Technology & Innovation APAC

October 31 – November 1, 2023  |  Sydney & Digital

Agenda

Tuesday

Oct 31
  • 8:00 am – 9:00 am AEDT Breakfast
  • 9:00 am – 10:50 am AEDT Opening Remarks & Keynote Sessions
  • 10:50 am – 11:20 am AEDT Marketplace Break
  • 11:20 am – 12:25 pm AEDT Breakout & Case Study Sessions
  • 12:25 pm – 1:30 pm AEDT Lunch
  • 1:30 pm – 2:35 pm AEDT Breakout Sessions
  • 2:35 pm – 3:20 pm AEDT Marketplace Break
  • 3:20 pm – 4:40 pm AEDT Keynote Sessions & Closing Remarks
  • 4:40 pm – 5:40 pm AEDT Reception

Wednesday

Nov 1
  • 8:30 am – 9:25 am AEDT Breakfast & Forrester Women's Leadership
  • 9:30 am – 10:15 am AEDT Welcome Back & Keynote Session
  • 10:15 am – 11:00 am AEDT Marketplace Break
  • 11:00 am – 12:05 pm AEDT Breakout Sessions
  • 12:05 pm – 1:05 pm AEDT Lunch
  • 1:05 pm – 1:35 pm AEDT Breakout Sessions
  • 1:40 pm – 2:15 pm AEDT Keynote Session and Wrap Up

Tuesday Oct 31

8:00 am – 9:00 am AEDT

General Breakfast

9:00 am – 9:45 am AEDT

Welcome To Country and Opening Remarks

Speakers:
George Colony, CEO, Forrester
Sam Higgins, Principal Analyst, Forrester
Michael West, Cultural representative & Traditional Custodian, Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council

9:45 am – 10:15 am AEDT

Keynote: Technology’s Vital Role In The Customer-Obsessed Growth Engine

Customers and growth are the raison d’être of companies and a powerful motivation for the missions of nonprofits and government agencies. Technology is an essential component — the power — of the growth engine. Technology enables growth with secure, rock-solid operations and scale. Technology creates growth with new products, platforms, and market channels. And technology amplifies growth with continuous improvement from insights and AI. The big key for technology-powered growth is collaboration within the technology organization between technology leaders and marketing, digital, sales, product, and customer experience colleagues.  

In this session, you will:  

  • Onboard a simple framework to shape your technology-powered growth engine.  
  • Establish the connections you need to succeed.  
  • Learn how to develop a career in technology with a growth mindset. 

Speakers:
Sam Higgins, Principal Analyst, Forrester
Josianne Fortin, Digital Accelerator Manager, Woodside Energy

10:15 am – 10:45 am AEDT

Keynote: Reflecting On Australia’s AI Ecosystem Momentum

For the past decade, artificial intelligence (AI) adoption has evolved from a futuristic promise pursued by early adopters with mature technology teams to a legitimate and rapidly growing priority shared by business and technology leaders alike. Australia, like many countries, has a rapidly transforming AI ecosystem, where businesses are generating significant new revenue streams and efficiencies using AI technology. As the pace of AI-driven change accelerates through the convergence of natural language processing, large language models, and transfer learning, it is important that business and technology leaders understand how best to develop and deploy responsible AI solutions to maximize opportunities while mitigating the risks of unintended consequences. 

Speakers:
Stela Solar, Director, National AI Centre, CSIRO

10:50 am – 11:20 am AEDT

Marketplace Coffee Break & Networking (In-Person Only)

Marketplace breaks are your chance to connect with sponsors and catch up with colleagues on the show floor.

11:20 am – 11:50 am AEDT

Breakout Sessions

Make Technology A Strategic Differentiator
Push Down Your Cost Curve While Raising Productivity By Putting Your Technology Investments In Motion

The world is witnessing a significant shift in the way businesses operate, and technological investments are at the forefront of this change. The rise of modern technologies like artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and automation has opened new opportunities for businesses to invest in productivity that drives the top and bottom line. This presentation brings a simple model linking technology investment and growth. 

Session takeaways:  

  • Learn how technology investments impact productivity over time. 
  • Identify the opportunities and challenges that come with investing in technology capabilities. 
  • Apply key factors driving productivity to funnel your technology investment strategy. 

