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IDC Directions 2020: Boston, MA

Changing Customer Requirements: Creating Value in the Digital Economy

Boston, March 10, 2020
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Overview

6

IDC keynotes

24

Track breakout sessions

6

Breakfast and lunch sessions

30 +

Analyst-hosted lunch tables

100 +

Analysts available for 1-to-1s

In the expanding digital-first economy, growth and opportunity will be dominated by those visionary, agile organizations embracing the inevitable change. The evolving digital economy will demand an entirely new species of enterprise: one with a digital-first operating model that is hyperspeed, hyperscale, and hyperconnected.

Join us in March for IDC’s 55th annual Directions conference to take advantage of the day’s 60+ analyst-led presentations and small group lunch roundtables. During 30-minute private sessions, sit with an IDC analyst for insight into your strategy, your challenges, and your own paths to success.

By 2024, digital transformation and innovation will directly account for over 50% of all IT spending -- up from 31% in 2018. Let IDC help ensure you're part of, not just observing, the best of what's to come.

 

REGISTRATION RATES

Early Bird Rate: (deadline is February 7, 2020)
$495

Standard Rate:
$895

Attention IDC Clients: contact your IDC account executive, as you may be eligible for complimentary tickets to Directions 2020.

Event Benefits

 

 

 

Get the intelligence and guidance to identify growth opportunities

 

Connect directly with IDC analysts during 30-minute private meetings

 

Customize your day with 60+ sessions and hosted lunch roundtables

 

Network, learn, and share with colleagues and potential business partners

 

Enjoy post-event, online access to Directions presentations

 

Who Attends: Directions is attended by executives from ICT companies, technology professionals, and members of the investment community, including those in: Executive management, IT, marketing/business development, product management, strategy and planning, financial services, and more.

Speakers & Participating Analysts

Connect with top IDC analysts during session presentations and Q&A, private 1-to-1 meetings, hosted small-group lunch roundtables, breaks, and more!

Agenda

Download Complete Agenda
Time Event & Speakers
7:15 AM

Registration, Continental Breakfast, Analyst One-to-One Sign-up

Analyst One-to-One Sign-up is available until 12:45 and takes place at the Analyst Connection Kiosk (sign-up is onsite only, not in advance)
7:15 AM

IDC Pavilions open all day
Join analysts, product specialists, and peers to discuss business practices and experience demos that will help you realize future growth potential. Pavilions are open until 4:00 pm for walk-up service and discussions. All attendees are welcome to stop by without appointment.

Future Enterprise Pavilion
After years of ups and downs with digital transformation initiatives, we’ve reached a critical tipping point - the digital economy is now on the horizon. IDC forecasts that in just a few years, nearly half of all GDP worldwide will come from products and services offered by digitally transformed companies.
 
As CEOs develop their new agenda for running a digital business, they must focus on:
  • Addressing new customer requirements around personalization and trust
  • Developing new capabilities for digital innovation, work and intelligence
  • Building a digital IT infrastructure that supports resilient operations and pervasive experiences
  • Defining their new role in the digital economy

To help guide CEOs, key decision makers, and technology suppliers to meet the demands of the digital economy, IDC has launched nine “Future of” research practices that bridge the technology market view with a business outcomes view.

Visit the IDC Future Enterprise Pavilion to learn more.


IDC Custom Solutions Pavilion
IDC Custom Solutions helps clients plan, market, and sell in the global marketplace. We create actionable market intelligence and influential content marketing programs that yield measurable results. Stop by the IDC Custom Solutions Pavilion and speak with the experts who can help you PLAN (custom analytics, buyer behavior), MARKET (content marketing, thought leadership, business value), and SELL (partnering, sales enablement).

Data Products Pavilion
Stop by the IDC Data Products Pavilion where our team of experts can introduce you to IDC’s comprehensive portfolio of data products and tools including Trackers, Spending Guides, Black Books, Wallet, and Contracts Database.
  • Trackers - Assess market and competitive position. IDC Trackers provide accurate and timely market size, vendor share, and forecasts for hundreds of technology markets around the globe.
  • Spending Guides and Black Books - Map ICT demand and pinpoint opportunities. Find out about IDC’s 3rd Platform Spending Guides and Black Books for precision strategic and tactical planning.
  • Wallet - Define your customer targets. Discover the power of the Wallet, a tool that can help you sell smarter and understand the spending budgets for the world’s largest companies.
  • Services Contracts Database - Build your sales pipeline. IDC’s Services Contracts Database helps you generate leads and target opportunities across the globe by providing information on specific services contract deals including deal size, industry, company size, engagement type and more.
8:00 AM

Power Breakfast Session: The Business Case for Diversity and Inclusion in Technology

Michelle Bailey
VP/GM and Research Fellow Datacenter and Cloud, IDC

Many IT organizations say diversity and inclusion in their workforce are business imperatives, yet the proportion of women and minorities still averages under 25% of all employees, particularly for technical roles. New hiring and retention metrics are emerging, as are local laws and customer and supplier expectations, which means that the vast majority of IT organizations will have to rethink their overall diversity strategy, measurement systems, and goals. In this session, IDC Research Fellow Michelle Bailey will highlight our latest diversity and inclusion research as part of IDC's Social Impact research program. These insights cover the nine key employee personas that managers in technology will have to consider as part of their diverse recruitment and retention goals, quantify the impact of executive management and boards in making effective companywide changes, and provide a road map for how to build a representative IT organization.
8:45 AM

