As we move into the next phase of the economic cycle, the spotlight continues to shine on IT and digital initiatives to help organizations slice through the storms of disruption. While enterprises around the world struggle to navigate this perfect storm of economic, political, and social disruption, digital-first IT leaders will be best positioned to weather the storm and transform digital business through resiliency and value creation based on effective use of evolving and innovative technologies.
The IT and communications industries themselves will be among the most transformed as they adopt as-a-service (aaS) delivery and operating models, deal with radical alterations in ecosystems/value chains, and recognize that their primary tasks are to help CIOs and their enterprises share, use, govern, and increase the value of data.
Join us for IDC’s 58th annual Directions conference to take advantage of multiple analyst-led presentations and direct connections. Attendees will gain insight into developing strategies, overcoming specific challenges, and finding paths to success.
Let IDC help lead the way!
IDC Directions 2023 - Boston, MA
Tuesday, March 7, 2023 -- 7:15 am - 4:45 pm
Boston Convention and Exhibition Center
Registration Rates
Standard Rate: $895
Attention IDC Clients: contact your IDC account executive for a complimentary registration code for your tickets to Directions 2023.
Event Benefits
Get the intelligence and guidance to identify growth opportunities
Connect directly with IDC analysts during 20-minute private meetings
Customize your day with eight mainstage presentations, 15+ breakouts, and multiple networking opportunities
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.
An interactive IDC Product Showcase highlighting our latest offerings through a series of detailed demonstrations and conversations with IDC analysts and product specialists. The IDC Product Showcase is open throughout the day for walk-up service and discussions. All attendees are welcome to stop by without appointment.
7:30 AM8:30 AM
Generational Disruption: Adapting Your Future Consumer Strategy (Invitation Only)
Tom Mainelli
Group Vice President, Devices & Consumer Research, IDC
The next generation of consumers view technology and brands in radically different ways than those who drive spending today. As younger generational cohorts move to dominate technology spending in the coming decade, companies—both consumer-centric and enterprise-focused—must adapt or risk disruption and irrelevance. In this session, Tom Mainelli will share insights from IDC’s Future Consumer research, highlighting key trends and examining technologies, strategies, and vendors that are primed to succeed in the coming years.
8:45 AM9:00 AM
Slicing Through Storms of Disruption in the Golden Era of Tech
Crawford Del Prete
President, IDC Worldwide
IT continues its relentless march to transform nearly every aspect of our lives. Even as WW economies struggle with rising inflation brought on by the after-effects of COVID stimulus and geopolitical instability on multiple continents, technology continues to deliver gains in efficiency through software, connectivity and hardware improvements. We believe that the era of multiplied innovation continues to gain momentum, even as economic headwinds increase. Join IDC’s president, Crawford Del Prete for a discussion of this impact and to learn why we remain squarely in a “golden era” of technology innovation.
9:00 AM9:15 AM
The Five Levers Required to Scale the Digital Business
Meredith Whalen
Chief Research Officer, IDC
The next chapter of the digital journey will focus on using tech to scale the digital business as enterprises seek to thrive in the era of digital business. Business will need to pull the following five tech levers to scale the digital business: 1. Business Architecture 2. Enterprise Automation 3. Customer Data 4. Enterprise Intelligence 5. Trust
9:15 AM9:40 AM
Cloud’s Next Stage: the Foundation for Digital Business
Richard Villars
Group Vice President, Worldwide Research, IDC
In 2023, building out cloud infrastructure, using cloud-based services, and consistently governing all cloud assets will account for 42% of core IT spending. The scale and flexibility that comes with the shift to cloud-centric IT makes it the backbone upon which enterprises will build out their digital business. It also means that they will scrutinize cloud partners, investments, and uses cases more closely than ever before. In this session, Rick will provide insights and guidance on how cloud plus intelligent automation will evolve to become the critical technology delivery system for enabling even faster access to innovation, for ensuring cost and operational optimization at scale, and for solidifying the link between technology spending and business outcomes.
9:40 AM10:05 AM
Enterprise Automation 2.0: The Connective Tissue of the Digital Business
Ritu Jyoti
Group Vice President, Artificial Intelligence Research, Global AI Research Lead, IDC
Enterprise automation so far has been mostly reactive, implemented as a piecemeal noninvasive method to automate routine, repetitive tasks, and structured processes and data. Business drivers, goals, and means for all the three vectors (Business processes, IT operations and Software development) of enterprise automation have expanded for the next chapter of the digital journey. Digital businesses need proactive, predictive end-to-end automation that leverages optimal blending of intelligent automation toolbox (e.g., process mining, conversational AI, machine learning and IDP) beyond RPA, supports human and machine synergies, and robust governance to accelerate strategic business innovation and unlock the success divide with competition.
10:05 AM10:55 AM
Networking Break and IDC Product Showcase
During the break, check out the interactive IDC Product Showcase highlighting our latest offerings through a series of detailed demonstrations and conversations with IDC analysts and product specialists. The IDC Product Showcase is open until 3:15 pm for walk-up service and discussions. All attendees are welcome to stop by without appointment.
