Technology & Innovation Summit
APAC

Technology, Data, & Security Leaders

August 19, 2025  |  Sydney & Digital

Agenda

Monday Aug 18

3:30 pm – 5:30 pm AEDT

Workshop: Build Your High-Performance IT Strategy And Roadmap To Drive Business Value

Ensure that your IT strategy continuously pursues improved business results with a plan that links tech-based initiatives with strategic business outcomes. This hands-on workshop lays out your IT strategy on a page, based on your organization’s mission, vision, and strategic objectives. With this strategy on a page in your hands, you are on course to develop your roadmap plan. The program is designed for attendees to:
  • Build strategic goals, values, and behaviors for the IT organization based on strategic business objectives.
  • Understand how to set the direction for tech architecture, skills, practices, and platforms.
  • Plan for the points along the strategic IT roadmap journey that will depend on the strategic portfolio, as well as considerations such as governance, policies, performance metrics, and funding.

Speakers:
David Wheable, VP, Global Consulting Delivery, Forrester
Frederic Giron, VP, Senior Research Director, Forrester

Tuesday Aug 19

8:30 am – 9:30 am AEDT

Registration & General Breakfast

8:30 am – 9:30 am AEDT

Forrester Women's Leadership Program

Choose Your Advisors — And Nuggets Of Advice — Wisely

When you’re at a career crossroads, you’ll receive lots of conflicting advice, and it can be very difficult to separate the gems from the duds. This problem is compounded for women, because well-meaning advisors often make assumptions about how they’d like to balance work and family. For this session, we’ve assembled a fantastic panel of senior women to share the best (and worst!) career advice they’ve received and how they approach giving their own career advice. Here’s what you’ll take away from this session if you join us:
  • How to choose the right people from whom to get career advice
  • How to frame your career challenge so that you get the most useful answers from your advisors
  • How to tell good advice (for you!) from bad

Speakers:
Jinan Budge, VP, Research Director, Forrester

9:30 am – 9:50 am AEDT

Welcome to Country & Opening Remarks

9:50 am – 10:20 am AEDT

Keynote: Gods, Machines, & Kaos: High-Performance IT (Because Prayer Isn’t A Strategy)

When divine intervention fails — and it will — tech leaders must turn to something a little more reliable. Enter high-performance IT (HPIT): the pragmatic, battle-tested response to a world run by chaos, machines, and budget cuts. Drawing from myth, machines, and the madness of modern leadership, this session shows how HPIT emerges as a hero’s weapon for leaders — a tool built to not just survive the storm but tame it. You’ll learn how to: 

  • Lead with clarity when everything’s on fire. 
  • Architect systems that absorb shock without breaking. 
  • Replace wishful thinking with resilient tech strategy. 

Speakers:
Sam Higgins, VP, Principal Analyst, Forrester

10:20 am – 10:50 am AEDT

Guest Keynote

Details coming soon.

10:50 am – 11:20 am AEDT

Coffee Break & Networking

Connect with your peers and partners over coffee and refreshments.

10:55 am – 11:15 am AEDT

Analyst-Led Roundtables

Expertly curated by our analysts, these 20-minute roundtables foster vibrant discussions among peers on trending topics. Held during breaks, they offer a prime opportunity for networking and knowledge sharing. Details coming soon.

Attend one session:

CIO Roundtable: Doing More With Less — Can More Tech Help You Master Tech Mayhem?

Organizations are continually pushing for increased productivity and business value while also driving down costs. Will even more technology and automation cure, or contribute to, ongoing tech mayhem?

Speakers:
John Brand, VP, CIO Exec Partner, Forrester

Deconstruct Human-Related Breaches

Join your peers to learn the many and varied risks posed by and to humans — problems that have plagued cybersecurity teams for decades. Prioritize the human-related breaches that are most relevant to you and have conversations with executives and peers across functions about controls to mitigate the human-element breach types most common to their own organizations and industries.

Speakers:
Jinan Budge, VP, Research Director, Forrester

11:20 am – 11:55 am AEDT

Case Study

Hear real-world stories, solutions and insights leveraging the best in today’s technologies and services.

