It’s that time of the year when conferences and events fill the calendars of Enterprise Architects and IT professionals. And few are more prestigious than the Gartner® IT Symposium/Xpos™ taking place in multiple cities across the world. Ardoq attended and presented at the Symposiums in Orlando and Barcelona with the theme “Clear Insights. Bold Decisions”. Here are our key takeaways and highlights.
CIOs Can Set the Pace in Their AI Outcomes Race
It is staggering how quickly Artificial Intelligence has advanced and started to become a key part of many organizations, and Gartner’s opening keynote, “Pacing Yourself in the AI Races,” addressed this.
The relentless innovation has led to some CIOs feeling unable to keep up and ensure that AI delivers value and outcomes. However, analysts emphasized that different industries move at a different pace. That means organizations in industries that haven’t been reinvented by AI can afford to go at a more measured pace. Those with bigger AI ambitions may wish to accelerate their pace to keep up with their industry peers.
Productivity gains from GenAI are not equally distributed
Gains can vary per employee, depending on personal interest, adoption level, job complexity, and level of experience.
CIOs should manage AI benefits like a portfolio
Organizations should decide how much they’d like to achieve in each benefit area, then manage the risks and rewards.
CIOs Feel Unprepared For Change
Our Chief Product Officer, Ian Stendera, presented a CIO Boardroom session, “Reimagining Enterprise Architecture: Powering Business Transformation in the AI Era”. This brought CIOs together to discuss their common struggles and approaches to digital transformation and AI adoption.
CIOs validated that they were struggling with transparency, tech debt, and governance. The pace of technology evolution and shadow IT are intensifying these issues. Tech leaders and their business partners feel unequipped to deal with this speed of change and are finding it difficult to track ROI from their AI initiatives.
Success comes from business buy-in
The CIOs we spoke to emphasized the importance of buy-in and joint collaboration with both IT and business stakeholders. Continuous communication ensures that teams are aligned on shared objectives, which helps drive consistent progress and overcome organizational silos.
Perspectives, maturity, and risk tolerances vary
Different organizations approach EA with different focuses in mind. Some prioritize governance, others data accessibility, and a few customer-centric value. Some leaders are sharing knowledge to teach others within the organization to manage data and architecture.
AI maturity varies; a number of teams have created models and use cases to guide AI strategy. But many are cautious, looking for practical applications rather than adopting AI for its own sake. We found that US organizations appear more tolerant of risk, while European teams favor clear divisions between business and IT.
Driving digital change with Cabinetworks and ABB
Our personal theme of “Clear Insights. Bold Decisions” was exemplified by the presentations and sessions we held with our customers: “Digital-Enabled Business Transformation” with ABB and “Transforming Tradition: Driving Digital Change in a 100-Year-Old Industry Giant” with Cabinetworks.
These stories demonstrated our commitment to helping our customers achieve bold outcomes by improving their understanding of their business capability and technology landscape, strengthening collaboration between IT and business, and driving transformative change.
Discover how we helped ABB.
Ian Stendera, Ardoq's Chief Product Officer, speaking to Håkan Wärdell, Group VP at ABB, on stage at Gartner IT Symposium Barcelona.
Ian Stendera speaking to Heidi Mattison, Chief Technology Officer, Cabinetworks Group, on stage at Gartner IT Symposium Orlando.
Use Cases For AI Go Beyond Productivity
Gartner’s “The Future of AI” discussed foundational elements for organizations to prepare for the future of AI and deliver maximum value.
Presenter Erick Brethenoux, Distinguished VP Analyst, advised organizations to consider ways to use AI that go beyond improving productivity. For example, AI can be used as a sidekick for projects by enhancing problem-solving, or multiple techniques can be mixed together to develop minimum viable solutions.
Prepare for more regulation with responsible use practices
Erick recommended preparing for more AI regulation in the future by applying AI engineering practices and fostering its responsible use through organizing an AI literacy training program.
How AI augmentation can drive business transformation
In this session, Jason Baragry, Chief Enterprise Architect at Ardoq, explored how AI technologies can help enterprise architects and save them time. He discussed how AI can be used to:
Improve data quality
AI can convert unstructured information into structured. It can extract notes, photos or graphics from brainstorming sessions and put them into a form that can be processed and analyzed in an Enterprise Architecture tool. This information can be simplified for presenting to different audiences.
Infer new information
AI can infer connections between information, helping to build architecture without need for extensive human input. For example, capability change requirements can be estimated from a business case, then application requirements can be inferred from these.
Analyze architecture
An AI assistant can use preset reasoning to answer architectural questions. Users can then add their own reasoning to guide decision-making. For example, solution architectures could be analyzed to see if they conform to architectural principles and policies and recommend an approach if they do not. This would reduce the need for architectural review boards to check architecture once it has been created.
Augment expertise using AI agents
AI agents (one or more large language models) could be trained on specific types of data to break down problems into sets of steps. The agents could automate these steps where possible or guide the user through executing them.
Jason Baragry, Chief Enterprise Architect at Ardoq, on stage at Gartner IT Symposium Barcelona.
CIO and Technology Executive Agenda for 2025
Gartner’s Signature Series: CIO and Technology Executive Agenda for 2025 highlighted what should be on CIOs’ radars over the next 18 months using some incisive stats:
Just 48% of digital initiatives enterprise-wide meet or exceed their business outcome targets
To overcome this, it is important to understand why these initiatives fail. CIOs must develop technology and digital leadership skills across the entire enterprise, not just in IT.
Some CxOs and CIOs work closely together to form a “digital vanguard” to co-own digital delivery
This means that IT and business staff are jointly responsible for digital initiatives and their results.
14% of EMEA CIOs prioritize building a technology workforce enterprise-wide in 2025
This could explain the low number (48%) of digital initiatives that meet or exceed their business outcome targets.
Over 80% of EMEA CIOs said they expect to increase their tech investments in 2025
These technologies included cybersecurity, AI, business intelligence, and data analytics, or integration technologies/APIs.
We’ve done our own research into how tech leaders are dealing with emerging technologies like AI in our CIO report: Emerging Technology Adoption 2024.
It was clear from Gartner’s presentations across the Barcelona and Orlando Symposiums, as well as our own research from talking to CIOs and tech leaders, that AI and emerging technologies are top of the tech agenda going into 2025. This brings great opportunities for digital transformation, but only if they are managed in a smart way.
Ardoq helps you produce clear insights and make bold decisions, ensuring IT and business align for digital transformation success. Plus, we're a 4x Gartner®
Leader and Customers' Choice. Read about our latest position in the 2024 Magic Quadrant™ for Enterprise Architecture.