10:10 AM10:30 AM
Analyst 1-to-1 Meetings - Session #1
10:35 AM10:55 AM
Analyst 1-to-1 Meetings - Session #2
11:00 AM11:25 AM
Customer Data: The Revenue Engine
Marci Maddox
Research Vice President, Digital Experience Strategies, IDC
The customer experience has tilted on its conventional axis such that every customer interaction, from digital marketing to customer service, is immersive, fluid across channels and connected from one department to another. Enterprises must rethink their data management practices to scale at the customer demand for higher levels of privacy and personalization - experienced at the same time - with the added complication of a shift from 3rd party to Zero-party data across multiple sources.
11:25 AM11:50 AM
Enterprise Intelligence: Digital Differentiation with Decision Velocity
Dan Vesset
Group Vice President, Analytics and Information Management, IDC
In the digital world, growth and progress and capturing the value of digital data will depend on the level of enterprise intelligence. Organizations, big and small, across industries and countries, will spend $290 billion globally on technology and services to acquire, move, manage, analyze, and use data to increase the velocity of decision making, drive differentiation, and value. This level of investment is unsurprising, but much of it remains in siloed projects without an overarching enterprise intelligence strategy and leadership. A new C-suite agenda has emerged that elevates the need to raise enterprise intelligence through new investments in the organization’s ability to synthesize information, learn collectively, delivery insights at scale, and foster a data culture.
11:50 AM12:15 PM
Total Trust: Digital Sovereignty’s Vital Linchpin
Rahiel Nasir
Associate Research Director, European Cloud Practice, IDC
Economic and geopolitical turmoil continues to impact organizations globally. Digital sovereignty can provide the extra armor needed to boost resilience and security, not only for businesses but also at a national level to ensure the continued operations of critical infrastructure and systems. But without one crucial ingredient, the entire digital sovereignty platform crumbles: trust. Trust is the number one attribute that organizations seek in partners and providers for digital sovereignty. This presents multiple challenges for vendors offering sovereign solutions. Not only must they ensure they deliver all of their services and infrastructure with the utmost transparency, they must also demonstrate that their entire ecosystem of partners can do likewise. And this must be an ongoing process that takes place over the long term, and across various markets and jurisdictions where rules and regulations continue to evolve. Digital sovereignty therefore adds greater complexity to already complex multicloud and hybrid environments. But the pay-off can be worth it. Once successfully implemented, many organizations believe digital sovereignty enhances customer, government and stakeholder trust in their operations and businesses, and can therefore open access to new global markets. Trust begets trust.
12:15 PM1:30 PM
Lunch
12:30 PM12:50 PM
Analyst 1-to-1 Meetings - Session #3
12:45 PM1:30 PM
Marketing’s Playbook for Scale During Disruptive Times (Invitation Only)
Laurie Buczek
Research Vice President, CMO Advisory Practice, IDC
Enterprises face another year of uncertain business conditions while transforming into a digital business. Marketing’s most critical role is to drive business growth. What are the investments and strategy to fuel marketing’s ability to scale? What is the most effective playbook to engage today’s tech buyer? How does marketing fulfill the digital customer experience leadership role? Join Laurie Buczek, IDC’s Vice President of the CMO Advisory Practice to gain insights and actionable advice for marketing excellence in 2023.
12:55 PM1:15 PM
Analyst 1-to-1 Meetings - Session #4
1:00 PM1:30 PM
Lunch and Learns (Parallel Sessions)
Lunch and Learns
1:00 PM - 1:30 PM
HPC Goes Mainstream: Implications to R&D technology, Markets & Industries
Josephine Palencia
Research Director, High Performance Computing, IDC
HPC Goes Mainstream: Implications to R&D technology, Markets & Industries
High Performance Computing (HPC) is a top national priority for each country that aggressively push the boundaries of Research and Technology (R&D) to stay competitive in the Global world. HPC is a pervasive tool that industries and businesses use to develop world-class products, services and inventions to boost their ranking in the technology race. Driven by Artificial Intelligence (AI), HPC shows increasingly strong convergence with AI, Big Data Analytics and Quantum Computing. As HPC goes mainstream, industries, agencies and corporate businesses join governments, and the academia to consolidate, and optimize their digital-first infrastructures to deliver the fastest insights to data. With the accelerated technological race, attend this session to learn the deployment models and strategies as well as new and formidable challenges.
1:00 PM - 1:30 PM
Delivering Customer Success: A Playbook for IT Providers
Elaina Stergiades
Research Director, Software and Hardware Support Services, IDC
Delivering Customer Success: A Playbook for IT Providers
As more technology providers adopt customer success programs, many are struggling to define best practices for services delivery that can meet new requirements in this dynamic market. IDC will share survey results from a worldwide study to highlight the changing nature of customer success services, IT and LOB perceptions and expectations for customer success services, and how vendors can deliver on the promise of customer success.