11:55 am – 12:25 pm AEDT

Keynote: AI Inside: The Rise Of The Intelligent IT Operating Model

AI is not just transforming the enterprise – it is reshaping the IT operating model from the inside out. For years, IT has struggled to balance stability with responsiveness, governance with agility. Now, the rise of generative and agentic AI introduces a new paradigm: intelligent systems that don’t just support operations, but actively participate in them. From incident response to IT portfolio governance, intelligent agents are beginning to traverse infrastructure, data, and human workflows—surfacing insights, proposing actions, and in some cases, initiating them. What emerges is an adaptive digital control plane: one that blends automation with judgment, telemetry with context, and operations with continuous learning. IT becomes not just a service provider, but a sensing, reasoning, and evolving system in its own right.
Join this session to:
  • Understand how AI, graph technology, and feedback loops are redefining the IT control plane at the architectural level.
  • Explore how IT functions—from CMDBs to AIOps to FinOps—are becoming proving grounds for enterprise-scale intelligent systems.
  • Learn what governance, leadership, and strategy look like when IT becomes a cognitive participant in shaping digital business outcomes.

Speakers:
Charles Betz, VP, Principal Analyst, Forrester

12:30 pm – 1:30 pm AEDT

Networking Lunch

Enjoy lunch while networking with your peers and partners.

12:30 pm – 1:30 pm AEDT

Executive Leadership Exchange (Invite-Only): Exclusive Lunch — Breaking Down Silos

Connect with fellow executives for a dynamic, invitation-only lunch aimed at breaking down silos. Join this exclusive lunch to:
  • Learn how to break down silos and foster cross-industry collaboration.
  • Share insights and tackle challenges in a fast-paced, tech-driven world.
  • Build valuable connections and exchange knowledge with top leaders across sectors.

Speakers:
Charles Betz, VP, Principal Analyst, Forrester
John Brand, VP, CIO Exec Partner, Forrester

1:30 pm – 2:05 pm AEDT

Case Study

Hear real-world stories, solutions and insights leveraging the best in today’s technologies and services.

2:05 pm – 2:35 pm AEDT

Keynote: Address 2025 Cyber Threats With Preparation And A Steady Hand

Predictive, generative, and agentic AI are taking the world by storm, a chaotic political landscape is resulting in isolationism, a global recession is looming, and we are in the middle of a global trade war. 2025 brings an overwhelming list of uncertainties, leading to new risks and threats while enabling opportunities. Join us in this session to:
  • Deconstruct and anticipate the top current and emerging threats.
  • Learn how to act decisively to protect your organization.
  • Work with your stakeholders to respond with wisdom and agility.

Speakers:
Jinan Budge, VP, Research Director, Forrester

2:35 pm – 3:05 pm AEDT

Keynote: Forrester’s 2025 Technology Awards

In this session, we will announce the winners of this year’s Technology Awards in two categories: Technology Strategy Impact and Enterprise Architecture.

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

3:05 pm – 3:35 pm AEDT

Coffee Break & Networking

Connect with your peers and partners over coffee and refreshments.

3:10 pm – 3:30 pm AEDT

Analyst-Led Roundtables

Expertly curated by our analysts, these 20-minute roundtables foster vibrant discussions among peers on trending topics. Held during breaks, they offer a prime opportunity for networking and knowledge sharing. Details coming soon.

The Impact Of Gen AI On IT Management

It’s no longer just about IT support chatbots. From AIOps to the service desk, and from portfolio management to IT finance, generative AI is fundamentally transforming the landscape of IT management. Join your peers to discuss the implications of Gen AI for IT management tools and capabilities, as well as real-world insights into what people are observing and implementing.

Speakers:
Charles Betz, VP, Principal Analyst, Forrester

3:35 pm – 4:10 pm AEDT

Case Study

Hear real-world stories, solutions and insights leveraging the best in today’s technologies and services.

4:10 pm – 4:40 pm AEDT

Keynote: Meet The 2025 Technology Award Winners

Join us for this interactive Q&A with Forrester’s 2025 Technology Award Winners.

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

4:40 pm – 5:10 pm AEDT

Keynote: Leadership In The Agentic Era

As AI systems become more capable and agentic, enterprises are entering a new operational era — one where intelligent machines don’t just support work but actively perform it, coordinate with human teams, and autonomously monitor outcomes. This shift marks a critical inflection point for leaders: The traditional playbook for management no longer fits. The speed, uncertainty, and human implications of AI-driven transformation demand a rethinking of how organizations are led. This session will explore how leadership must evolve — highlighting the new capabilities, mindsets, and collaboration models required to thrive in a world where humans and intelligent systems work side by side. You’ll walk away with:
  • A clear view of how AI agents are reshaping work, teams, and decision-making.
  • Insight into how leadership and change management must evolve in AI-driven environments.
  • Practical guidance for developing adaptive, AI-literate leadership capabilities.

Speakers:
Leslie Joseph, Principal Analyst, Forrester

5:10 pm – 5:15 pm AEDT

Closing Comments

5:15 pm – 6:30 pm AEDT

Reception

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

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Technology & Innovation Summit APAC · August 19, 2025 · Sydney & Digital

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