CIO National Virtual Summit

New York, NY, May 18, 2021 - Apex Assembly will be bringing together 60+ CIO’s and other Divisional Leaders from F500 and Global 2000 Enterprise organizations. In collaboration with industry leading speakers and our Sponsors BMC, DataStax, PagerDuty, Everbridge, Denodo, eSentire and Apptio, we will examine the challenges and concentrate on the most pressing issues that lie ahead in 2021. 

We will kick off the day with our opening Keynote Fireside Chat, hosted by BMC. The topic will be on “Key Elements for Future Digital Success.” Herb VanHook, VP of Strategy - CTO Office with BMC will moderate the panel. Joining the discussion we have Craig Sisson, Technology Solutions Director with BMC, Rob Teel, CTO for the State of Oklahoma, Dennis Hodges, CIO of Inteva Products and Vinay Indraganti, VP, Global Digital Transformation and Strategy at Ingredion. Digital technology has enabled and accelerated a shift by companies in how they engage with their customers, the products and services they offer and a redefinition of market and process velocity. Leading organizations are evolving to become Autonomous Digital Enterprises – focused on the outcomes of agility, customer centricity, and actionable insights. These new models hinge upon operating model changes coupled with excellence in future-state technology areas. This session will explore how organizations are embracing and addressing the changes and opportunities brought about by these shifts.

DataStax, our Disrupter Presenter will then give a talk on “Smart Apps Win Markets: Why “Fast Data” is the New Gold” with their speaker, Bryan Kirschner, Vice President, Strategy at DataStax. Technology is not a strategy, but some strategies are only possible with the right technology in place, backed by an operating model tuned to make the most of its capabilities. More data than ever is available to CIOs and CDOs–but architecture and practices fit for handling “less data, more slowly” aren’t enough to use it compete and win. We will dive into how today’s leaders have shown the path toward starting, scaling, and sustaining shared mastery of the new “fast data” powering winning apps to drive growth.

Following on the agenda, our Disrupter Presenter, PagerDuty, will present on “Unlocking the Power of AIOps for Real-time Work” with Heath Newburn, Solutions Specialist - AlOps & Digital Operations with PagerDuty. In this talk, we’ll discuss the nature of Real-Time Work in AIOps and how Actionable Intelligence empowers Automated Incident Response, allowing your people to focus on creating value instead of firefighting and toil.

Next up, our Fireside Chat sponsor, Everbridge, will host a conversation on “Optimizing Incident Response across your ITIL & DevOps Service Delivery Model'' Prashant Darisi, VP, Global Solutions will moderate the discussion. Joining him, we have Robert Lacy, VP DevOps & Security; CISO for LegalShield and Sreeveni Kancharla, VP of Information Systems and Technology with UserTesting. Digital Transformation remains #1 on the CIO priority. However, running IT efficiently continues to be their #1 responsibility. And managing transformative initiatives while carrying tools and processes from decades ago creates an interesting challenge for all CIOs, especially as outages occur often, threats remain pervasive and pressure to increase service delivery grows. In order to support Digital Transformation efforts, and running IT Incident Management, Major Incident Response, and Cybersecurity response, we are seeing a shift in Incident response from traditional ITIL processes, to adoption of DevOps concepts. Legacy ITIL processes tend to be process heavy, siloed, with low degree of automation. As organizations apply DevOps Concepts such as continuous service delivery, AGILE methodology, with high levels of automation ultimately leading to higher service reliability, the shift is fueling cultural changes, rapid incident response along the cutting edge concept of centralized GSOCs and Fusion Centers to consolidate Physical and Digital crisis response.

Next, our Disrupter Presenter, Denodo, will present on the topic, “Data Fabrics for Enterprise Data Management? What Analyst Firms Are Peddling as New Trend in 2021” with a presentation by Ravi Shankar, SVP & CMO at Denodo. Gartner and Forrester started writing research articles about “data fabric” in 2020. Gartner listed it as one of the top ten trends and Forrester even published a Wave called “Enterprise Data Fabric.” So, what is a data fabric? Gartner and Forrester have slightly differing definitions, but they both ultimately mean the same — knitting together disparate data irrespective of its location, format, or latency. And they advocate adding AI/ML on top of it.

The following session, eSentire, our Disrupter Presenter, will cover the topic, “Cybersecurity is not an IT Problem to Solve. It’s a Business Risk to Manage” Mark Sangster, Principal Evangelist and VP Industry Security Strategies with eSentire will give the presentation. Most companies fall victim to attacks because the C-suite doesn’t understand the risk, and the IT practitioners speak a language that doesn’t resonate with business leaders. For more than a decade, Mark Sangster has worked with technical teams, C-suite executives, and Boards to provide cybersecurity awareness training and run real-world simulations to bring both parties together to address risks, respond to cyber threats, and ensure they protect the interests of their stakeholders. Join eSentire as they explore a five pillar executive approach to cyber risk management.

To wrap up the day, we have a fantastic Closing Keynote Panel hosted by our sponsor, Apptio, on “The Triumphs and Tragedies of Digital Transformation.” Phil Alfano, Field CTO with Apptio will host a panel discussion on how the world of digital transformation changed overnight and why existing systems can’t keep up. Joining the panel we have Fernando Velazquez, CTO Technology Transformation and Innovation Director with Walmart, Mahesh Paolini-Subramanya, CTO with BlockFi and Raj Singh Managing Director, Multicloud Platform with State Street.

Through these thought leadership sessions, panels and live chats we will bring to the forefront today's top successes, challenges and focus areas for CIO’s in the enterprise. 

Apex Assembly specializes in bringing together technology leaders from the world’s largest companies to discuss technology trends and focus on solving their biggest technology challenges. By uniting exclusive C-level communities, Apex offers unparalleled opportunities to mindshare in a secure environment and collaborate on industry trends, challenges and successes. Headquartered in Midtown Manhattan, Apex Assembly hosts regional and national events focused on open discussion and education to assist technology leaders in building lasting business relationships. Learn more at https://www.apexassembly.com/.