1:00 PM - 1:30 PM
The Circular Economy: Why IT Vendors Need to Pay Attention
Susan Middleton
Research Vice President, Flexible Consumption and Financing Strategies for IT Infrastructure, IDC
The Circular Economy: Why IT Vendors Need to Pay Attention
Awareness about sustainability metrics and adopting innovative ways to reduce consumption is top of mind for organizations today. Included in this sustainability conversation is another trend, circularity.
The circular economy (CE) concept, outlined by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, asks us to redefine waste as a resource for another process. In addition, the foundation also believes that the circular economy can contribute toward tackling 45% of global greenhouse gas emissions that cannot be resolved by transitioning to renewable energy alone. IDC has observed that organizations are adopting circular economy principles that support industrial processes and economic development programs rooted in restorative or regenerative concepts such as reuse, refurbish, and recycle. When resources remain "in the circle" for as long as possible, they return the greatest value.
IDC will share survey results from a worldwide 2023 study to explain why organizations are adopting circularity models as part of their procurement strategies and what they need from their vendor partners to reach their circularity goals.
1:00 PM - 1:30 PM
How to Engage with Digital Natives Businesses
Simone De Bruin
Research Director, Worldwide Digital Native Business, IDC
How to Engage with Digital Natives Businesses
Digital Native Businesses (DNBs) are built from the start around modern technologies, adopting cloud and data across all aspects, from operations to business models to customer engagement. This means all core value and revenue generating processes are dependent on those digital technologies. As such, they are a new customer segment with very distinct business and IT requirements, challenging the IT vendors’ sales and segmentation processes.
This track provides key insights on how to engage with Digital Native Businesses, ranging from B2B, B2C and tech-oriented start-ups, scale-ups, and unicorns. In this session, Simone de Bruin will draw from recently completed research of over 1200 Digital Native Businesses to discuss what makes them tick and how to increase market & mind share with this high potential customer segment.
1:00 PM - 1:30 PM
Skills Forward: A 2023 IT Skills Shortage Survival Guide
Amy Loomis
Research Vice President, Future of Work, IDC
Skills Forward: A 2023 IT Skills Shortage Survival Guide
By 2025, 90% of global organizations will be staring down the barrel of a crippling IT skills crisis. The cost: More than $6.5T in missed product releases, impaired competitiveness, lower customer satisfaction and missed revenue goals. From security and data to AI, cloud and more, tech talent is at a premium. Getting the right people with the right skills into the right roles is a strategic imperative. In this session, IDC Research Vice President Amy Loomis will deliver a late-breaking look at the talent crunch and what enterprises can do right now to prepare. Why is a holistic culture of learning important? What is the best way to increase tech skill time to mastery? How should enterprises begin training and reskilling cross-functional teams? This session will dive into those topics and more.
Lunch and Learns
1:00 PM - 1:30 PM
HPC Goes Mainstream: Implications to R&D technology, Markets & Industries
High Performance Computing (HPC) is a top national priority for each country that aggressively push the boundaries of Research and Technology (R&D) to stay competitive in the Global world. HPC is a pervasive tool that industries and businesses use to develop world-class products, services and inventions to boost their ranking in the technology race. Driven by Artificial Intelligence (AI), HPC shows increasingly strong convergence with AI, Big Data Analytics and Quantum Computing. As HPC goes mainstream, industries, agencies and corporate businesses join governments, and the academia to consolidate, and optimize their digital-first infrastructures to deliver the fastest insights to data. With the accelerated technological race, attend this session to learn the deployment models and strategies as well as new and formidable challenges.
Josephine Palencia
Research Director, High Performance Computing, IDC
1:00 PM - 1:30 PM
Delivering Customer Success: A Playbook for IT Providers
1:00 PM - 1:30 PM
Delivering Customer Success: A Playbook for IT Providers
As more technology providers adopt customer success programs, many are struggling to define best practices for services delivery that can meet new requirements in this dynamic market. IDC will share survey results from a worldwide study to highlight the changing nature of customer success services, IT and LOB perceptions and expectations for customer success services, and how vendors can deliver on the promise of customer success.
Elaina Stergiades
Research Director, Software and Hardware Support Services, IDC
1:00 PM - 1:30 PM
The Circular Economy: Why IT Vendors Need to Pay Attention
1:00 PM - 1:30 PM
The Circular Economy: Why IT Vendors Need to Pay Attention
Awareness about sustainability metrics and adopting innovative ways to reduce consumption is top of mind for organizations today. Included in this sustainability conversation is another trend, circularity.
The circular economy (CE) concept, outlined by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, asks us to redefine waste as a resource for another process. In addition, the foundation also believes that the circular economy can contribute toward tackling 45% of global greenhouse gas emissions that cannot be resolved by transitioning to renewable energy alone. IDC has observed that organizations are adopting circular economy principles that support industrial processes and economic development programs rooted in restorative or regenerative concepts such as reuse, refurbish, and recycle. When resources remain "in the circle" for as long as possible, they return the greatest value.