Welcome and Opening Remarks

Crawford Del Prete
President, IDC Worldwide

In this era of multiplied innovation, technology is increasingly intertwined with all aspects of our lives. New innovations are challenging norms and reshaping experiences. Please join IDC's president as he kicks off the day with a discussion of the major issues and trends shaping the technology marketplace.
9:05 AM

Preparing for the Digital-First Economy: The Hyperscale, Hyperspeed, and Hyperconnected Enterprise

Frank Gens
Senior Vice President & Chief Analyst, IDC Worldwide

By 2023, the global economy will reach a tipping point, as products and services from digitally transformed enterprises drive over half of global GDP. The impact on every enterprise will be enormous as this new majority of digital-first competitors set demanding new requirements at an accelerating rate in every industry. Creating value will require an entirely new "species" of enterprise — one with a digital-first operating model that is:

  • Hyperspeed: Creating and enhancing digital services over 100 times faster
  • Hyperscale: Developing over 10 times as many digital apps and services — and deploying those services across billions of edge devices and millions of edge computing locations
  • Hyperconnected: Amplifying enterprises' own "innovation power" by supersizing their digital supply chains and distribution networks

In this presentation, IDC Chief Analyst Frank Gens will share how — and how quickly — enterprises will transform and what tech suppliers will do to align with these radically changing market needs.

9:40 AM

The Future of the C-Suite: The New Tech Buyer

Meredith Whalen
Chief Research Officer, IDC

As you sell to the new digital enterprise, not only will the C-suite’s agenda and priorities be different, so will the buyers and their requirements. Line of business will represent half of the influencers. Millennials will join the ranks of decision makers. And CIOs who transition to the digital enterprises will be acting and evaluating you differently than before. Join IDC Chief Research Officer Meredith Whalen as she helps tech suppliers navigate these new waters. Drawing from IDC's 2020 global CEO and C-suite studies, Ms. Whalen will lay out the new tenets for the tech supplier to the digital enterprise. They include:

  • Innovation - Lending your knowledge and experience
  • Trust - Aligning to your client’s vision and values
  • Critical Thinking - Making sense of complexity
  • Access to technologies beyond your own
9:55 AM

Future of Customers and Consumers: Empathetic Enterprise

Alan Webber
Program Vice President, Customer Experience, IDC Worldwide

Traditionally, company models have focused on products and services building products, designing services, advertising and marketing them, and then waiting for the sales to roll in. That industrialized model of the customer journey is fading into antiquity as customers turn from buying a product or a service to purchasing experiences. How should companies respond to this shift? Brands that want to look and grow beyond personalization should focus next on providing empathy at scale. Empathy at scale, and more precisely cognitive empathy at scale, is the ability to use data, analytics, and intelligence technologies to understand and gain insights into the thoughts, feelings, and needs of a large percentage of the customer population and respond appropriately within the context of those thoughts, feelings, and needs. This session will discuss how organizations move up the ladder from data to information to knowledge. #EmpatheticEnterprise
10:15 AM

Networking Break and Pavilions

During the break, stop by the IDC Custom Solutions Pavilion, Data Products Pavilion, and Future Enterprise Pavilion. Join analysts, product specialists, and peers to discuss business practices and experience demos that will help you realize future growth potential. Pavilions are open until 4:00 pm for walk-up service and discussions. All attendees are welcome to stop by without appointment.
10:15 AM

Analyst One-to-One Meetings - Session #1

Open to all attendees. Note: Meetings are scheduled onsite. There is no sign-up in advance of the event. Visit the Analyst Connection Kiosk onsite for guidance and to schedule a meeting. See "Speakers & Participating Analysts" section above for a list of analysts who will be available.
10:45 AM

Future of Trust: Pervasive Integrity

Frank Dickson
Program Vice President, Cybersecurity Products, IDC Worldwide

The 3rd platform identifies data as the fuel of digital transformation (DX); "trust," an up-leveling of the security conversation, is an integral component of that fuel. Trust introduces new variables that go beyond the traditional idea of "security" to include "risk," "compliance," "privacy," and even business ethics. This session examines the future of trust and what it means to organizations in our "post-truth" world, implementing three new trust spheres: trusted-enabled commerce, trusted ecosystem, and trusted governance. #PervasiveIntegrity
11:05 AM

Future of Intelligence: Insights at Scale

Dan Vesset
Group Vice President, Analytics and Information Management, IDC Worldwide, IDC