Speakers:
Frederic Giron, VP, Senior Research Director, Forrester

Power Your Business With Awesome Software
Making Strong Platform Choices: When To Build, Buy, Configure, Or Compose

The simple build-versus-buy framing is handy but usually based on outdated assumptions and wishful thinking about software and digital business. It underestimates the complexity and cost of packaged solutions as well as the value of platforms and their ecosystems. And it overestimates the cost and complexity of modern custom development as well as the similarities between firms in a truly adaptive digital environment. For an effective digital enterprise, pure buy doesn’t exist, and pure build is often impractical. The real question for any given software decision is: Should we configure a packaged app or compose software components to obtain the custom solution we need? 

During this session, we will: 

  • Explain how to create an adaptable software culture. 
  • Give you three specific strategies for how to get started no matter where you are today. 

Speakers:
Leslie Joseph, Principal Analyst, Forrester

11:55 am – 12:25 pm AEDT

Case Study Sessions (In-Person Only)

Hear real world case studies showcasing the value of partnering with the right technology provider.

Attend one session:

PagerDuty: The future of critical Incident Response with AIOps

Modern enterprises need a modern approach to resolving critical, time-sensitive and business-impact unplanned issues. Due to major revenue, cost and brand implications, incident response needs to be event-driven, automation-first and people-centric. Incidents are inevitable but the reliability of the customer experience is dictated by the operational excellence behind-the-scenes. Gone are the days when we could wait for a ticket to start addressing issues. Come and learn new ways to applying automation, AI and embedded best practices in raising the maturity of your digital operations. Hear first-hand case studies on advanced use cases of automated incident diagnosis and resolution, AIOps-powered event reduction and real-time customer service.

Speakers:
Kenith de Beer, Senior Software Engineering Manager, Serko
Abhijit Pendyal, Director, Customer Solutions , PagerDuty

Twilio Segment: From Puzzle Piece to Masterpiece - Unlocking the Customer Story Through Data

Many businesses, especially in the Asia-Pacific region, are grappling with an ever-expanding volume of data, and the outlook suggests this trend will persist. In our session we invite you to envision every data point within your organisation as a unique puzzle piece. Just like each puzzle piece contributes to a much larger and more captivating picture, every data point plays a crucial role in shaping a comprehensive understanding of your customers. Why the metaphor of puzzle pieces? As customers engage with brands, they leave behind a myriad of distinct imprints and interactions. These various data pieces hold the potential to reveal a masterpiece—the full story of your customers, waiting to be uncovered and understood.

Speakers:
Blake Rowley, Principal Solution Engineer, Twilio Segment

12:25 pm – 1:30 pm AEDT

Lunch & Marketplace (In-person Only)

Marketplace breaks are your chance to connect with sponsors and catch up with colleagues on the show floor.

1:30 pm – 2:00 pm AEDT

Breakout Sessions

Turn Tech Debts Into High Yields Now And In The Near Future
Pay Down Debt To Reinvest In The Future

Technical debt’s definition has expanded over the years; organizations now recognize its many forms. Forrester customers manage debt in software, vendor product, security, knowledge, hardware, and more. Based on best practices reported by Forrester clients, we will discuss an integrated data capture and reporting approach that closes the loop with investment and planning and frees up much-needed capital for investment in future tech.  

Attend this session to understand: 

  • The importance of robust asset management and application portfolio management and their linkage to tech debt. 
  • How to calculate tech debt by identifying all the relevant components that contribute to it. 
  • What best practices to build for continuous monitoring and management of tech debt. 
  • How to effectively free up resources using tech debt management and reinvest in future technologies. 

Speakers:
Biswajeet Mahapatra, Principal Analyst, Forrester

Foster Resilience To Enable Creativity
Show, Don’t Tell Developers How To Secure Serverless

Serverless has emerged as an enabling technology to help developers focus on what the business cares about — their code — rather than infrastructure concerns. Although simplifying and democratizing software development might improve time to value, the fact remains that applications are the most frequent external attack vector for companies. But application security can improve only if developers either code securely or remediate existing security flaws — and, unfortunately, many don’t receive training with proper security know-how. Our interviews with serverless technology providers and end users have revealed the best practices developers and security professionals should leverage to make the most of this emerging but rapidly maturing technology approach.  

In this session, you will learn: 

  • How to deliver in-the-moment application security education before all employees become developers. 
  • The four development best practices you need to embrace for serverless success. 
  • How to avoid security pitfalls when embracing serverless techniques.