IDC will share survey results from a worldwide 2023 study to explain why organizations are adopting circularity models as part of their procurement strategies and what they need from their vendor partners to reach their circularity goals.
Susan Middleton
Research Vice President, Flexible Consumption and Financing Strategies for IT Infrastructure, IDC
1:00 PM - 1:30 PM
How to Engage with Digital Natives Businesses
1:00 PM - 1:30 PM
How to Engage with Digital Natives Businesses
Digital Native Businesses (DNBs) are built from the start around modern technologies, adopting cloud and data across all aspects, from operations to business models to customer engagement. This means all core value and revenue generating processes are dependent on those digital technologies. As such, they are a new customer segment with very distinct business and IT requirements, challenging the IT vendors’ sales and segmentation processes.
This track provides key insights on how to engage with Digital Native Businesses, ranging from B2B, B2C and tech-oriented start-ups, scale-ups, and unicorns. In this session, Simone de Bruin will draw from recently completed research of over 1200 Digital Native Businesses to discuss what makes them tick and how to increase market & mind share with this high potential customer segment.
Simone De Bruin
Research Director, Worldwide Digital Native Business, IDC
1:00 PM - 1:30 PM
Skills Forward: A 2023 IT Skills Shortage Survival Guide
1:00 PM - 1:30 PM
Skills Forward: A 2023 IT Skills Shortage Survival Guide
By 2025, 90% of global organizations will be staring down the barrel of a crippling IT skills crisis. The cost: More than $6.5T in missed product releases, impaired competitiveness, lower customer satisfaction and missed revenue goals. From security and data to AI, cloud and more, tech talent is at a premium. Getting the right people with the right skills into the right roles is a strategic imperative. In this session, IDC Research Vice President Amy Loomis will deliver a late-breaking look at the talent crunch and what enterprises can do right now to prepare. Why is a holistic culture of learning important? What is the best way to increase tech skill time to mastery? How should enterprises begin training and reskilling cross-functional teams? This session will dive into those topics and more.
Amy Loomis
Research Vice President, Future of Work, IDC
1:35 PM3:00 PM
Afternoon Tracks (Parallel Sessions)
Track 1 - Cloud: The Foundation for the Digital Business
1:35 PM - 2:00 PM
The Evolution of Cloud Infrastructure: Multicloud to Hybrid; Shared to Dedicated
Dave McCarthy
Research Vice President, Cloud and Edge Infrastructure Services
The Evolution of Cloud Infrastructure: Multicloud to Hybrid; Shared to Dedicated
Cloud is no longer a location but rather an operating model that helps digital-first businesses innovate faster with on-demand provisioning, elastic scaling, and global reach. To address an expanding range of business and technical requirements, new deployment models have emerged that include hybrid, multicloud, and distributed scenarios. Attend this session to learn the attributes of each deployment model and how best to the choose the right one for your business.
2:05 PM - 2:30 PM
Distributed by Design: Workload Driven Infrastructure Architectures
Mary Johnston Turner
Research Vice President, Future of Digital Infrastructure, IDC
Distributed by Design: Workload Driven Infrastructure Architectures
Today's highly interconnected on-premises, edge, and public cloud infrastructure environment provide IT buyers with a complex set of options to maximize business resilience, optimize application and business performance, and facilitate innovation. Attend this session to learn how digital business leaders are applying workload-centric deployment strategies and transforming digital infrastructure operating models to deliver top priority business outcomes enabled by distributed architectures, intelligent automation, partner ecosystems, and as-a-service consumption models.
2:35 PM - 3:00 PM
The Operations Cookbook: Transforming with AIOPs, Observability, IT Automation, and Cost Transparency
Stephen Elliot
Group Vice President, I&O, Cloud Operations, and DevOps, IDC
The Operations Cookbook: Transforming with AIOPs, Observability, IT Automation, and Cost Transparency
This session will discuss many of the critical investments being used by enterprise IT Operations teams to empower speed and competitive differentiation in a tightening economic environment. It will analyze markets, key customer trends, and strategies across critical Operational pillars.
Track 2 - Enterprise Automation 2.0: Operating at Scale
1:35 PM - 2:00 PM
The Importance of a Fused Connectivity and Process Automation Strategy
David Schubmehl
Research Vice President, Conversational Artificial Intelligence and Intelligent Knowledge Discovery, IDC
The Importance of a Fused Connectivity and Process Automation Strategy
Many businesses are prioritizing automation investments in 2023 despite economic uncertainty – but are those investments really poised for success? Islands of automation have many causes, but the impacts to businesses go beyond low ROI on automation projects, they can harm the customer experience and add multiple costs to the business. A holistic connectivity and process automation strategy with fusion tools and teams will deliver stronger business, boosting both enterprise resiliency, but also enterprise innovation. But to build consensus and a culture of automation, we need to deconstruct and reconstruct our understanding of automation as it means now and, in the future, and how AI is going to boost it along the way. For that we need a holistic automation strategy.