What if you could double your employee productivity? What if you could halve the time it takes to respond to customers, partners, or regulators? What if you could increase the success rate of new product launches by 25%? What could your organization achieve if it had these superpowers of intelligence? It's a question that is top of mind for CEOs and their boards. Today, most enterprises purport to treat data as an asset, yet ignore that enterprise intelligence is more than the ability to process large amounts of data or to subscribe to an artificial intelligence (AI) service. In this session, you'll learn about IDC's latest research about achieving economies of intelligence that combine the organization's capacity to learn with its ability to synthesize the information it needs in order to learn and to apply the resulting knowledge pervasively across the enterprise. You'll learn about roadblocks on the way to achieving this future state of intelligence and about enterprises that are successfully overcoming these roadblocks. #InsightsAtScale
11:25 AM

Future of Work: Rethink Work

Sandra Ng
Group Vice President, Practice Group, IDC Asia/Pacific

Traditional team structures are beginning to change within high-performing organizations. IDC predicts that, by 2024, leaders in 50% of G2000 organizations will have mastered "future of culture" traits such as empathy, empowerment, innovation, and customer and data centricity to achieve leadership at scale. As digital transformation levels the competitive playing field for organizations and economies around the world, many understand the importance of human-machine augmentation to drive new organizational values. This understanding shapes their drive and commitment in finding the "fit for purpose" augmentation suited for their past heritage and future ambition. By 2021, new future of work (FoW) practices will expand the functionality and effectiveness of the digital workforce by 35%, fueling an acceleration of productivity and innovation at practicing organizations. In five years, 75% of the global workforce will be millennials and organizations will have to manage not only their expectations but also harness the strengths of a multigenerational workforce. In this presentation, Sandra Ng will highlight the FoW values that matter the most to organizations' success in the digital economy and share global examples of practicing organizations. #RethinkWork
12:00 PM

Lunch Roundtables

Open to all attendees on a first-come, first-served basis. See who's hosting

Table 1: 5G Versus Wi-Fi 6: Wireless Friends or Foes?

Brandon Butler, Senior Research Analyst, Enterprise Networks
Patrick Filkins, Senior Research Analyst, IoT and Mobile Network Infrastructure

The concurrent development of these two high-performance, low-latency wireless connectivity technologies is creating an enthusiastic debate about whether 5G and Wi-Fi 6 will supplement or supplant one another. This roundtable will explore how these technologies will coexist and compete with one another and how they will create new business opportunities for networking vendors and new use cases for enterprise customers.

Table 2: Agriculture Revolutionizing in the Digital Age

John Zhang, Research Analyst, IDC Canada
Jason Bremner, Research Vice President, IDC Canada

The agriculture industry is going through massive change enabled by DX. Precision agriculture is the fusion of digital, communications, information, and operational technologies. The market is shaped by agtechs, OEMs, and large technology companies. Join this discussion on how new technologies can boost productivity and limit the impact on the environment in all aspects of the farming process, including planting, growing, and harvesting.

Table 3: Build, Buy, or Borrow — Talent in Times of Digital Disruption

Megan Buttita, Research Director, Emerging Trends in Talent Acquisition

During periods of low unemployment, it is a candidate's market. With prospective employees gaining more control over where and how they want to work, what they want to work on, and the subsequent demands required of employers, technology must evolve to meet these needs. Join this conversation to discuss how talent acquisition technology decision makers are changing, the impact this shift has on attracting and retaining talent, and the changing role of the CHRO.

Table 4: Cloud Communications Platforms: CPaaS API Platforms Drive Enterprise Innovation

Courtney Munroe, Group Vice President, Worldwide Telecommunications

The worldwide communications platform-as-a-service (CPaaS) will grow to $17.2 billion in 2023. API-based applications are gaining traction in the enterprise sector, driven by Twilio, Vonage, and a wide range of new market entrants on a global basis, who are responding to the simplicity and agility of leveraging cloud-based APIs to create innovative customer engagement tools.

Table 5: Cloud Ecosystems 2.0 — New Interdependencies and Interconnectedness

Rory Duncan, Research Vice President, Cloud Service Providers

Digital transformation and cloud are creating ecosystem complexities — blurring the lines between vendors and providers as buyers intensify their demand for new products and services. Join the discussion to learn about leveraging dynamic, layered relationships, and how new interdependencies will foster interconnection, helping to protect against future disruption while maintaining innovation in the face of emerging technology and services.

Table 6: Cloud Migration — A Discussion of Commonly Seen Challenges and Workarounds

Andrew Smith, Research Manager, Cloud Infrastructure Services
Deepak Mohan, Research Director, Cloud Infrastructure Services

Cloud infrastructure services are now an integral part of the enterprise IT infrastructure environment. But enterprises are still early in their cloud adoption, and a majority of enterprise applications continue to run on traditional infrastructure. Migration of these applications into cloud infrastructure is now a top focus for a majority of enterprises. This lunch roundtable will discuss commonly seen challenges in cloud migration and recommended actions to address these challenges.

Table 7: Container Infrastructure Platforms — Driving the Next Generation of Compute

Gary Chen, Research Director, Software Defined Compute

Containers and Kubernetes are clearly the platforms of the future. Learn how enterprises are adopting containers and Kubernetes and how they're using them. We'll discuss the containerization of existing applications, stateful applications, containers on bare metal versus VMs, adoption of microservices, and the application of containers to hybrid cloud and multicloud.