Speakers:
Janet Worthington, Senior Analyst, Forrester

2:05 pm – 2:35 pm AEDT

Breakout Sessions

Make Technology A Strategic Differentiator
Develop Empathy To Drive Better Stakeholder Experiences And Strategic Advantage

In today’s hypercompetitive marketplace, delivering exceptional customer, employee, and partner experiences has become a company’s critical differentiator. To achieve this, IT organizations must adopt a human-centered approach that aligns technology capabilities with customers’, employees’, and partners’ outcomes. By applying user-centered design, journey and experience analysis, and empathy tools, IT organizations can create solutions that exceed expectations, enhance their experiences, and deliver a strategic advantage.    

Join this session to:   

  • Gain insights into the benefits that come when an IT organization takes a human-centered approach that places the needs of customers, employees, and partners at the forefront.   
  • Learn best practices on how IT organizations can adopt human-centered design, customer journey mapping, and empathy tools to enhance the experiences and outcomes for all stakeholders. 

Speakers:
Riccardo Pasto, Principal Analyst, Forrester

Power Your Business With Awesome Software
Architect A Future Fit Data Platform

Enterprise resilience, creativity, and adaptiveness only happen with a future fit architecture strategy and platform. Modern data architecture approaches are use case driven and pattern enabled for data flexibility, scale, and speed.  

In this session, Forrester will share the five foundational architecture patterns and emerging data platform capabilities needed for today’s and tomorrow’s insight-driven business. 

Speakers:
Michele Goetz, VP, Principal Analyst, Forrester

2:35 pm – 3:20 pm AEDT

Marketplace Coffee Break & Networking (In-Person Only)

Marketplace breaks are your chance to connect with sponsors and catch up with colleagues on the show floor.

2:40 pm - 3:00 pm | Coffee Chat: Will Generative AI Steal Your Job?

Coffee Chats are informal discussions on trending topics. Feel free to bring your questions and help spark the conversation.

Speakers:
Sam Higgins, Principal Analyst, Forrester

3:20 pm – 3:50 pm AEDT

Keynote: Leadership Is Not About Getting Lost In Each New Technology (We’re Looking At You GenAI!) (In-Person Only)

Generative AI has triggered a hype cycle the likes of which we have not seen since Apple launched the iPhone. Every LinkedIn article, conversation, conference, and report from every company is here to tell you what you should know, and why you should drop everything right now and pay attention to it. But in this session, we’re not going to talk about “it”. Why? Because this is not the first, nor will it be the last, innovative technology you’ll see in your career. If as leaders we are doing our jobs well, then our teams and organizations will have the tools and resources to evaluate new innovations. We won’t be subsumed by the hype but rather ready to put new technology into practice when the time is right. Join Sam Higgins, Principal Analyst, as he sits down with two exceptional technology leaders to find out what it takes to foster a learning culture that creates space and psychological safety to test and learn with new tools. And how good leaders stick to a human-centered vision that empowers individuals to decide for themselves what value the shiny thing of the day has for them and their work.

Speakers:
Sam Higgins, Principal Analyst, Forrester
Sheridan Ware, Former Chief Information & Technology Officer, and Board Director, Charter Hall & Sustainable Digitalisation Project
Kathryn King, General Manager, Technology and Strategy Group, eSafety

3:50 pm – 4:35 pm AEDT

Forrester Technology Awards (In-Person Only)

This session will see the announcement of the winners of this year’s Technology Awards in two categories: Technology Strategy Impact and Enterprise Architecture.

Speakers:
Dane Anderson, SVP, International Research & Product, Forrester
Frederic Giron, VP, Senior Research Director, Forrester
Phanimitra Bhethanabottla, Global CIO and CDO, Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd.
Brajabhusan Panda, Global Head of Digital CoE and Enterprise Architecture, Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd.
Michelle P. Rodriguez, Vice President & Enterprise Architecture Head, Union Bank of the Philippines
Dennis D. Omila, Executive Vice President, Chief Technology and Operations Officer, Union Bank of the Philippines

4:35 pm – 4:40 pm AEDT

Closing Remarks

Speakers:
Sam Higgins, Principal Analyst, Forrester

4:40 pm – 5:40 pm AEDT

Reception

Join us for a reception full of networking, fun, food, and refreshments.

