Across conversations with first-time attendees and seasoned veterans, one question kept surfacing: How do we turn our investment into durable outcomes?
Four themes stood out.
AI ROI and accountability
Organizations are moving beyond experimentation and asking harder questions about returns. What value is the investment delivering? How can we effectively measure? Are we achieving payback within an acceptable pace? Deploying is not enough. There needs to be evidence it works, at scale.
More reliable agents
The conversation is shifting from what agents can do to how reliably they perform in real business environments, securely. Agents need relevant context and strong governance, without creating new bottlenecks that limit adoption.
Less complexity, more value
With overlapping tools and growing integration demands, teams are looking to consolidate vendors and simplify operations. The goal isn't just fewer tools. It's making existing investments work together more effectively, without adding to the burden on already stretched teams.
What's next beyond AI?
Quantum computing also sparked conversations about emerging opportunities, its potential impact on seemingly impossible quantitative challenges, and the implications to organizations as it becomes more accessible.
Beyond the buzzwords
On the vendor floor, there were agents aplenty, and claimed context victory was everywhere. But those claims mean very different things in practice. Where does it attach to, who fills it out, who signs off, what’s the required lift for the CIO, and what happens when the agentic world changes again (for the 7th time this week)?
That means looking beyond the demo and feature list to understand what these systems can actually deliver, and identify which processes it can help durably transform.