Table 8: Database Deployment in a Hybrid Cloud

Carl Olofson, Research Vice President, Data Management Software

IDC surveys have shown a strong preference for a hybrid approach to cloud migration. We will discuss the challenges involved in deploying databases in a hybrid environment, including the need for a unified data management environment serving both the on-prem and cloud platforms. Do containers and microservices fit into the picture? Specific products and features are part of the discussion.

Table 9: Digital Ethics and ESG — Sustainable Business Practices Shaping DX

Bjoern Stengel, Senior Research Analyst, Business Consulting Services

ESG has become a mainstream issue for businesses dealing with their multiple stakeholder groups. Topics like diversity and inclusion are now viewed from a materiality perspective (i.e., their direct impact on enterprise value). This impacts business and technology consultancies alike (e.g., by rising demand for solutions around ethics and AI). Join this session on how consulting firms address these issues from strategy development to implementation.

Table 10: Edge Compute — The New Frontier for Delivering a Rich Customer Experience

Ghassan Abdo, Research Vice President, Worldwide Telecom, Virtualization and CDN

Edge compute is gaining the attention of communication service providers and CDN providers as they address demanding communication needs at the edge and delivery of rich media content to customers. Join Ghassan Abdo to discuss the impact of edge compute on software-defined WAN and the push toward programmability to deliver a compelling customer experience.

Table 11: Edge Strategies — Business and Technology Decisions Converge

Dave McCarthy, Research Director, Edge and Cloud
Ashish Nadkarni, Group Vice President, Infrastructure Systems, Platforms and Technologies

This lunch roundtable will discuss IDC's coverage of edge. It will explore the convergence of business and technology in charting out a vision and strategy for the edge, how ITDMs and LOB DMs must approach edge, and how vendors must seek to enable their customers with a robust end-to-end edge portfolio.

Table 12: Enterprise Digital Transformation — Where Are We Today and Why?

Shawn Fitzgerald, Research Director, Worldwide Digital Transformation Strategies

In this session, we will look at the state of digital transformation maturity across and by industries, including organizational approaches and why function follows form. We'll discuss critical business areas for empowering DX and which functions actually impede progress. We'll take a closer look at investment levels and the technologies driving DX, executive sponsorship and DX (who leads has a direct impact on success or failure), and performance measuring, KPIs, and management systems.

Table 13: Evolving Agile Project and Portfolio and Work Management, Quality, and Security for DevOps in Multimodal Environments

Melinda Ballou, Research Director, Application Life-Cycle Management

Agile adoption and work management are modernizing how business teams collaborate and execute with one another and with IT. At the same time, agile practices to drive quality, software development, and life-cycle management are key enablers to accelerate digital transformation with DevOps. What strategies are enterprises adopting for these areas? This roundtable will also discuss tools decisions using four recently published IDC MarketScapes as part of a project and portfolio management (PPM) series, including IT PPM, agile PPM, and work management.

Table 14: From Data Points to Insights — Unlock the Power of Enterprise Search with AI

Hayley Sutherland, Senior Research Analyst, AI Software Platforms

Enterprise search has traditionally lagged behind consumer search when it comes to delivering accurate, relevant insights in context, but the need for intelligent tools that can do this effectively is stronger than ever. Join this discussion on how a new generation of AI-enabled search tools leveraging technologies like machine learning, knowledge graphs, and NLP is helping knowledge workers to be more efficient and effective.

Table 15: Future of Work: Why Culture Is Critical to Digital Transformation

Amy Loomis, Research Director, Future of Work

Work culture has become even more critical to the success (or failure) of digital transformation initiatives as organizations automate work processes and move to integrate work in collaborative digital workspaces. Fierce competition for talent requires targeted social, mobile, and AI-enabled engagement of workers who offer both technical and human skills. The growing need to rapidly reskill and upskill diverse work teams also creates new opportunities for organizations to create agile, dynamic, and AI-driven learning pathways that link career development and business success. Learn how leading technology, business, and HR leaders are effectively interweaving technology and culture as part of their digital transformation.

Table 16: Infrastructure for Emerging Workloads

Sriram Subramanian, Research Director, Infrastructure Systems, Platforms and Technologies

Enterprises primarily care about their business workloads. Infrastructure requirements such as continuous availability, redundancy, and high-performance storage disks are determined by the characteristics of these business workloads. Infrastructure purchase decisions are also strongly influenced by business workloads. IDC tracks 18 different workloads across multiple functional markets and their trends such as deployment locations and architecture patterns. This lunch roundtable will discuss recent trends of business workloads and how such trends are influencing infrastructure choices.

Table 17: IoT Service Innovation — Servitization Transforming Business Models

Aly Pinder, Program Director, Service Innovation and Connected Products, IDC Manufacturing Insights
Stacy Crook, Research Director, IoT

The Internet of Things (IoT) is enabling additional intelligence and insights captured from assets, equipment, and products. Organizations are now building new business models and service offerings to leverage this connected product and equipment data to enhance the value being delivered to customers, drive new revenue streams, and improve the efficient delivery of support.

