Technology & Innovation Forum East

Celebrating Excellence In Tech Strategy: The 2026 Technology Strategy Impact Award Winner

Join us as we recognize the winner of the 2026 Technology Strategy Impact award; an organization that has set the standard for aligning technology strategy with business outcomes. This session will spotlight their journey, key decisions, and measurable impact, offering a firsthand look at what it takes to lead with technology and drive meaningful results in today’s complex environment.

Join this session to:

Learn what sets best-in-class tech strategies apart
Hear how leaders translate strategy into measurable impact
Gain insights to elevate your own technology roadmap

Speakers:
Joseph Schiavone, Principal Analyst, Forrester
Derek Waldron, Chief Analytics Officer, JPMorgan Chase
Dr. Biswa Sengupta, Managing Director of Generative AI Solutions, JP Morgan Chase

Enterprise Architecture: The Cutting Edge

Forrester’s most current data and case research show enterprise architecture (EA) penetration is rising, and the discipline is finding its feet as a strategic function. Underpinning this shift are the real-world experiences of today’s leading EA teams — the operating models and practices that are working (and not working) in large, complex enterprises. This session will celebrate the winner of the 2026 Enterprise Architecture Award, an organization whose work exemplifies many of these themes in practice.

Join this session to:

Understand the real state of enterprise architecture today (i.e., the struggles, counterevidence, where EA is genuinely turning the corner)
Learn how this year’s winner is evolving in practice, including org structures, governance models, metrics, and ways of working that are delivering measurable impact
Gain practical approaches to confront technical debt and ring-fence modernization before it erodes delivery capacity

Speakers:
Charles Betz, VP, Principal Analyst, Forrester
Julie Kiley, Vice President of Enterprise Architecture, GM Financial

Celebrating Excellence In Data And AI: The 2026 Data & AI Impact Award Winner

Join us as we recognize the winner of the 2026 Data & AI Impact award — an organization that has unlocked meaningful business value through data and AI. This session will explore how they’ve operationalized data, scaled AI initiatives, and built trust while delivering measurable outcomes across the enterprise.

Join this session to:

Learn how organizations turn data and AI into business impact
Hear how leaders scale AI responsibly and effectively
Gain insights to advance your data and AI strategy

Speakers:
Kim Herrington, Senior Analyst, Forrester
Hans Hage, Chief Product Officer, UnitedHealth Group

Analyst-Led Roundtables

Industry Roundtable: Government

Engage with government peers to explore how AI, data, and emerging technologies are reshaping agencies and teams. Leave with fresh perspectives, validated approaches, and ideas to inform your next move.

Speakers:
Chioma Onwuanibe, VP, CIO Executive Partner, Forrester
Lisa Martinez, VP, CIO Executive Partner, Forrester

Industry Roundtable: Insurance

Engage with insurance peers to explore how AI, data, and emerging technologies are reshaping enterprises. Leave with fresh perspectives, validated approaches, and ideas to inform your next move.

Speakers:
David Mooter, Principal Analyst, Forrester

Industry Roundtable: Banking

Engage with banking peers to explore how AI, data, and emerging technologies are reshaping enterprises. Leave with fresh perspectives, validated approaches, and ideas to inform your next move.

Speakers:
Alan Hanson, VP, Executive Partner, Forrester
Kevin Ogunsua, Principal Analyst, Forrester

11:45 am – 12:15 pm EST

Case Study Sessions

Join case study sessions to hear real-world stories, solutions and insights.

Arist: Case Study

Tempo Software: Case Study

12:25 pm – 12:55 pm EST

Breakout Sessions

Avoid the AI Horror Show: How to Control Spend and Prove the Value

AI is amplifying the consequences of unfocused spend, unclear cost optimization strategies, and ill-defined business models to an 11 out of 10. As organizations scale AI, the stakes extend beyond cost control to revenue growth, monetization pathways, and sustainable value capture. Instill spend discipline from the onset with frameworks that drive clarity, accountability, and measurable business impact; ensuring AI spend translates into top-line growth, bottom-line operational margins, and defensible economic value.