Wednesday Nov 1

8:30 am – 9:25 am AEDT

Breakfast

Grab a coffee and come and join us for a Forrester Women’s Leadership session and a Government Roundtable

Forrester Women's Leadership: Fireside Chat: Moving Beyond “Beating The Odds

In the last two decades, a significant amount of money and time has been spent in efforts to diversify the tech and security workforces. While progress is happening, it seems to move at a glacial pace. Women are still significantly underrepresented in tech and security as a whole, and dramatically underrepresented in tech and security leadership. The women who do succeed make it by beating the odds and overcoming significant obstacles in their path to success. This problem represents a risk, not just for women, but for the industry as a whole. Join this panel to discuss how women can move beyond surviving despite the odds, to thriving in an ecosystem of opportunity.

Speakers:
Jinan Budge, VP, Principal Analyst, Forrester
Simone Briggs, Senior Consultant, Forrester
Janet Worthington, Senior Analyst, Forrester
Michele Goetz, VP, Principal Analyst, Forrester
Josianne Fortin, Digital Accelerator Manager, Woodside Energy

Government Roundtable | Tech Priorities vs. Embracing Innovation: Striking the Balance

All government attendees are invited to an interactive session following yesterday’s keynote, where you can discuss your strategies for effectively handling tech debt, regulatory challenges, and daily tasks, all while leveraging innovative technologies to propel your agencies into the future. Share insights and find common ground for success.

Speakers:
Sam Higgins, Principal Analyst, Forrester
Riccardo Pasto, Principal Analyst, Forrester

9:30 am – 9:40 am AEDT

Welcome Back

Speakers:
Dane Anderson, SVP, International Research & Product, Forrester

9:40 am – 10:10 am AEDT

Keynote: Exercise Empathy To Break Down The Silos Between Security And Tech (In-Person Only)

Each day, IT and security teams face major risks and concerns globally; unfortunately, teams are often working against each other by not presenting a unified front and, at times, exhibiting outward hostility. Yet technology and security executives have a multitude of benefits to reap by having a unified and consolidated security vision and sound relationships and working together to enable the business.   

Attend this keynote to: 

  • Explore the root causes of the divide and tensions between IT and security. 
  • Discover the surprising commonalities between technology and security leaders and teams. 
  • Build humanity in the interactions and behaviors with infosec leaders and teams.  
  • Learn how to operationalize the collaboration required to build trust between teams.  
  • Exercise empathy to build trust across teams. 

Speakers:
Jinan Budge, VP, Principal Analyst, Forrester
Charmaine Valmonte, CISO, Aboitiz Equity Ventures

10:15 am – 11:00 am AEDT

Marketplace Coffee Break & Networking (In-Person Only)

Marketplace breaks are your chance to connect with sponsors and catch up with colleagues on the show floor.

11:00 am – 11:30 am AEDT

Breakouts

Lead A High-Performing Team
Panel: The Promise And Peril Of Generative AI For Tech

Generative AI is the creative side of AI. You’ve heard of and perhaps even tried ChatGPT. But generative AI technology also includes image generation, novel data generation for scientific exploration, and TuringBots that generate code. Forrester coined the term TuringBot in 2020, when we saw the potential for machine learning algorithms to supplement parts of the software development lifecycle. This applied AI is one of the hottest but least well-known emerging technologies that could accelerate your firm’s tech delivery by orders of magnitude. But many technologies Forrester covers come with a “buyer beware” label.   

The Forrester experts on this panel will attempt to answer what generative AI means for the tech organization itself and how far and fast it will go.

Speakers:
Leslie Joseph, Principal Analyst, Forrester
Michele Goetz, VP, Principal Analyst, Forrester
Janet Worthington, Senior Analyst, Forrester

11:00 am – 12:05 am AEDT

Learn-A-Skill: Burnout In Cybersecurity & Technology: A Love Story. (In-Person Only)

New in 2023, we have programmed several interactive sessions led by Forrester analysts. Each hour-long session features hands-on exercises that will equip you with the skills needed to lead change within your organization. ​No additional payment is required to attend. Sessions are first come, first served.