Table 18: Making Sense of Multicloud Data Management and Protection

Phil Goodwin, Research Director, Infrastructure Systems, Platforms and Technologies

As application deployments explode across cloud, edge, and core, market opportunities are emerging for multicloud data management. This roundtable will present IDC's new multicloud data management and protection taxonomy to help organizations make sense of an inherently broad and confusing topic, identify growth areas, and give a future outlook.

Table 19: Multi-Access Edge Computing

Rajesh Ghai, Research Director, Carrier Network Infrastructure

The carrier network edge holds the promise of enabling several significant use cases and applications for enterprises and new services and revenue streams for carriers. This session will be a discussion on the opportunity from both enterprise and service provider perspectives.

Table 20: Pinpointing the Market Opportunities for Growing Your Business in Canada

Lars Goransson, Managing Director, IDC Canada

At $140 billion, the Canadian market keeps growing, and by 2025, 50% of all IT spending will be directly for digital and innovation, up from 25% in 2018. With a diverse set of industries, a large SMB space, and a unique end-user environment, profitably targeting the Canadian market can be a challenge. Join us for a discussion on how IDC can help you pinpoint growth markets, use cases, industries, and regions that are critical to your success.

Table 21: Retail Infrastructure – Where Are Cloud, IoT, Edge, and Advanced Network Technologies in Your Plans?

Robert Eastman, Research Manager, IDC Retail Insights

The future of network infrastructure is arriving now. Network infrastructure is on a path to become more software defined; virtualization and edge computing bring fresh considerations to a retailer's infrastructure strategies. Success with digital transformation (DX) will depend on a retailer deploying a modern DX infrastructure foundation. What technologies are strategic for your retail network infrastructure, and how are you prioritizing your investments in infrastructure?

Table 22: Scale Problem Ahead for Identity Solutions: Suddenly Everyone's a User

Jay Bretzmann, Program Director, Security Products

These days, admins and security teams can't throw a virtual stick in a datacenter without hitting a web-based application solution. The force of so many new applications connecting with so many new users during this 3rd Platform, digital transformation shift is pushing existing identity systems to their breaking points. In this session, trade insights with us over changing user dynamics and the impact of scale upon future IAM product requirements.

Table 23: Scaling DevOps Across the Enterprise

Jim Mercer, Research Director, DevOps

There has been a lot of hype around DevOps, but what does it take to adopt DevOps at scale? IDC research data shows that many organizations have adopted DevOps, but they are struggling to scale DevOps across their IT landscape. We will have an open discussion around the challenges for scaling DevOps as well as some successful practices for making it all work — such as culture, agile development, transformative technologies, tooling, and security (e.g., DevSecOps).

Table 24: Service Provider Infrastructure

Kuba Stolarski, Research Director, Infrastructure Systems, Platforms and Technologies

Service providers are the largest buyer segment in the server and storage infrastructure markets. Whether large hyperscalers, smaller cloud and digital service providers, telecoms, or hosters, these companies are in many ways on the leading edge of infrastructure deployment strategies. Join this discussion on how service providers are solving their infrastructure scaling, management, and sourcing needs and how infrastructure suppliers can work with them.

Table 25: The Developing Storage Class Memory Market

Eric Burgener, Research Vice President, Infrastructure Systems, Platforms and Technologies

Over the past year and a half, we have seen a number of vendors introduce persistent memory (PM) and/or storage class memory (SCM) options for their enterprise storage arrays. In this roundtable, we'll discuss which vendors are playing here today, what workloads they're targeting, and what sort of market traction is being achieved with these offerings.

Table 26: Unified Communications and Collaboration: Cloud, Video, and Collaboration

Rich Costello, Senior Research Analyst, UC&C
Amy Lind, Research Manager, Communications Services and UC&C

IDC forecasts the worldwide UC&C market to reach $48.3 billion in 2023, driven by organizations across all business segments, including enterprises, with interest especially in cloud voice and UC solutions, collaborative apps including video and team collaboration, and digital transformation projects. Join Rich Costello and Amy Lind for this discussion on where the UC&C market is trending and some of the benefits/challenges when moving to new UC&C technology.

Table 27b: (Boston Exclusive) AI in Innovation, Engineering, R&D: Where Are the Opportunities?

Jeffrey Hojlo, Program Director, Product Innovation Strategies

AI is the hot tech term of the moment, for good reason: The technology promises to enable augmented decision making, greater productivity, and better company performance. What about with innovation and engineering? Within this domain perhaps lies the greatest opportunity. This session will discuss the opportunities for AI and machine learning (ML) and how organizations of today and tomorrow can benefit.

Table 28b: (Boston Exclusive) Banking Onboarding Challenged by Regulatory and Privacy Concerns

Marc DeCastro, Research Director, Consumer Banking
Steven D'Alfonso, Research Director, Compliance, Fraud and Risk Analytics Strategies

There are numerous friction points when it comes to customers trying to apply for or onboard themselves with new banking products or services. Know your customer (KYC), anti–money laundering (AML), GDPR, and other regulatory concerns are just a few things that impact the overall customer experience. How are customers choosing to open new accounts? How does biometrics help to reduce this friction? How will current and future regulations change how customers interact with their financial institution? What is the role of AI?