2:05 PM - 2:30 PM
DevOps Evolution: It’s no Longer Just About Deploying Apps
Jim Mercer
Research Vice President, DevOps & DevSecOps, IDC
DevOps Evolution: It’s no Longer Just About Deploying Apps
Using automation to drive velocity has been one of the core pillars of DevOps since its inception. While automation is critical for application delivery, it has been enriched by the adoption of cloud platforms and declarative Kubernetes distributed architectures. It is essential for driving developer efficiency, optimizing the value stream, infrastructure provisioning, security (i.e., DevSecOps), software testing, etc. This session will explore how modern DevOps teams can use automation and intelligence to deliver software faster, with improved reliability, quality, and security.
2:35 PM - 3:00 PM
IT Ops: Understanding CloudOps and FinOps
Jevin Jensen
Research Vice President, Infrastructure and Operations, IDC
IT Ops: Understanding CloudOps and FinOps
IT budgets are under pressure from inflation and challenging economic forecasts. A recent IDC survey shows the number 1 area of investment for IT Automation in 2023 is FinOps. Private and public cloud resources are prime candidates for optimization. This session will discover how FinOps adoption and IT automation can drive savings and improved business outcomes for enterprises.
Track 3 - Customer Data: The Revenue Engine
1:35 PM - 2:00 PM
Using CX Insights to Fuel Profitable Growth
Sudhir Rajagopal
Research Director, Future of Customer Experience, IDC
Using CX Insights to Fuel Profitable Growth
The days of growth at any cost are behind us and experiences are the tip of the spear for enterprises to profitably compete. Customer expectations for continuous engagement, and experiences that are curated on their terms implies that the value exchange between customers and brands will be defined by data. Enterprises can maximize business value through whole journey experiences which will require tapping into customers’ engagement with the brand, employees, and partners across the ecosystem. This requires firms to design experiences upwards from the data layer, drive permissible experiences via an active and unified portfolio of customer intelligence, and reorient the enterprise to deliver against customer outcomes.
2:05 PM - 2:30 PM
Customer Data Platforms: Accelerating Revenue Through Improved CX
David Wallace
Research Director, Customer Data and Analytics, IDC
Customer Data Platforms: Accelerating Revenue Through Improved CX
CDP adoption has grown rapidly as firms across industries, firm sizes and business models shift to omnichannel customer profiles driven by zero- and first-party data to improve CX, which becomes even more important during recessions. Use cases are expanding beyond marketing, with CDPs becoming customer data repositories for other front-office teams. In this session we will discuss:
Current CDP adoption, use cases, case studies
New technologies in CDPs (AI, personalization, data clean rooms, engagement channels)
Future opportunities and threats for the CDP market
2:35 PM - 3:00 PM
Matching Customer Data and Engagement - How Retailers are Building Connected Experiences
Ananda Chakravarty
Research VP, Retail Merchandising and Marketing Analytics Strategies, IDC
Matching Customer Data and Engagement - How Retailers are Building Connected Experiences
This session describes how retailers are extending the value of CDP’s Drive Loyalty, ROI, and LTV. The holistic vision for Customer 360 is to tie customer touchpoints together through a central directory and corpus of information, so that customer care, marketing, operations and ultimately the customer finds more value in shared experiences. Attendees will hear about:
• A retailer’s journey from customer data manager to customer experience connector
• How retailers can improve outcomes by integrating Customer Data more holistically
• A vision for automated and prescient customer experiences
Track 4 - Enterprise Intelligence: Digital Differentiation with Decision Velocity
1:35 PM - 2:00 PM
The Data Supply Chain is Broken: Data Logistics Can Help Fix It
Phil Goodwin
Research Vice President, Infrastructure Systems, Platforms and Technologies, IDC
The Data Supply Chain is Broken: Data Logistics Can Help Fix It
Data logistics, as the name implies, is the task of capturing, storing, moving, protecting and assuring data availability. Well-implemented data logistics reduces data silos and makes data more accessible for superior value extraction. It also improves data governance and reduces data risk. This sessions discusses practical aspects of data logistics and the key elements that go into it.
2:05 PM - 2:30 PM
Data Intelligence: The Foundation for Data Activation
Stewart Bond
Vice President, Data Integration and Data Intelligence Software, IDC
Data Intelligence: The Foundation for Data Activation
Data in the modern enterprise is highly distributed, diverse, and dynamic. Organizations are evaluating and implementing multiple architectural approaches to activate data for enterprise intelligence. Some are using cloud data warehouses, data lakes, lake houses, fabrics, meshes, and data control planes. Regardless of what architectural approach is used, the foundational element that needs to exist is data intelligence, fueled by metadata. Data intelligence should be the first thing that organizations harvest and curate before deciding where data needs to be, and how it can be utilized in enterprise intelligence use cases.