Join this session to:

Understand the total cost of AI investments, how to track them, and how they’ll trend in the future
Hear perspectives on how the value of AI investments can be defined and tracked
Learn how to institutionalize the Strategic Control Plane to systematically manage the AI cost-benefit story

Speakers:
Kevin Ogunsua, Principal Analyst, Forrester

Reimagining I&O: From Infrastructure Operator To Capability Platform

Even with modern platforms in place, many I&O organizations remain constrained by legacy roles, siloed teams, and outdated operating models. Over the next five years, I&O must reinvent itself, shifting from operating infrastructure to engineering, orchestrating, and governing business capabilities. This requires new team structures, new skills, and new ways of working that replace siloed execution with cross-functional, product-oriented ownership. I&O must also build trust with the business, working with partners to cocreate solutions and measure success through business outcomes. AI-driven interfaces and agents will also redefine how engineers interact with systems, shifting from tools and tickets to intent-driven, automated operations.

Join this session to:

Understand how the I&O role is changing and what it means for your organization
Explore different operating model options, including platform engineering and SRE
Learn how to shift from siloed teams to capability-focused structures and governance
Examine how new interfaces and automation will change how teams operate and deliver value

Speakers:
Carlos Casanova, VP, Principal Analyst, Forrester

AI Platforms Are Transforming Themselves And The Way Enterprises Build And Deliver Value

Enterprises are rushing to build the next generation of agentic applications to create emerging value. They also want to reinvigorate, reimagine, and reinvent their existing processes with tools and platforms that allow them to do so regularly and reliably. Enterprises are using AI platforms to help them architect and deliver agentic applications that are making a real impact to the business and doing so with reliability and explainability.

Join this session to:

Understand the expanding and changing landscape of AI platforms
Learn what emerging agentic architectures built with AI platforms look like
Hear different approaches enterprises can take to rationalize AI across their current platform investments

Speakers:
Mike Gualtieri, VP, Principal Analyst, Forrester

12:25 pm – 12:55 pm EST

Executive Leadership Exchange: Operationalizing AI At Forrester (Invite Only)

Join our ELE AMA featuring Michael Facemire, Forrester’s chief technology officer. Go beyond the hype to hear how Forrester has truly operationalized AI across the business — and where there have been challenges. Bring your toughest questions and get candid insights into what’s working, what’s not, and what it really takes to turn AI into client value.

Speakers:
Naj Uddin, Senior Vice President & Chief Information Officer, AARP
Michael Facemire, Chief Technology Officer, Forrester

12:25 pm – 1:25 pm EST

Workshop: Build A Plan For AI-Ready Data

Most organizations are not starting from zero on data for AI — but agentic AI raises the bar from well-managed data to intelligence-ready data. Part one is familiar: double down on data fabric, governance, quality, timeliness, and integration to ensure trusted, accessible, and secure data — now with far less tolerance for gaps, latency, or inconsistency. Part two is new: invest in semantic layers, knowledge graphs, and vectorized representations of unstructured data to give agents the contextual understanding, relationships, and memory required to act with relevance and precision at scale.

Join this session to:

Understand why doubling down on data fabric and data governance is no longer optional — as agentic AI amplifies the risk of inconsistent, poorly governed, and inaccessible data
Learn the new data requirements for agentic AI, including knowledge graphs and context engineering, to deliver the context, semantics, and retrieval capabilities agents need to operate effectively at scale

Speakers:
Boris Evelson, Vice President, Principal Analyst, Forrester

12:55 pm – 2:00 pm EST

Executive Leadership Exchange Lunch & Keynote (Invite Only)

From Ecommerce to Agentic Experiences: What Every Technology Leader Needs to Know
AI agents are rapidly evolving from assistants to autonomous actors that can discover, recommend, and take action on behalf of users. Agentic AI is not just a retail trend. It is the next evolution of digital experiences, and every enterprise needs to prepare now. Neelima Sharma, SVP Digital & Customer Experience at Lowe’s, for a fireside chat exploring how agentic AI is reshaping customer engagement, digital experiences, and business operations, and what technology leaders need to do today to prepare their organizations for an agent-driven future.

Speakers:
Neelima Sharma, Senior Vice President, Customer and Commerce Technology, Lowe's
Greg Willrich, VP, Executive Partner, Forrester

12:55 pm – 2:00 pm EST

Networking Lunch

2:00 pm – 2:30 pm EST

Breakout Sessions

Generating Your Future: Successful Strategies For Driving Business Transformation With AI Engineering

Businesses are winging it with generative and agentic tools. Without strategy, they are generating themselves into chaos and tremendous costs. But companies must move quickly to adopt AI tools and evolve how they run. Don’t jump headlong into the AI crevasse. Understand the best way to build your AI strategy and learn from companies who have forged ahead.

