Neil Ward-Dutton
VP AI and IPA European Research Practices IDC
Neil Ward-Dutton is vice president, AI and DX European Research Practices at IDC. Prior to joining IDC Neil was Founder and Research Director of MWD Advisors, a technology advisory firm focusing on digital technologies and their impacts on business. Neil is recognised as one of Europe’s most experienced and high-profile technology industry analysts, and has regularly appeared on TV and in print media over his 20-year industry analyst career as well as authoring over 10 books on IT and business strategy.
Neil initially studied and trained as a software engineer, and holds a BSc in Computer Software Technology from the University of Bath. He is also a Fellow of the RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce).
Suranjan Chatterjee
Global Head, Cloud Apps, Microservices & API, TCS
Suranjan Chatterjee is Global Head, Cloud Apps, Microservices & APIfication at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). In this role, Suranjan helps the world’s leading enterprises leverage cloud services to fuel innovation, accelerate technology adoption and realize speed, agility and scale.
He leads strategic initiatives for cloud-based application modernization and integration service offerings and is focused on driving growth related to cloud-native application development, migrations, hybrid cloud integrations, microservices design, “API-fication” and containerization.
Suranjan has over 23 years of experience in IT solutions, lending his expertise on many enterprise transformation projects as both a consultant and business leader. Prior to his current role, he held multiple positions at TCS involving the Oracle business, where he oversaw areas such as emerging business opportunities in India and other growth markets, and the management of presales and numerous client engagements.
Philippe la Fornara
President, EMEA (Excl. DACH) Software AG
Philippe La Fornara brings to Software AG 29 years of experience at European level in the High-tech industry. He joined in October 2012 to drive the South Europe countries to the next steps in terms of revenue, and took over the rest of EMEA countries since, excluding the DACH ones. He also became a member of the extended Board of Software AG.
Before joining Software AG, Philippe was at Unisys for 7 years, where he drove the TCIS team to develop the market share of Unisys Solutions around DataCenters Transfornation/Private Cloud, Application Modernisation and Security Solutions.
TCIS has strong partnerships with software vendors such as Microsoft and technology suppliers such as EMC, VCE, MSFT and BMC in EMEA.
Before this he held numerous European leadership roles at Unisys, Dimension Data, ICL, Microsoft Europe, Data General Europe and Pacer Europe.
Kiran Deshpande
Global Head -Pre-sales - Cloud Apps, Microservices & API, TCS
Kiran Deshpande, heads pre-sales and solutioning globally for TCS’ Cloud Apps, Microservices & API as well as the Integration Center of Excellence. In the current role, he is responsible for closely working with clients to drive growth in the area of Integration modernization, Enterprise API-fication, Hybrid Integration, iPaaS, B2B, Microservices and Event Driven solutions.
Prior to this, as the Digital Delivery Center Head, Kiran was responsible for delivery management of Digital Services for Analytics, Big data & Information Management, Social, Cloud, User Experience and other innovative solutions. He has been actively involved in various strategic assignments across the globe.
In his career, spanning more than 25 years, Kiran has delivered many complex projects for Fortune 500 customers.
Wilfred Harbers
CTO Benelux, Software AG
Wilfred Harbers is CTO Benelux at Software AG. He has over 20 years of experience with hybrid data integration, API management, event processing and analytics solutions. He works in digital innovation projects with clients such as KPN Things for IoT, Akzo Nobel, DSM, Ahold Delhaize and Colruyt.
His international work experience is cross-industry such as in telco, utilities, retail, process- and discrete manufacturing / industry 4.0, healthcare and public sectors.
Wilfred advises companies how they can shape their digital transformation in a flexible and future-proof way and implement it sustainably. With the right balance between openness, integration and interoperability, performance, security and control.