2:35 PM - 3:00 PM
Shared Data and Insights to Fuel Industry Ecosystems
Jeffrey Hojlo
Research Vice President, Future of Industry Ecosystems & Energy Insights, IDC
Shared Data and Insights to Fuel Industry Ecosystems
Industry ecosystems flourish when participants share data & insights in support of a common mission. With this is place, the collective ecosystem innovates more quickly, operates more flexibly, and engages more effectively with the end customer, consumer, citizen, or patient. Supported by our global Future of Industry Ecosystems survey, this track will explore how the combination of enterprise intelligence with shared data & insights from industry ecosystems empowers the digital business to scale and thrive in the face of whatever disruption, need, or opportunity is present.
Track 5 - Trust: The Digital Business' New Operating Context
1:35 PM - 2:00 PM
Future of Trust
Grace Trinidad
Research Director, Future of Trust, IDC
Future of Trust
Trust is emerging as the number one factor in acceptance of automation, in AI and ML, and in customer retention and business growth - but what does it mean? How do we know whether we have it? In this session we will describe how trust has changed and how it may change as emerging technologies are more widely adopted. We will also present findings from the IDC Trust Perception Index and the implications of these findings for the maintenance of trustworthy businesses.
2:05 PM - 2:30 PM
ESG Reporting & Management
Frank Dickson
Group Vice President, Security & Trust, IDC
ESG Reporting & Management
ESG is a buzzworthy topic that has captured the attention of most boards and CEOs, but the journey has just begun. Organizations are relatively immature in their approach to and perceptions of ESG and carbon emissions. While emerging legislation is providing impetus for ESG reporting, the grander vision of how ESG can create value for the organization is uncommon. ESG as a compliance exercise is perceived as an organizational cost and drain on resources. It is only the most revolutionary of companies that have conceptualized and embraced ESG management as a value enhancing exercise.
2:35 PM - 3:00 PM
Managed Security Services to Managed Detection and Response
Craig Robinson
Research Vice President, Security Services, IDC
Managed Security Services to Managed Detection and Response
Cybersecurity is no longer the exclusive domain of CIOs or CISOs as the Board and the rest of the C-suite need to be able to trust that their cybersecurity posture is resilient to the types of cyber attacks that are launched against them. The old ways of throwing more tools, along with more dollars, in an effort to protect the enterprise is useless when the trained practitioners that configure, tune and monitor the myriad tools can not be found or are unaffordable. MSSPs and MDR providers are stepping into the gap by providing the 24x7x365 monitoring, detection and response capabilities under the name of MDR or MXDR to allow for better security at a lower price point than is attainable if firms tried to provide this capability on their own.
Track 1 - Cloud: The Foundation for the Digital Business
1:35 PM - 2:00 PM
The Evolution of Cloud Infrastructure: Multicloud to Hybrid; Shared to Dedicated
1:35 PM - 2:00 PM
The Evolution of Cloud Infrastructure: Multicloud to Hybrid; Shared to Dedicated
Cloud is no longer a location but rather an operating model that helps digital-first businesses innovate faster with on-demand provisioning, elastic scaling, and global reach. To address an expanding range of business and technical requirements, new deployment models have emerged that include hybrid, multicloud, and distributed scenarios. Attend this session to learn the attributes of each deployment model and how best to the choose the right one for your business.
Dave McCarthy
Research Vice President, Cloud and Edge Infrastructure Services
2:05 PM - 2:30 PM
Distributed by Design: Workload Driven Infrastructure Architectures
Today's highly interconnected on-premises, edge, and public cloud infrastructure environment provide IT buyers with a complex set of options to maximize business resilience, optimize application and business performance, and facilitate innovation. Attend this session to learn how digital business leaders are applying workload-centric deployment strategies and transforming digital infrastructure operating models to deliver top priority business outcomes enabled by distributed architectures, intelligent automation, partner ecosystems, and as-a-service consumption models.
Mary Johnston Turner
Research Vice President, Future of Digital Infrastructure, IDC
2:35 PM - 3:00 PM
The Operations Cookbook: Transforming with AIOPs, Observability, IT Automation, and Cost Transparency
2:35 PM - 3:00 PM
The Operations Cookbook: Transforming with AIOPs, Observability, IT Automation, and Cost Transparency
This session will discuss many of the critical investments being used by enterprise IT Operations teams to empower speed and competitive differentiation in a tightening economic environment. It will analyze markets, key customer trends, and strategies across critical Operational pillars.
Stephen Elliot
Group Vice President, I&O, Cloud Operations, and DevOps, IDC
Track 2 - Enterprise Automation 2.0: Operating at Scale
1:35 PM - 2:00 PM
The Importance of a Fused Connectivity and Process Automation Strategy
1:35 PM - 2:00 PM
The Importance of a Fused Connectivity and Process Automation Strategy
Many businesses are prioritizing automation investments in 2023 despite economic uncertainty – but are those investments really poised for success? Islands of automation have many causes, but the impacts to businesses go beyond low ROI on automation projects, they can harm the customer experience and add multiple costs to the business. A holistic connectivity and process automation strategy with fusion tools and teams will deliver stronger business, boosting both enterprise resiliency, but also enterprise innovation. But to build consensus and a culture of automation, we need to deconstruct and reconstruct our understanding of automation as it means now and, in the future, and how AI is going to boost it along the way. For that we need a holistic automation strategy.