Today, 52% of the workforce is experiencing some form of burnout. Preliminary studies show that cybersecurity workers are suffering burnout at a rate higher than healthcare workers. In this context, this hidden epidemic and the impact of burnout on teams’ mental health, as well as on their organization’s cybersecurity and technology posture, are immense. Did you know that it is possible for employees to be highly engaged and experiencing burnout at the same time? The fact is that some of your best, most engaged rock-star employees are also burning out, and you won’t see until it’s too late. We’ll show you how to identify the different types of burnout and how to support the people who want to be their best at work without depleting themselves. Participants in this session will:

  • Rethink what burnout is and how to identify its many causes and manifestations.
  • Understand the risk of ignoring burnout and learn to work with people and managers to avoid and address it.
  • Leave with examples of next steps for preventing, identifying, and redressing burnout in their teams and divisions.

Speakers:
Jinan Budge, VP, Principal Analyst, Forrester

11:35 am – 12:05 pm AEDT

Breakouts

Turn Tech Debts Into High Yields Now And In The Near Future
Get Cloud Costs Under Control With FinOps

Cloud is key to future fit technology strategies, but the complexity of cloud cost management is increasingly challenging cloud adoption. FinOps can help companies take control of cloud costs fast, and the economic recession has pushed it to the forefront for technology executives.  

This session will help you: 

  • Learn the key concepts and business value of FinOps. 
  • Understand major technology capabilities of FinOps and four ways to optimize cloud costs. 

Speakers:
Charlie Dai, VP, Principal Analyst, Forrester

12:05 pm – 1:05 pm AEDT

Lunch & Marketplace (In-Person Only)

Marketplace breaks are your chance to connect with sponsors and catch up with colleagues on the show floor.

12:35 pm – 1:35 pm AEDT

Hack-A-Thon: Explore the Boundaries Of Generative AI

Grab your lunch and join Forrester in a hack-a-thon where you will have the opportunity to work in teams using various large language models to solve a big world problem, while you push the boundaries of this technology and discover what it can and cannot do. The event will be structured to not only raise your awareness of the capabilities of Gen AI, but also it will provide a unique format to see firsthand where these solutions have limitations.

Get excited to roll up your sleeves and test a breadth of Gen AI tools! Please bring your laptop set up with free accounts for the following tools:

  • Google Bard
  • ChatGPT
  • Bing Chat (available only in the Microsoft Edge browser)
  • Adobe Firefly
  • Pictory

Speakers:
Frederic Giron, VP, Senior Research Director, Forrester
Sam Higgins, Principal Analyst, Forrester

1:05 pm – 1:35 pm AEDT

Breakouts

Foster Resilience To Enable Creativity
Panel: Creative Resilience: An Oxymoron

Generative AI is the creative side of AI. You’ve heard of and perhaps even tried ChatGPT. But generative AI technology also includes image generation, novel data generation for scientific exploration, and TuringBots that generate code. Forrester coined the term TuringBot in 2020, when we saw the potential for machine learning algorithms to supplement parts of the software development lifecycle. This applied AI is one of the hottest but least well-known emerging technologies that could accelerate your firm’s tech delivery by orders of magnitude. But many technologies Forrester covers come with a “buyer beware” label.

The Forrester experts on this panel will attempt to answer what generative AI means for the tech organization itself and how far and fast it will go.

Speakers:
Charlie Dai, VP, Principal Analyst, Forrester
Janet Worthington, Senior Analyst, Forrester
Biswajeet Mahapatra, Principal Analyst, Forrester

1:40 pm – 2:10 pm AEDT

Keynote: Forrester's 2024 Predictions (In-Person Only)

With an inflation crisis and the looming threat of economic recession, all organizations, regardless of industry size or scope, will face even greater pressure in 2024 to harness technology-led innovation to deliver business value. The pace of technology-driven change has never been greater. What was last year’s metaverse is this year’s ChatGPT. What emerging opportunities should you focus on and why? When your organisation is working with limited budgets, competing priorities, a need for talent transformation, and the ever-rising expectations from customers, partners and regulators, choosing the right technology investment path has never been so critical. How do you decide when and what to invest in? This session will provide a “sneak peak” into some of Forrester’s insights and predictions for 2024 and beyond.

Speakers:
John Brand, VP, Advisor, Forrester
Biswajeet Mahapatra, Principal Analyst, Forrester
Janet Worthington, Senior Analyst, Forrester
Frederic Giron, VP, Senior Research Director, Forrester

2:10 pm – 2:15 pm AEDT

Closing Remarks

Speakers:
Sam Higgins, Principal Analyst, Forrester