Table 29b: (Boston Exclusive) Contact Center Deployment Options — To Cloud or Not to Cloud, and Which Cloud?

Mary Wardley, Program Vice President, Customer Care and CRM

Contact center-as-a-service (CCaaS) deployments have lagged behind all other CRM categories in migrating to "the cloud." Moving from an on-premises solution to the public cloud is not the straight-forward value proposition that it has been in other CRM applications categories. Dedicated public cloud is offering a compelling solution to many risk and security-focused organizations. We will discuss what benefits the various deployment options bring to the contact center environment and strategies for benefiting from the various deployment options.

Table 30b: (Boston Exclusive) Curating an Ecosystem and Connected Enterprise with Blockchain

Ali Close, Research Manager, Digital Business Operations and Analytics Services
Ali Zaidi, Research Director, IT Consulting, Systems Integration, and Artificial Intelligence Services

Join this discussion to understand buyer pain points with blockchain adoption, specifically curating and orchestrating an ecosystem that will drive value, growth, and transformation. In addition, learn how to approach business use cases and the importance of blockchain integration with other innovation accelerators, like IoT and AI.

Table 31b: (Boston Exclusive) Emerging Shift in Ecosystem Value Chain and Roles

Chris Webber, Research Director, Strategic Alliances
Zachary Rabel, Senior Research Analyst, Cloud SaaS and Industry Cloud

Rapidly evolving business requirements are requiring technology and support partners to reexamine their operating and financial models. To create a value chain that leverages and connects various ecosystem partners, the concept of an ecosystem orchestration platform (EOP) is emerging to facilitate interactions between technology producers and consumers. Join Chris Webber and Zachary Rabel for a discussion on IDC's view of this emerging trend.

Table 32b: (Boston Exclusive) MDaaS: A Next-Gen Mobility Management Solution for Businesses

Denise Lund, Research Director, Enterprise Mobility
Bryan Bassett, Senior Research Analyst, Enterprise Mobility

Mobile device as a service (MDaaS) is essentially a next-gen mobility management solution with the combined value proposition of mobile hardware, software, and services at its core. MDaaS includes mobile smartphone or tablet hardware, connectivity services, device life-cycle management services, and enterprise mobility management (EMM) mobile device and app management services integrated into one bundled recurring fee. This roundtable will characterize the business needs aligned with MDaaS, key metrics when considering MDaaS solutions, and how mobile device deployment solutions offered by OEMs fit within the picture of MDaaS solutions and EMMS solutions.

Table 33b: (Boston Exclusive) Robotics for Business Innovation: When Ops Leaders Run Profit Centers

Remy Glaisner, Research Director, Worldwide Robotics: Commercial Service Robots

Operation-centric businesses are under pressure to generate new value transferable to supplied ecosystems. Therefore, operationally intelligent organizations integrate robotic elements that communicate and collaborate with other digital nods regardless of their function or origin. It results in new dynamic operational capabilities and unique value. Anticipating the change implied by the rise of "robotics business service centers" are becoming a strategic executive mandate.

Table 34b: (Boston Exclusive) Seven Things to Know About the Smart Home

Adam Wright, Senior Research Analyst, Smart Home

The smart home market has evolved rapidly with a multitude of new devices, platform, services, and partnerships. The competitive landscape is shifting as new lines of differentiation are forming not only around product features but also around broader ecosystems of devices and services. Adam Wright will discuss the emerging developments in this fast-moving market and explore the key drivers and inhibitors to making smart homes mainstream.

Table 35b: (Boston Exclusive) Smart City Trends for 2020

Ruthbea Yesner, Vice President, IDC Government Insights and Smart Cities

This session will explore key tech and spending trends in Smart Cities, looking at how Smart Cities and communities are leveraging the innovation accelerators to transform government service delivery outcomes.

Table 36b: (Boston Exclusive) The Government AI Journey — How to Lead Responsible Use

Curt Savoie, Program Director, IDC Government Insights
Shawn McCarthy, Vice President, IDC Government Insights

As AI proliferates in government and is deployed for mission-critical operations, it will make/assist in decisions having significant impact on many aspects of individuals' lives. Technical challenges result in errors, false positives, or false negatives triggering automated actions. AI can have embedded algorithmic or data bias in sensitive areas, particularly regarding gender, race, class, or age. This roundtable presents the importance of responsible and ethical AI for government.

Table 37b: (Boston Exclusive) Using Advanced Segmentation to Better Market, Sell, and Develop Products for the SMB

Shari Lava, Research Director, Small and Medium Business

One of the biggest challenges in building products, marketing, and selling to the small and medium-sized business segment is that one size often fits none. Needs of this market can vary among businesses based on factors that go beyond traditional business attributes of employee size and revenue. While those measures can help categorize and filter this market segment at a high level, additional attributes are needed to build a deeper set of buyer personas, to build effective products, and focus sales and market resources more effectively. This is particularly important in the SMB given the estimated 6.6 million in the United States alone. Come learn about some of the advanced segmentation attributes IDC has uncovered that show how the SMB buyer profile is changing and identifies qualified buyers from casual browsers.
12:00 PM

Lunch, Lunchtime Sessions, and Pavilions

Pick up a boxed lunch to take to your meeting or session.

