Accelerating Cloud Innovation in 2023

Organizations are looking for new ways to accommodate accelerating cloud growth and edicts. Business agility, competitive differentiation, and the desire to grow overall are the driving factors for cloud adoption. Cloud approaches are necessary in order for the business to evolve, but the transition isn’t easy. Many CIOs are tasked with adopting a cloud strategy but are equally challenged with keeping core business operations going. This puts a tremendous burden on IT as well as lines of business. In this keynote session, ESG Senior Analyst Paul Nashawaty will discuss the skill gaps that make it difficult for organizations to tackle cloud projects, how most organizations are adopting a distributed approach to cloud adoption, why application portability is important, and how the market is evolving to adapt to this new way of doing business.

When we speak of innovation we invariably default to conversations about technology and how and where it can change our organisations, but true innovation requires creative, original thinking to create the innovative ideas in the first place. It is said that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process and expecting a different result. The same applies to how we think. We need a different approach to enable innovation.

Join us in this webinar to explore how different approaches to organisational thinking can unlock potential within your organisation and release the potential for greater innovation.

Cloud is quickly becoming the tech enabler of choice to disrupt markets and sectors with differentiated products and services. Savvy business leaders are waking up to the Cloud arms race and utilising its innovative power to re-shape operations and gain competitive edge whilst at the same time harnessing opportunities to embed long term sustainability.

We’re no longer in the decade of lift and shift. If businesses aren’t using Cloud to innovate and drive sustainable outcomes in the next, they’ll simply be left behind. Cloud coupled with industry leading knowledge and insight holds real potential for businesses to be successful in both strategy and ambition whilst future-proofing at speed and scale.

In this session, Bijit Sikdar, Klairi Liis and Jason Sutherland explore the Current state of cloud Adoption & Maturity, Challenges & Mitigation approaches, the industry-centric thinking and trends driving accelerated adoption to the Cloud; with innovation, global issues and emerging challenges such as sustainability management at the heart of shaping solutions using Cloud products and services.

Meet our Panel of experts in the field:

Jason Sutherland (Director - Cloud CoE: Innovation & Strategy Lead, PwC)
Bijit Sikdar (Director - Cloud CoE: Multi Cloud Pre-Sales Architect, PwC)
Klairi Liis (Director - Consulting: Cloud Transformation and Sustainability Tooling, PwC)

Cloud infrastructure today is all built by composition. A disparate mix of hardware and software that must be composed into a final solution that is complex to build and costly and fragile to operate. But does it have to be this way?
Join SoftIron CTO Kenny Van Alstyne in this session to explore and understand the transformative technology that underpins SoftIron’s HyperCloud - the world’s first complete technology for building clouds.

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to discover this groundbreaking new technology.

Join us in this webinar to learn:
- The drawbacks with how clouds have traditionally been composed
- How rethinking the “silos” of compute network and storage can be transformative
- How the concepts like “state and statelessness” can empower a new cloud architecture
- How fragmented lifecycle management can be transformed into holistic fleet management deep in the the fabric of the technology
- How this enables HyperCloud to be deployed in as little as half a rack and half a day, yet to scale to almost infinity with just generalist IT skills, and with a fraction of the management overhead

With concerns about the environment constantly on the forefront, businesses should seek to do their part and reduce waste while maintaining efficiency and optimizing costs. The green cloud covers the many environmental benefits provided by cloud use such as reduced data center carbon footprint. Green cloud computing can even reduce costs when properly applied, making it a no-brainer for cloud-invested companies to explore. Tune into this panel discussion to hear experts in the field discuss some practical, real-life tips to making your cloud infrastructure more environmentally friendly:

• How to select a green cloud service provider.
• The action steps to help “green” your data center such as optimizing infrastructure and tracking usage.
• The newer technologies like machine learning that can replace the older more wasteful ones.
• How the green cloud can ultimately speed up digital transformation efforts.

Today there is a large gap in quality and access to pediatric healthcare between major cities in rich countries and rural areas in those same countries as well as the entire developing world. We have the power to help repair those gaps and raise the standards of children’s healthcare across the globe, through the development and deployment of pediatric cardiology, orthopedic, neurology, oncology and radiology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications.

Born out of his early commercial work in cloud computing and inspired by a student in his Stanford cloud computing class, Timothy Chou formed BevelCloud to transform children’s healthcare globally by creating privacy-preserving real-time pediatric applications based on access to 1,000,000 healthcare machines in all 500 children’s hospitals in the world.