David Schubmehl
Research Vice President, Conversational Artificial Intelligence and Intelligent Knowledge Discovery, IDC
2:05 PM - 2:30 PM
DevOps Evolution: It’s no Longer Just About Deploying Apps
2:05 PM - 2:30 PM
DevOps Evolution: It’s no Longer Just About Deploying Apps
Using automation to drive velocity has been one of the core pillars of DevOps since its inception. While automation is critical for application delivery, it has been enriched by the adoption of cloud platforms and declarative Kubernetes distributed architectures. It is essential for driving developer efficiency, optimizing the value stream, infrastructure provisioning, security (i.e., DevSecOps), software testing, etc. This session will explore how modern DevOps teams can use automation and intelligence to deliver software faster, with improved reliability, quality, and security.
Jim Mercer
Research Vice President, DevOps & DevSecOps, IDC
2:35 PM - 3:00 PM
IT Ops: Understanding CloudOps and FinOps
2:35 PM - 3:00 PM
IT Ops: Understanding CloudOps and FinOps
IT budgets are under pressure from inflation and challenging economic forecasts. A recent IDC survey shows the number 1 area of investment for IT Automation in 2023 is FinOps. Private and public cloud resources are prime candidates for optimization. This session will discover how FinOps adoption and IT automation can drive savings and improved business outcomes for enterprises.
Jevin Jensen
Research Vice President, Infrastructure and Operations, IDC
Track 3 - Customer Data: The Revenue Engine
1:35 PM - 2:00 PM
Using CX Insights to Fuel Profitable Growth
1:35 PM - 2:00 PM
Using CX Insights to Fuel Profitable Growth
The days of growth at any cost are behind us and experiences are the tip of the spear for enterprises to profitably compete. Customer expectations for continuous engagement, and experiences that are curated on their terms implies that the value exchange between customers and brands will be defined by data. Enterprises can maximize business value through whole journey experiences which will require tapping into customers’ engagement with the brand, employees, and partners across the ecosystem. This requires firms to design experiences upwards from the data layer, drive permissible experiences via an active and unified portfolio of customer intelligence, and reorient the enterprise to deliver against customer outcomes.
Sudhir Rajagopal
Research Director, Future of Customer Experience, IDC
2:05 PM - 2:30 PM
Customer Data Platforms: Accelerating Revenue Through Improved CX
2:05 PM - 2:30 PM
Customer Data Platforms: Accelerating Revenue Through Improved CX
CDP adoption has grown rapidly as firms across industries, firm sizes and business models shift to omnichannel customer profiles driven by zero- and first-party data to improve CX, which becomes even more important during recessions. Use cases are expanding beyond marketing, with CDPs becoming customer data repositories for other front-office teams. In this session we will discuss:
Current CDP adoption, use cases, case studies
New technologies in CDPs (AI, personalization, data clean rooms, engagement channels)
Future opportunities and threats for the CDP market
David Wallace
Research Director, Customer Data and Analytics, IDC
2:35 PM - 3:00 PM
Matching Customer Data and Engagement - How Retailers are Building Connected Experiences
2:35 PM - 3:00 PM
Matching Customer Data and Engagement - How Retailers are Building Connected Experiences
This session describes how retailers are extending the value of CDP’s Drive Loyalty, ROI, and LTV. The holistic vision for Customer 360 is to tie customer touchpoints together through a central directory and corpus of information, so that customer care, marketing, operations and ultimately the customer finds more value in shared experiences. Attendees will hear about:
• A retailer’s journey from customer data manager to customer experience connector
• How retailers can improve outcomes by integrating Customer Data more holistically
• A vision for automated and prescient customer experiences
Ananda Chakravarty
Research VP, Retail Merchandising and Marketing Analytics Strategies, IDC
Track 4 - Enterprise Intelligence: Digital Differentiation with Decision Velocity
1:35 PM - 2:00 PM
The Data Supply Chain is Broken: Data Logistics Can Help Fix It
1:35 PM - 2:00 PM
The Data Supply Chain is Broken: Data Logistics Can Help Fix It
Data logistics, as the name implies, is the task of capturing, storing, moving, protecting and assuring data availability. Well-implemented data logistics reduces data silos and makes data more accessible for superior value extraction. It also improves data governance and reduces data risk. This sessions discusses practical aspects of data logistics and the key elements that go into it.
