FutureIT Canada 2025 Agenda: Sessions on Tech Innovation & Leadership
Join FutureIT Canada 2025 for an action-packed day exploring the latest in AI, cloud, and cybersecurity. This virtual conference brings together IT decision-makers, CIOs, and technology leaders to discuss emerging trends, real-world case studies, and strategic insights that drive business innovation. From AI-driven automation and enterprise security to data governance and digital transformation, expert speakers and interactive sessions will provide the knowledge and tools needed to navigate today’s rapidly evolving tech landscape. Don’t miss this opportunity to engage with industry leaders, gain actionable insights, and shape the future of IT in Canada.
As artificial intelligence continues to evolve at an unprecedented pace, the future holds transformative potential for businesses across all sectors. In this session, we will explore key areas of AI technology that could reshape the business landscape in the coming years. The session will focus on the impact of AI Agents on business interactions with customers and employees, examine how AI workloads will redefine the design of core IT infrastructure from data centers to remote edge locations. We will also discuss how these technologies will influence workforce dynamics and will transform our interaction with technology in the years to come.
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Explore the future of enterprise management, where AI, data, and applications come together like never before.
Join us for insights from RingCentral’s 2025 Trends Report, showcasing how AI is revolutionizing business communications. Explore AI-powered tools, personalized assistants, and omnichannel engagement that boost productivity and streamline workflows. Discover actionable tips to enhance customer and employee experiences while future-proofing your communications strategy in an AI-driven world.
Discover strategies to effectively operationalize AI within enterprise environments. This session will cover key considerations, best practices, and real-world examples to integrate AI strategically, with a focus on providing immediate value, while addressing security, performance, scalability, and availability.
Learn how to use SnapLogic’s latest innovation, GenAI Builder. with an in-depth tour led by SnapLogic’s in-house expert technical product manager, Roger Sramkoski. See how you can easily augment-LLMs with your data using SnapLogic’s famous low-code platform.
In today’s digital landscape, the frequency and sophistication of cyber attacks have reached unprecedented levels, posing significant threats to businesses of all sizes. The consequences of these attacks can be catastrophic, leading to substantial financial losses, operational disruptions, and irreparable damage to a company’s reputation. According to recent studies, the average cost of a data breach is $4.88 million, with each minute of downtime costing an average of $14,056. Moreover, the average downtime following a ransomware attack is 24 days, which can severely impact business operations and customer trust.
Commvault’s approach to minimum viability for cyber resilience is a comprehensive and effective solution designed to help businesses recover quickly and efficiently after a cyber incident. This approach emphasizes understanding assets, costs, and recovery times to minimize downtime and financial losses.
In an era where cyber attacks are more and more common and damaging, Commvault’s approach is important for making sure that organizations can recover quickly, cleanly, and completely. Join Commvault to learn more.
The power of AI to convert data’s potential to realize business goals and make critical decisions across an enterprise is immense. With the proliferation of data and its many sources, it’s essential that organizations have confidence in their data. Learn how AI agents or co-pilots can act as intelligent assistants for ensuring trustworthy results for various job functions.
Businesses face mounting pressure to accelerate AI and application innovation, while ensuring data security and cost efficiency. Yet, slow, manual processes, privacy risks, and rising infrastructure costs create roadblocks, limiting ability to compete.
This session explores best practices and solutions for eliminating data bottlenecks. You’ll learn how leaders automate data to enable faster application releases, better AI model training, and seamless compliance with privacy regulations.
This on-demand video underscores cybersecurity’s critical role in the digital age, emphasizing it as essential for organizational survival. It covers escalating cyber threats—such as human error (95% of breaches), ransomware, DDoS attacks (37.1% of app-layer traffic), and malicious bots (93% of bot traffic)—which cost the global economy $10.5 trillion annually by 2025. Risks to healthcare, finance, and critical infrastructure, plus regulatory pressures (GDPR, HIPAA), highlight the urgency. Attendees learn about outdated defenses (e.g., traditional WAFs failing API security) and third-party code vulnerabilities (47 scripts per enterprise). The session shares proactive strategies: incident response, compliance, and collaboration between experts, policymakers, and industries. Cloudflare’s internet-native platform is showcased as a solution to simplify security, unify protection for apps/APIs, and balance innovation with resilience. Attendees gain actionable insights to fortify defenses, adopt modern tools, and prioritize proactive measures amid rising complexity. Key takeaways: cybersecurity is non-negotiable; organizations must embrace agile, unified platforms and cross-sector cooperation to mitigate risks in an interconnected digital world.