In this talk, Timothy Chou describes how his team have constructed a widely distributed, privacy-preserving edge cloud service that optimizes communication and collaboration in pediatric healthcare to drive better outcomes for patients across the globe. He’ll discuss the benefits and challenges of using central architectures for AI in medicine and highlight real-time collaboration and privacy-preserving federated learning applications.

Join the session to discover:
- How software can do good in the world and transform children’s healthcare globally.
- The challenges central architectures have to advance AI in pediatric medicine.
- An introduction to a new edge cloud service.

There’s a reason only 32% of global data is currently being put to work. Though projections expect 180 zettabytes of data will be created by 2025, these deep troves of information are often locked up, behind skills gaps, data gravity problems, and incomplete hybrid architectures. Even when the data is accessible, diverse teams struggle to collaborate to create, refine, understand, govern, and innovate with their data. Meanwhile, costs are always a factor. Amidst all these challenges — is there a better way?

In this session, Faction CTO Matt Wallace will explore:

- How a multi-cloud approach solves data gravity and skills gravity
- How multi-cloud creates huge cost and innovation advantages over “multiple clouds”
- What the future of data warehouses, data lakes, and innovation looks like
- How a fluid, hybrid multi-cloud approach can give you the best of all worlds - and what pitfalls to avoid that drive up cost and complexity

The decentralized cloud (dcloud) is emerging as a cost-effective alternative to conventional public cloud services.

Research universities, for example, love the convenience of cloud services, but find it hard to afford to store all the data they have to collect and maintain.

As storage and compute become less tightly coupled, price-sensitive, early adopter customers have been storing their big data via services that harness the power and cost advantages of the dcloud: newly capable peer-to-peer data networks such as the Interplanetary File System (IPFS) and the cloud-friendly infrastructure that’s already being built on top.

Other early adopter organizations such as the Chrome development unit of Alphabet, Netflix and Opera have been using IPFS-based storage as a simpler, cheaper and in some other ways more suitable alternative for certain classes of data storage. Tape and other “cold storage” methods are under replacement threat as a result.

This talk will provide an overview of dcloud (a.k.a., services that use the dgraph/dweb/web3) or P2P data network cloud storage alternatives for enterprise, what the pros and cons are of these new services, and how they promise to expand the storage options available to mainstream companies.

Speaker bio:
Alan Morrison is an independent consultant and freelance writer on data tech and enterprise transformation. He is a contributor to Data Science Central with over 35 years of experience as an analyst, researcher, writer, editor and technology trends forecaster, including 20 years in emerging tech R&D at PwC.

Whether they know it or not, most companies' IT infrastructure is multi-cloud. Even when using a single cloud strategy to drive digital transformation, companies have workloads hosted in AWS, Office365 for the desktops, Salesforce for CRM, SAP Concur for travel and expenses. It doesn’t get more multi-cloud than that.

The challenges are many:
· How does a company manage all these different SaaS, PaaS and IaaS environments?
· How do they keep security guardrails consistent?
· What about keeping track of cloud native innovations?
· And, most of all, how do they control costs?

In this session, join Jeroen Mulder (Principal Consultant at Fujitsu) as he discusses the principle of the single pane of glass view in managing business environments across cloud propositions, from security and cost management perspective. Attendees will come away with a deeper understanding of how to keep their company safe and financially sound on the road to digital transformation.

Using cloud and cloud-migration to accelerate business growth and explore new ways to innovate and quickly implement new services emphasizes the need to adopt the mindset of security-by-design and zero trust. Without a solid foundation of cyberprotection, businesses open a gateway for cyberattacks and cybercriminals to cause severe and irreparable damage.

The core and foundation of true cybersecurity is validated digital identities (eID): The prerequisite of all other cybersecurity measures. Validated digital identities must be the one and only authorized way to identify and gain access across all user groups, services, and devices.

For more than 15 years, Denmark has provided public access to the eID-solution MitID. 3rd. generation is now available delivering one unified system giving both citizens, employees, public authorities, and businesses easy access to validated digital identities. Bjarke Alling has been closely involved in the development of the solution and will share insights into how it is used and how validated digital identities can be implemented.

Takeaways:
1.) How the Danish solution for validated digital identities works
2.) What the Danish solution for validates identities gives access to
3.) How to adopt validated digital identities as the foundation of a truly cybersecure cloud infrastructure

About the speaker:
Bjarke Alling is co-founder and acting Group Managing Director of cybersecurity company Liga. He is a current member and prior co-chair of the National Danish Cyber Security Council, former chair of their IT-security committee, member of the board at The Danish ICT Industry Association (ITB), and member of the board of D-Mærket (D-Seal)

Cloud technology has experienced massive growth, driven by the explosion of remote and hybrid workforces. Cloud computing provides a myriad of benefits for companies like increased growth, improved efficiency and faster workflows. But with this technology rapidly evolving, it is essential to stay on top of the new trends to ensure your company is gaining the most leverage from its cloud use and practicing a forward-thinking approach.

