Cloud & Infrastructure New Zealand schedule

• Responding to unprecedented change with clearer priorities around growth and resilience
• Determining where leaders should drive acceleration — and where stronger guardrails are needed
• Shaping a compelling executive vision that connects AI, organisational change and investment strategy 

Speaker:

Raffaella del Prete Chief Digital Officer Steel & Tube Holdings

Abbie Stevens Digital Transformation Manager The Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners (moderator) 

Although enterprise AI is still fairly new, Dan will explore some of the emerging patterns for sustaining success (and failure):

• Not all AI automation is created equal.
• Vibe Coding! Huh! Yeah! What is it good for?
• Why transformation is hard (and necessary)
• How to plot next steps that start from where you are now

• Setting transformation initiatives up for success through clear sponsorship, scope and decision-making
• Aligning business, product and technology leaders around shared priorities, ownership and outcomes
• Scaling successful approaches across the organisation to create repeatable and lasting value

Speakers:

Amanda White Chief Information Officer Open Country Dairy

Annette Rangi General Manager - Digital Transformation HEB Construction

Grant McIvor Chief Digital Officer Southern Cross Health Society

Dolly Kaur Director ICT - Centres of Expertise New Zealand Police

Abbie Stevens Digital Transformation Manager The Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners (moderator) 

• Translating ambition into action: Defining bets, dependencies and trade-offs
• Prioritising under constraint: Balancing strategic intent with realistic delivery decisions
• Maintaining momentum: Keep leadership focus amidst challenges 

Speakers:

Adam Courtier GM Data and AI 2degrees (moderator) 

• Standardising the base: Enabling platform teams through what a consistent, trusted foundation
• Reducing drag without reducing pace: Balancing governance and simplicity so teams can keep moving fast
• Setting up for what's next: Scaling in response to AI and platform demands

Speaker:

Senior Representative Chainguard  

• Unified visibility across the estate: Connecting cost, performance and utilisation across hybrid environments
• Supporting better investment choices: Using stronger financial insight to guide decisions
• From reporting to active governance: Making financial management part of technology steering

• Resetting technology’s place: Shaping platforms, operating model and enterprise performance
• Re‑engineering funding, platforms and accountability: Aligning investment, ownership and measures
• Inflection points that changed the trajectory: Structural, leadership and capability moves 

• Automated guardrails over manual gates: Replacing bottleneck governance with controls that keep pace with AI, cloud and automation
• Trust built into the foundations: Embedding security and accountability directly into architecture and platforms, not bolting them on afterwards
• Resilience on secure "paved roads": Aligning architecture, security, infrastructure and governance so teams move faster while keeping control and operational confidence

Operating Models for Product, Platform and AI

• Structuring around products and platforms: From idea to outcome
• Defining ownership across the organisation: Who owns platforms, data, AI and customer-facing capabilities?
• Autonomy with alignment: Enabling teams to move fast while staying within a common playbook

• IT resilience as a board level topic
• Implementing an IT resilience framework
• Structuring a program to higher systems reliability

• Critical capabilities: Prioritising skills that matter across platform, product, data and AI
• Build, buy or partner: Deciding where to deploy internal capability vs external leverage
• Leadership and role redesign: Evolving architecture, engineering and technology leadership roles for a modern estate

Speakers:

Mike Jackson Chief Technology Officer Grant Thornton New Zealand

Kevin Rowland Digital Director Eastern Institute of Technology

Collin van Rooyen Head of Information Technology and Information Security (CIO) Cardinal Logistics

Xanthe Sulzberger Head of Data - Operational Excellence Fonterra (moderator)

• Identifying the patterns worth scaling: Approaches that genuinely improve customer, risk or financial outcomes
• Scaling with adaptation: Extending what works
• Backing success through portfolio governance: Use funding and decision frameworks to reinforce proven approaches

Speakers:

Jamie Smith Head of Architecture, Platforms, Cloud & Security The Warehouse Group

Mazen Kassis Head of Data, Insights and AI Milford (moderator)

• Next leadership priorities: The themes that will dominate the CIO/CTO agenda across value, resilience and AI
• Managing shifting expectations from customers, regulators and boards: Reshaping technology decisions
• Defining a high-performing technology organisation: What “good” looks like in leadership, capability and delivery

Speakers:

Sanit Kumar Head of Cloud & Infrastructure Platforms One New Zealand

Denver Drayson D'Costa CIO & Chief Privacy Officer Honda New Zealand Ltd

Pablo Matamoros Chief Information and Technology Officer Atlantis Health

Bob Kombora Head of IT Operations and Cyber Vulcan (moderator)