Systems with a rich history like IBM run mission-critical workloads—but often without the modern security layers today’s threat landscape demands. In this on-demand session, Steve Pitcher highlights overlooked vulnerabilities, shares practical mitigation steps, and outlines a proactive approach to keeping your IBM environment secure and resilient.
All times are listed in Eastern Standard Time.
Wednesday, May 7
Login early and check out the virtual environment, join the contest and explore the on-demand content.
Our hosts welcome you to Day 1 of FutureIT Canada’s Q2 virtual event. Setting the stage for the program and how to navigate the virtual platform, they’ll provide an overview of the strategic insights and tech trends you can expect to hear about during the day.
Agentic AI is disrupting the tech stack by shifting the focus from static applications with predefined workflows to dynamic, autonomous agents capable of making decisions and taking actions across multiple systems. Learn how this transforms the data layer, driving a paradigm shift in infrastructure and enterprise automation architecture, and professional services to manage the increased complexity of agent interactions. Discover how to balance competitive innovation with vigilance, prioritizing human-agent collaboration, security, and ethical governance.
Get an inside look at how a leading financial institution transformed data to the cloud and is innovating to implement AI. In this Fireside chat discussion, we’ll explore the digital evolution, from overcoming challenges to unlocking new opportunities with cloud first data. Hear firsthand how they have implemented frameworks to enhance customer experiences, optimize operations, and drive innovation. Moderated by CIO Leadership Live’s Lee Rennick, this conversation will provide IT leaders with valuable insights into building a scalable, data and AI-powered business in a complex and highly regulated industry.
Discover how Dell and NVIDIA are revolutionizing AI with the AI Factory framework. This session dives into the architecture and real-world use cases, from AI agents to digital humans. Explore how Dell’s Data Lakehouse streamlines data management and how the NEMO ecosystem powers everything from virtual assistants to advanced AI agents. Join us to unlock the potential of AI, driving innovation and transforming industries with powerful, scalable solutions.
Is your organization truly ready to be an AI-fueled business? As AI-driven technologies rapidly evolve, IT leaders must navigate the complexities of data readiness, governance, and strategy to drive real business value. This panel will dive into key findings from the latest State of the CIO report, exploring how enterprises can transform for an AI-focused world. From AI assistants to autonomous agents, our expert speakers will share practical insights on aligning infrastructure, streamlining data strategies, and preparing your workforce to maximize AI’s impact. Walk away with the strategies you need to lead your organization into the AI-powered future.
Enterprises struggle to leverage their exponentially growing data, with over 80% remaining “dark” and untapped due to the sheer volume, processing costs, lack of insights on what’s of value, and data trust issues. “Data debt” is the number one barrier to scaling generative AI initiatives.Iron Mountain sees the potential to meet this unmet market need with an integrated approach to data lifecycle management and transformation. They are already seeing meaningful impact across industries.Join Iron Mountain and AWS during this keynote session where they explore the key data challenges enterprises face, successful approaches for data lifecycle management and concrete examples across industries where clients have successfully transformed their data from potential to power.
In this engaging fireside chat with IDC contributing editor, veteran finance and technology journalist Michael Hainsworth, SAP Canada’s chief technology officer Anthony Robinson will address how Agentic AI can be deployed across your enterprise to build better business outcomes through clean centralized data, the latest innovations in artificial intelligence, and how to break-down the silos inhibiting progress.
Rapid fire tech trends will be shared by industry experts offering smart digital solutions to your burning tech and digital business challenges.