Tune into this panel discussion to hear top experts in the field discuss the key cloud computing trends to keep an eye on for this coming year and suggest how companies can practically apply these technologies while avoiding the trap of immediately jumping on a new cloud technology simply because it's another buzzword.

Key discussion points:
- The multi-cloud strategy and its many benefits.
- The growing role AI and machine learning capabilities in cloud services.
- The increased adoption of cloud-native apps and how companies can best leverage them.
- The green cloud computing frameworks and how it emphasizes the environmental sustainability of cloud computing.

Moderated by: Simon Ratcliffe, Mentor and Adviser, Ensono
Alicia Howard, Product Manager, VMware Aria Cost powered by CloudHealth

Today’s cloud teams have a lot on their hands. Some are working to modernize and migrate legacy applications to the cloud, others are struggling to keep up with the fast pace of change with cloud resources and services, all while managing a multi-cloud world, with workloads spanning on-prem data centers, private clouds, and public clouds.

Join us for an introduction to VMware AriaTM, a new multi-cloud management solution, and a deep dive into cloud cost optimization.

Learn how VMware Aria Cost powered by CloudHealth (formerly CloudHealth):
• Gives business visibility into multi-cloud usage and costs
• Delivers recommendations for cost and usage optimization
• Governs your multi-cloud environment with policy-based alerts and automation
• Helps businesses implement FinOps best practices

AI brings unprecedented opportunities to businesses, but also incredible responsibility. Its direct impact on people’s lives has raised considerable questions around AI ethics, data governance, trust and legality. In fact, Accenture’s 2022 Tech Vision research found that only 35% of global consumers trust how AI is being implemented by organizations. And 77% think organizations must be held accountable for their misuse of AI.

As machine learning and AI become more ubiquitous, businesses will need to find ways of overcoming these questions, deploying AI systems that empower employees and fairly impact customers and society.

Join Monark Vyas (Managing Director – Applied Intelligence, Accenture) to explore how to leverage Responsible AI practices to design and deploy AI systems that engender trust and allow your business to flourish.

Topics for discussion include:
- Why AI and Machine Learning systems need to be built responsibly
- The principles of responsible AI
- How to put them into practice
- And more...

The impact of the business need for faster cycles and increasing flexibility is driving DevOps and Cloud ideas throughout the IT value stream. This has significant meaning for the compute side of the world. We will explore the “Environments on Demand” and how it impacts the IT Value Stream. We will examine key elements of DevOps and cloud that help address the new world and optimize the investment.

In this session, we will discuss:

1. Accelerating Change – Driving Forces (eg. Change Drivers, Industry Impact)
2. DevOps and Cloud – The Foundation (eg. Continuous Flow, Pipeline, Cloud Services)
3. Environments on Demand – Key Elements (eg. Infrastructure as Code (IAC), Automation, Integration & Ephemeral)
4. Environments on Demand – Real World Scenarios

Presented by:
Terry Brennan, Managing Director, Orasi

From the digital core to the data fabric, the data landscape has evolved dramatically over the past decades. We have witnessed the rise in complex data-driven applications, providing solutions to challenges which were previously thought to be unsolvable. Data fabrics will accelerate the development of these type of solutions, to create a seamless experience across disparate data technologies and their varied connection mechanisms. Most importantly, data fabrics will provide the protective umbrella-like cover for effective data management across an organization and when done right, simplify data partnerships across multiple organizations.

Join Dr. Pragyansmita Nayak for this data management-focused session to:
1. Define Data Fabric.
2. Understand its critical role in the data management ecosystem.
3. Gain insight into how it enables data-driven solutions.

Is your team developing AI solutions at pace with business demand? Modern cloud architectures have enabled a scale and flexibility for production AI not possible less than a decade ago. However, data science teams are seeing increased demand for new models often exceeding their capacity.

In this session, we'll share why Agile AI is necessary for modern data science teams and practical learnings on how to leverage the cloud to:
- Increase time to value
- Decrease time to production
- Ensure the success of your models over the long term

Plus, we'll share multiple DataRobot customer stories and examples of Agile AI across the AI lifecycle.