Join this session to:

Discover an approach to AI strategy that produces measurable value
Learn how companies are advancing their AI programs
Understand pitfalls so you don’t have to experience them
Get access to Forrester tools to help make it happen

Speakers:
Sanjeev Vohra, Chief Technology and Innovation Officer, Genpact
Erica Shine, Enterprise Technology & AI, VP/Corporate Officer, Erie Insurance
Ken Parmelee, Principal Analyst, Forrester

Design For Capabilities: The New Infrastructure Foundation For AI

The AI revolution demands that businesses rethink their technology foundations to achieve business outcomes at scale. Meet this challenge with capability-driven architecture: identifying business level goals, evaluating risk, mapping those goals to critical capabilities in both resources and technology, defining the measurements required to achieve those goals, and developing patterns for evolution and improvement over time.

Join this session to:

Understand what capability-driven infrastructure means and why it matters
Identify how infrastructure decisions impact business outcomes such as speed, resilience, and cost
Understand how technology decisions will radically change previously non-technical parts of the business

Speakers:
Lauren Nelson, VP, Research Director, Forrester

The Quantum And AI Opportunity

Interest in quantum computing is heating up, but what is it, and what is its real potential? This session will begin with an overview of quantum computing and its current and future trajectory and then highlight its potential uses with an emphasis on AI use cases, plus myth–busting the hype. Questions from the audience are encouraged!

Speakers:
David Mooter, Principal Analyst, Forrester

Analyst-Led Roundtables

Industry Roundtable: Retail And CPG

Engage with retail and CPG peers to explore how AI, data, and emerging technologies are reshaping enterprises. Leave with fresh perspectives, validated approaches, and ideas to inform your next move.

Speakers:
Fiona Swerdlow, VP, Research Director, Forrester

Industry Roundtable: Healthcare

Engage with healthcare peers to explore how AI, data, and emerging technologies are reshaping enterprises. Leave with fresh perspectives, validated approaches, and ideas to inform your next move.

Speakers:
Alla Valente, Principal Analyst, Forrester
Chioma Onwuanibe, VP, CIO Executive Partner, Forrester

Architecting The Autonomous Enterprise: The Questions We Need To Be Asking

As AI agents become active participants across the enterprise, many of the architectural implications are still being defined. Join fellow technology leaders for an open discussion on the questions that matter most — from governance and identity to operating models and the evolving role of enterprise architecture.

Speakers:
Charles Betz, VP, Principal Analyst, Forrester
Joseph Schiavone, Principal Analyst, Forrester

2:40 pm – 3:10 pm EST

Breakout Sessions

Real-World Agentic AI Use Cases That Actually Scale In Enterprises

Agentic AI is moving from experiments to delegated work but only a few use cases deliver repeatable value. In this session, we’ll showcase successful enterprise deployments across enterprise business and services; what the agents do, how they were deployed, grounded in data, and where governance makes or breaks outcomes. Leave with a practical shortlist of use cases, the architecture choices that made (and did not break these deployments), and “don’t do this” lessons.

Join this session to:

Use Forrester’s 12-point model to decide which use cases make the cutting room floor
Determine high-ROI use cases you can operationalize in the short term
Learn trending AI deployment options and avoid common pitfalls

Speakers:
Craig Le Clair, Vice President, Principal Analyst, Forrester

Government And Industry: Building Trust, Visibility, And Smarter Operations

What can decades of federal technology leadership teach us about managing increasingly complex IT environments? In this analyst-led conversation with an experienced government technology leader, we’ll explore lessons from the front lines of public-sector IT, including how government and industry can build greater transparency and trust, improve visibility, and make smarter enterprise technology decisions. The discussion will span enterprise agreements and standardization, the growing challenge of understanding assets and dependencies, and the evolving role of AIOps, observability, and AI in operational decision-making. Along the way, we’ll examine lessons that apply well beyond government as infrastructure and operations leaders balance innovation, efficiency, risk, and accountability.

Join this session to:

Explore how greater transparency between government and industry can improve technology decisions, accountability, and trust
Understand the trade-offs between enterprise standardization, procurement efficiency, flexibility, and innovation
Examine how better visibility into assets, dependencies, and operations can support AI-driven and increasingly autonomous IT

Speakers:
Carlos Casanova, VP, Principal Analyst, Forrester
Theresa Terry, Director, DAF Enterprise Performance Improvement, Office of the Administrative Assistant, Office of the Secretary of the Air Force