Cutting friction, boosting loyalty, and freeing teams to focus on higher‑value work is the promise of GenAI. Join RingCentral’s Mike Egli in an engaging and entertaining fireside chat with IDC contributing editor, veteran CTV finance and tech reporter Michael Hainsworth as they discuss the next wave of intelligent communications. In this fast‑paced session you’ll discover how GenAI cloud‑native platforms empower IT leaders to modernise customer (CX) and employee (EX) experiences at scale. Expect real‑world success stories, a clear framework for spotting high‑impact use cases, and guidance on securing executive buy‑in with hard ROI.
Hear from a solutions expert from Veeam as they share their top tech trends.
Join Daemon Behr, Field CTO, Americas at Nutanix as he discusses How to Simplify Enterprise AI with Nutanix.
With AI adoption accelerating across industries, IT leaders face increasing pressure to choose the right tools, justify investments, and deliver measurable results. In this expert-led discussion, top technology executives will share practical frameworks for assessing AI tools, key metrics for success, and critical considerations for long-term scalability. This session will explore how AI can be leveraged to streamline workflows, reduce technical debt, and enhance internal productivity. Learn from our IDC Analyst and hear real-world experiences from leading IT executives as they break down what works, what doesn’t, and how to build a future-ready AI strategy.
Join our host for the closing remarks to reflect on a day full of learning from the best in the industry. We’ll also revewal the event day contest winners, live!
Thursday, May 8
Login early and check out the virtual environment, join the contest and explore the on-demand content.
Our hosts welcome you to Day 2 of FutureIT Canada’s Q2 virtual event. Setting the stage for the program and how to navigate the virtual platform, they’ll provide an overview of the strategic insights and tech trends you can expect to hear about during this day focused on cybersecurity.
Attendees will gain insights into adapting security strategies for evolving infrastructure and cloud delivery models, ensuring robust protection while enabling innovation in AI-driven and future-ready IT environments.
Join Perforce Delphix’s Andrew Shaw, as he discusses automating data delivery and compliance in this rapid-fire session.
In an ever-evolving threat landscape, cybersecurity is no longer just about defense—it’s about resilience. This panel will dive into proactive strategies for reducing attacks, the latest advancements in detection and response, and essential recovery protocols to minimize downtime and damage. We will also explore how to enhance security with AI adoption to mitigates risks and ensures a proactive approach to cybersecurity in an era of constant change.
In an era of rapid technological advancement, many organizations face a critical challenge: balancing the necessity of maintaining legacy systems with the growing risks they present to security and operational efficiency. This panel will explore the complexities of managing outdated infrastructure while safeguarding business value.
Join Steve Pitcher, Sales Consultant & Security Engineer at Service Express alongside Lee Rennick, VP, Tech Evangelist from IDC as they delve into key topics, including:
• The unique vulnerabilities and threats posed by legacy systems.
• Strategies for integrating modern security measures into outdated environments.
• The cost-benefit analysis of system modernization versus maintenance.
• Roadmaps for transitioning from legacy systems to future-proof technologies.
• Emerging tools and methodologies to secure critical systems during upgrades.
Attendees will gain actionable insights into navigating the security dilemma, ensuring legacy systems remain an asset rather than a liability. This discussion is essential for IT leaders, security professionals, and decision-makers striving to protect their organizations while embracing innovation.
As cyber threats grow, security can no longer operate in isolation. IT and security leaders must collaborate to embed security into every aspect of the business. This panel will explore the shift from siloed security to shared leadership, discussing strategies for integration, fostering a security-first culture, and aligning CISO and CIO priorities. Join us to learn how a collaborative approach can enhance resilience, innovation, and business success.
As AI adoption accelerates, so do cybersecurity risks. From AI-powered threats to regulatory challenges, IT leaders must stay ahead. In this expert-led panel, industry professionals and an IDC cybersecurity analyst will share essential strategies to secure AI models, manage third-party risks, and ensure compliance. Gain actionable insights to build a resilient security posture in an AI-driven world.
Hear a full summary of the days’ takeaways during these final remarks from our Event Director. Afterwards, there will be prize draws for those with high scores on the leadersboard as well as random draws from those who participated. Learn more about the FutureIT Canada Community Hub and what else you can expect during 2025.