Phil Goodwin
Research Vice President, Infrastructure Systems, Platforms and Technologies, IDC
2:05 PM - 2:30 PM
Data Intelligence: The Foundation for Data Activation
2:05 PM - 2:30 PM
Data Intelligence: The Foundation for Data Activation
Data in the modern enterprise is highly distributed, diverse, and dynamic. Organizations are evaluating and implementing multiple architectural approaches to activate data for enterprise intelligence. Some are using cloud data warehouses, data lakes, lake houses, fabrics, meshes, and data control planes. Regardless of what architectural approach is used, the foundational element that needs to exist is data intelligence, fueled by metadata. Data intelligence should be the first thing that organizations harvest and curate before deciding where data needs to be, and how it can be utilized in enterprise intelligence use cases.
Stewart Bond
Vice President, Data Integration and Data Intelligence Software, IDC
2:35 PM - 3:00 PM
Shared Data and Insights to Fuel Industry Ecosystems
2:35 PM - 3:00 PM
Shared Data and Insights to Fuel Industry Ecosystems
Industry ecosystems flourish when participants share data & insights in support of a common mission. With this is place, the collective ecosystem innovates more quickly, operates more flexibly, and engages more effectively with the end customer, consumer, citizen, or patient. Supported by our global Future of Industry Ecosystems survey, this track will explore how the combination of enterprise intelligence with shared data & insights from industry ecosystems empowers the digital business to scale and thrive in the face of whatever disruption, need, or opportunity is present.
Jeffrey Hojlo
Research Vice President, Future of Industry Ecosystems & Energy Insights, IDC
Track 5 - Trust: The Digital Business' New Operating Context
1:35 PM - 2:00 PM
Future of Trust
1:35 PM - 2:00 PM
Future of Trust
Trust is emerging as the number one factor in acceptance of automation, in AI and ML, and in customer retention and business growth - but what does it mean? How do we know whether we have it? In this session we will describe how trust has changed and how it may change as emerging technologies are more widely adopted. We will also present findings from the IDC Trust Perception Index and the implications of these findings for the maintenance of trustworthy businesses.
Grace Trinidad
Research Director, Future of Trust, IDC
2:05 PM - 2:30 PM
ESG Reporting & Management
2:05 PM - 2:30 PM
ESG Reporting & Management
ESG is a buzzworthy topic that has captured the attention of most boards and CEOs, but the journey has just begun. Organizations are relatively immature in their approach to and perceptions of ESG and carbon emissions. While emerging legislation is providing impetus for ESG reporting, the grander vision of how ESG can create value for the organization is uncommon. ESG as a compliance exercise is perceived as an organizational cost and drain on resources. It is only the most revolutionary of companies that have conceptualized and embraced ESG management as a value enhancing exercise.
Frank Dickson
Group Vice President, Security & Trust, IDC
2:35 PM - 3:00 PM
Managed Security Services to Managed Detection and Response
2:35 PM - 3:00 PM
Managed Security Services to Managed Detection and Response
Cybersecurity is no longer the exclusive domain of CIOs or CISOs as the Board and the rest of the C-suite need to be able to trust that their cybersecurity posture is resilient to the types of cyber attacks that are launched against them. The old ways of throwing more tools, along with more dollars, in an effort to protect the enterprise is useless when the trained practitioners that configure, tune and monitor the myriad tools can not be found or are unaffordable. MSSPs and MDR providers are stepping into the gap by providing the 24x7x365 monitoring, detection and response capabilities under the name of MDR or MXDR to allow for better security at a lower price point than is attainable if firms tried to provide this capability on their own.
Craig Robinson
Research Vice President, Security Services, IDC
3:00 PM3:15 PM
Networking Break and IDC Product Showcase
During the break, check out the interactive IDC Product Showcase highlighting our latest offerings through a series of detailed demonstrations and conversations with IDC analysts and product specialists. The IDC Product Showcase is open until 3:15 pm for walk-up service and discussions. All attendees are welcome to stop by without appointment.
3:15 PM3:30 PM
CEO Study - Leading Through and Beyond the Recession
Philip Carter
Group Vice President, Worldwide Thought Leadership Research, IDC
IDC’s CEO Study 2023 will showcase the key findings of a quantitative survey of more than 400 CEOs across the world, together with 1:1 interviews with high profile executives sitting at the intersection of technology and business in a digital-first world.
3:30 PM4:10 PM
Closing Keynote
David Autor
Ford Professor of Economics and Associate Head of the MIT Department of Economics
MIT economist David Autor is one of the leading labor economists in the world. He is an internationally recognized authority on how technological change, globalization, and trade agreements affect labor markets. Autor also researches the causes of inequality and its remedies, including the effects of education and disabilities. David Autor is Ford Professor of Economics and associate department head of MIT’s Department of Economics.
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.
450 Summer Street, Boston, MA 02210 – (617) 476-6664
For your convenience, we have reserved a limited number of rooms at the Omni Boston Hotel at the Seaport. Special conference rates will be offered through February 13, 2023, 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 (888) 444-6664 and referencing: IDC Directions 2023. Conference Room Rate: USD $299+
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 1,300 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.
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Tech to Scale the Digital Business
