2026

Observability Summit 2026

The Future of AIOps

In collaboration with

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Overview

Australia is entering a pivotal phase in its AI evolution, with AI spending projected to grow nearly 4X faster than overall technology spending over the next five years. As enterprises accelerate digital modernisation across cloud, hybrid, and distributed environments, cloud operations and management have become a critical priority. Organisations are increasingly focused on first understanding their own environments end-to-end before engaging vendors, with a strong preference for unified platforms that can deliver visibility, intelligence, and action at scale. At the same time, traditional monitoring approaches can no longer keep pace with rising complexity, performance expectations, and cost pressures.

This challenge is further amplified as enterprises transition from cloud-centric architectures to model-centric architectures, where AI models sit at the centre of digital services and actively influence how applications behave, how data flows, and how user experiences are delivered. In this new operating model, observability must evolve beyond infrastructure and applications to provide clear visibility into how systems, data, and AI models interact in real time.

By 2027, 85% of Global 500 organisations are expected to deploy agentic AI for autonomous IT cloud operations, enabling systems to continuously monitor, analyse, and remediate issues with minimal human intervention. Join IDC and Riverbed on this summit as we spotlight the shift from reactive monitoring to predictive, AI-powered observability, demonstrating how forward-looking organisations are leveraging telemetry, automation, and AI-driven correlation to reduce operational complexity, eliminate blind spots, and improve performance across hybrid and distributed environments.

Agenda

Wednesday, 4 March 2026

Agenda

Observability Summit 2026

Tue, Mar 4

11:30AM

Registration & Networking

12:00PM

Welcome Address by IDC & Riverbed

Linus Lai

Linus Lai

Group Vice President, Research, IDC

Paul Crighton

Paul Crighton

VP, APJ Sales, Riverbed Technology

12:05PM

Turning Intelligence into Action: The Future of AIOps

In a world where digital experiences are central to business success, IT leaders face mounting expectations to deliver both seamless performance and operational excellence. Today’s enterprises operate across a wide mix of technologies, making it increasingly challenging for IT teams to maintain clear, unified visibility over their entire environment. Fragmented data and reactive approaches often lead to missed opportunities and persistent issues, even as technology evolves.

The rise of AI-powered operations (AIOps) and agentic AI is transforming this landscape, enabling organizations to move beyond simply reacting to problems toward anticipating and autonomously resolving them. Agentic AI systems, capable of making decisions and taking action independently, are opening the door to new ways of working and delivering value. By harnessing data-driven insights and full-stack observability—from devices and networks to cloud and applications—IT teams can proactively optimize digital experiences and reduce disruptions.

This session will explore how modern platform solutions, AI automation, and agentic AI are empowering IT operations to deliver better digital outcomes, drive efficiency, and unlock new revenue streams and business models. Attendees will gain insight into how these innovations are reshaping the future of IT and creating fresh opportunities for growth.

Linus Lai

Linus Lai

Group Vice President, Research, IDC

12:20PM

The Future of AIOps and Scaling for Observability and Acceleration Across End-user Devices and the Network

Fernando Castanheira

Fernando Castanheira

Global CIO, Riverbed Technology

12:35PM

The Riverbed Platform

Nick Kempt

Nick Kempt

Director, APJ Professional Services, Riverbed Technology

12:55PM

Q&A

1:15PM

Lunch

Demonstrations

2:15PM

Aternity 360 – Spotlighting Aternity Mobile

IT and business leaders face constant pressure to deliver exceptional digital experiences, while balancing performance, cost efficiency, and operational agility. But achieving this with incomplete visibility is difficult.​

We’ll explore how Aternity’s 360° Digital Experience helps leaders achieve better business outcomes enabling a productive mobile workforce.

Adi Mendel

Adi Mendel

Director of Product Management, Riverbed Aternity, Riverbed Technology

2:45PM

Panel Discussion

Linus Lai

Linus Lai

Group Vice President, Research, IDC

Fernando Castanheira

Fernando Castanheira

Global CIO, Riverbed Technology

Nick Kempt

Nick Kempt

Director, APJ Professional Services, Riverbed Technology

Adi Mendel

Adi Mendel

Director of Product Management, Riverbed Aternity, Riverbed Technology

3:15PM

Summary & Close

3:20PM

Networking Drinks

Speakers

Linus Lai

Linus Lai

Group Vice President, Research

IDC

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Fernando Castanheira

Fernando Castanheira

Global CIO

Riverbed Technology

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Paul Crighton

Paul Crighton

VP, APJ Sales

Riverbed Technology

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Nick Kempt

Nick Kempt

Director, APJ Professional Services

Riverbed Technology

Read Bio

Adi Mendel

Adi Mendel

Director of Product Management, Riverbed Aternity

Riverbed Technology

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Partners

In collaboration with

Venue

Capella Sydney

Event Venue:
Smith Rooms 1 & 2

Address:
24 Loftus St, Sydney NSW 2000, Australia

Be Part of it!

Join us to discover how AI-powered observability and unified platforms are enabling organisations to simplify cloud operations, gain end-to-end visibility, and deliver resilient digital experiences.

Register Now