Over lunch, also stop by the IDC Custom Solutions Pavilion, Data Products Pavilion, and Future Enterprise Pavilion. Join analysts, product specialists, and peers to discuss business practices and experience demos that will help you realize future growth potential. Pavilions are open until 4:00 pm for walk-up service and discussions. All attendees are welcome to stop by without appointment.
12:00 PM

Analyst One-to-One Meetings - Session #2

Open to all attendees. Note: Meetings are scheduled onsite. There is no sign-up in advance of the event. Visit the Analyst Connection Kiosk onsite for guidance and to schedule a meeting. See "Speakers & Participating Analysts" section above for a list of analysts who will be available.
12:45 PM

Lunch and Learns (Parallel Sessions)

Analyst presentations over the lunch hour, covering hot topics based on client demand.

Lunch and Learn

12:45 PM - 1:15 PM

Sustainable Digital Commerce: Preparing for an Era of Smarter Business, Jordan Jewell, Research Manager, Digital Commerce and Enterprise Applications

Lunch and Learn

12:45 PM - 1:15 PM

The Future of Sales Enablement, Randy Perry, Vice President, Business Value Strategy Practice; Nancy Selig, Vice President, Interactive Platforms; and Matthew Marden, Research Director, Business Value Strategy Practice

Lunch and Learn

12:45 PM - 1:15 PM

The Growing Private Cloud Landscape and the Customer Demands Driving Growth, Deepak Mohan, Research Director, Cloud Infrastructure Services, and Natalya Yezhkova, Research Vice President, Infrastructure Systems, Platforms and Technologies Group

Lunch and Learn

12:45 PM - 1:15 PM

The Tipping Point for Sustainability Progress, Jennifer Cooke, Research Director, Cloud to Edge Datacenter Trends

Lunch and Learn

12:45 PM - 1:15 PM

Blueprint for Better Content Performance, Kathleen Schaub, Vice President, CMO Advisory Practice
12:45 PM

Analyst One-to-One Meetings - Session #3

Open to all attendees. Note: Meetings are scheduled onsite. There is no sign-up in advance of the event. Visit the Analyst Connection Kiosk onsite for guidance and to schedule a meeting. See "Speakers & Participating Analysts" section above for a list of analysts who will be available.
1:30 PM

Afternoon Tracks (Parallel Sessions)

Choose from these sessions across eight tracks:

Track 1: Future of Operations

1:30 PM - 1:55 PM

Track 1: IT/OT: Digital Engineering in the Future of Operations, Kevin Prouty, Group Vice President, Energy and Manufacturing Insights

Track 2: Future of Connectedness

1:30 PM - 1:55 PM

Track 2: The Future of Connectivity — Connecting People, Things, and Processes, Carrie MacGillivray, Group Vice President, Internet of Things, 5G & Mobility

Track 3: Future of Customers & Consumers

1:30 PM - 1:55 PM

Track 3: Consumer Trust and Empathy: The Intangible, Soft Side of the New Rules of Engagement, David Myhrer, Research Vice President, Consumer Strategies

Track 4: Future of Digital Infrastructure

1:30 PM - 1:55 PM

Track 4: Future of Digital Infrastructure: Infrastructure Software and Services Redefine Consumption, Matt Eastwood, Senior Vice President, Enterprise Infrastructure, Cloud, Developers and Alliances

Track 5: Future of Intelligence

1:30 PM - 1:55 PM

Track 5: Realizing Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning at Scale, Ritu Jyoti, Program Vice President, Artificial Intelligence Strategies

Track 6: Future of Digital Innovation

1:30 PM - 1:55 PM

Track 6: Emerging Opportunities as Enterprise Developers Go Cloud Native, Arnal Dayaratna, Research Director, Software Development

Track 7: Future of Trust

1:30 PM - 1:55 PM

Track 7: Privacy and the Future of Trust, Ryan O'Leary, Senior Research Analyst, Legal, Risk, & Compliance

Track 8: Future of Work

1:30 PM - 1:55 PM

Track 8: Future of Work: Deployment and Implementation Insights and Case Studies, Holly Muscolino, Research Vice President, Content and Process Strategies and the Future of Work
2:00 PM

Afternoon Tracks (Parallel Sessions)

Choose from these sessions across eight tracks:

Track 1: Future of Operations

2:00 PM - 2:25 PM

Track 1: Delivering Ubiquitous Infrastructure: Use Cases at the Operational Edge, Rick Villars, Research Vice President, Datacenter & Cloud

Track 2: Future of Connectedness

2:00 PM - 2:25 PM

Track 2: The Future of Enterprise Connectivity: The Transformative Potential of 5G Enhanced by the Multi-Access Edge Cloud, Rajesh Ghai, Research Director, Carrier Network Infrastructure

Track 3: Future of Customers & Consumers

2:00 PM - 2:25 PM

Track 3: Market Opportunity Beyond Products: Earning Customer Trust, Kathleen Schaub, Program Vice President, CMO Advisory & Customer Experience

Track 4: Future of Digital Infrastructure

2:00 PM - 2:25 PM

Track 4: Hybrid Multicloud Management Wars Flip the Script on Enterprise AIOps and Automation Strategies, Mary Johnston Turner, Research Vice President, Cloud Management

Track 5: Future of Intelligence

2:00 PM - 2:25 PM

Track 5: Creating the Capacity to Learn as an Intelligent Organization, Jennifer Hamel, Research Manager, Analytics and Intelligent Automation Services

Track 6: Future of Digital Innovation

2:00 PM - 2:25 PM

Track 6: Next Frontier for Enterprise SaaS and PaaS Providers: Positioning for Enterprises' Digital Supply Chains, Mickey North Rizza, Program Vice President, Enterprise Applications and Digital Commerce

Track 7: Future of Trust

2:00 PM - 2:25 PM

Track 7: Pervasive Data Defense in a Trust-Based Future, Robyn Westervelt, Research Director, Security & Trust

Track 8: Future of Work

2:00 PM - 2:25 PM

Track 8: The Rise of the Intelligent Workspace: Opportunities, Techniques, and Challenges, Phil Hochmuth, Program Vice President, Enterprise Mobility
2:30 PM

Afternoon Tracks (Parallel Sessions)

Choose from these sessions across eight tracks:

Track 1: Future of Operations

2:30 PM - 2:55 PM

Track 1: Future of Operations and Industry 4.0, Jon Lang, Research Manager, IT/OT Convergence

Track 2: Future of Connectedness

2:30 PM - 2:55 PM

Track 2: Future of the Connected Worker: From "at Work" to "in Work," Linn Huang, Research Vice President, Devices & Displays

Track 3: Future of Customers & Consumers

2:30 PM - 2:55 PM

Track 3: Creating Empathy at Scale: Driving CX Culture Across the Organization, Douglas Hayward, Research Director, Worldwide Digital Strategy and Agency Services

Track 4: Future of Digital Infrastructure

2:30 PM - 2:55 PM

Track 4: Extending the Infrastructure to the Edge, Ashish Nadkarni, Group Vice President, Infrastructure Systems, Platforms and Technologies Group

Track 5: Future of Intelligence

2:30 PM - 2:55 PM

Track 5: Unstructured, Undefined, Unknown: What Do You Really Know About Your Data? Marci Maddox, Research Director, Enterprise Content Strategies

Track 6: Future of Digital Innovation

2:30 PM - 2:55 PM

Track 6: Every Enterprise a Platform: Opportunities Around Enterprises' Digital Distribution Platforms, Al Gillen, Group Vice President, Software Development and Open Source

Track 7: Future of Trust

2:30 PM - 2:55 PM

Track 7: Analytics: The Foundation of the Future of Trust, Chris Kissel, Research Director, Security Products

Track 8: Future of Work

2:30 PM - 2:55 PM

Track 8: Future of Work: Critical Services to Scale the New Work Experience, Lisa Rowan, Research Vice President, HR, Talent, and Learning Strategies
3:10 PM

The Big Data Elephant: Leveraging Data in the Era of Automated Decision Making

Dr. Tricia Wang
Global Tech Ethnographer

A $700 billion big data marketplace promises leaders that more data will help them make better decisions. But what if this promise isn't real? From her work with setting up data practices inside organizations, Dr. Tricia Wang reveals the big data elephant in the room: Organizations are struggling to get the ROI out of their big data investments, and yet they keep being told to invest more in analytics and digital transformation. She details the inconsistent and unreasonable hopes that companies have for big data and how these problems can worsen with automation and artificial intelligence. Dr. Wang shares how organizations can solve this problem by not just focusing on solving for technical complexity but also by understanding human complexity. Her talk leaves the audience with concrete takeaways for setting up an integrated data supply chain.

Location

Boston Convention & Exhibition Center

Flexibility and proximity are hallmarks of the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center. Its convenient location - just eight minutes from Logan Airport, accessible to major roadways and public transportation - makes the BCEC an easy day trip, in the heart of the Boston Seaport District.

See Details

Venue Map

Accommodations

Aloft Boston Seaport District

401-403 D Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02210 – (617) 530-1600

For your convenience, we have reserved a limited number of rooms at the Aloft Boston Seaport District. Special conference rates will be offered through February 17, 2020, based on availability. Note: the block may fill prior to that date, based on demand. Make a reservation by clicking the link below or by calling (877) 462-5638 and referencing: IDC Directions 2020. Conference Room Rate: USD $239

Make a Reservation

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Jill Toole

Director of Sales Enablement

About IDC

56 Years | 1100 Analysts | 110 Countries

International Data Corporation (IDC) is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. With more than 1,100 analysts worldwide, IDC offers global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends in over 110 countries. IDC's analysis and insight helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community to make fact-based technology decisions and to achieve their key business objectives. Founded in 1964, IDC is a wholly-owned subsidiary of International Data Group (IDG), the world's leading media, data and marketing services company. To learn more about IDC, please visit www.idc.com.