About

For over a decade, enterprise technology leaders have invested heavily in cloud platforms, integration, and modular architectures, under the promise of business agility.

Yet for many organisations, this drive for flexibility has resulted in increased architectural complexity, mounting integration overhead, and growing reliance on external platforms and contracts. As AI enters the landscape, it is exposing the underlying quality, duplication, and governance flaws of these complex estates. Are they ready for the next phase of innovation?

Our latest CIONET community leadership forum brings senior UK technology leaders together to ask the question: has the pursuit of composability delivered genuine business adaptability, or has it simply traded one set of constraints for another?

Designed for CIOs, this session focuses on the commercial, organisational, and financial choices that shape enterprise performance.

We’ll be bringing CIOs together to ask these questions:

Strategic alignment and governance: defining clear criteria for which business processes require custom operational flexibility, versus those that must accept standardised execution.
Autonomy and decision making: navigating the tension between central technology control and business unit freedom, including who architecture is truly serving.
Contracts, legacy and risk appetite: weighing long-term commitments and support deadlines against the cost and risk of change, and deciding which legacy systems to leave alone.
AI, where it sits and where to prioritise: how much to take from your suppliers' AI roadmaps and how much to build yourself, and which pilots are worth taking into production.
Is the push for more AI being driven by efficiency, customer value or something else?
Investments in 2027 and beyond: where should CIOs place their bets? If the technology budget cannot grow, what should they fund, hold steady and stop?

You will leave with a clearer read on your own estate: where standardising would actually pay off, where business freedom is doing more harm than good, and how to prioritise your legacy upgrades and investment roadmap.

Speakers and Panellists

Find out more about the speakers and our panellists

Craig Walker

Chairman | Moderator

CIONET UK

Craig graduated in the summer of 1981 from the University of Surrey with a BSc.

Hons in Chemical Engineering. He joined Shell as an IT programmer in London.

Over the next 17 years, his career in IT management progressed and saw him spend

10 years as an expatriate in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Colombia.

In 1998, he moved to KPMG as an Associates Partner to learn about other

industries, cultures, and ways of working. In 2005, after what he describes as the

best 6-year training course Shell let him go on, he returned in 2005 to Shell as CIO

for the African Downstream businesses based in Cape Town. After 3 years he

became Global CIO of Shell Trading and Shipping based in Houston, Texas and

then, in 2014, became Global CIO of Shell Downstream based in London.

He is a high energy leader who has spent most of his career leading large-scale

digital transformations. As Global CIO of Shell Downstream business, his team

delivered billions of dollars of savings and value, created new ways of working,

enabled faster business strategy realisation and ultimately reduced the IT budget by

45%, creating more reliable and secure solutions, and delivering the next generation

of transformative technology. While these global transformations were technology

driven, they were highly business focused. His success can be attributed to

recognising the complexities of large-scale change and including all the key

stakeholders in business and IT to ensure a level of buy-in and energy such that they

were able to fundamentally transform the businesses.

He retired from Shell in 2020, and joined Salesforce as an SVP, Strategic Advisor to

the office of the CEO, where he worked with c-suite to help them refine and deliver

their business strategy. He advised hundreds of customers, building strong

relationships and helping drive transformational change through bringing technology and people together.

He has now retired for a second time and is now busier than ever having teamed up

with five ex-KPMG colleagues, who have a lifetime of experience, knowledge and a

track record of success, to create Veles Consulting which has the tag line “Our

Experience, Your Success”. There are delivering a range of services including

Strategic Business Advice, NED/Virtual Board Services, Company Review,

Leadership Development and Transformational programmes. He is enjoying working again with old friends and colleagues.

He also chairs the Institute of Coding, which is dedicated to delivering free technical

skills learning to disadvantaged people in the UK, as well as participating on several

advisory and executive boards.

He has a passion for business, developing people, enjoying his family, travelling,

good food and wine, and life.

Explore the program

Program

Fora Folgate Street

           
          18:00 
        
                Welcome Networking Reception 
        
          19:00 
        
                Warm Welcome
        
          19:45 
        
                Panel discussion with distinguished leaders and Q&A
        
          20:45 
        
                Drinks reception, desert & cheese
        
          21:30 
        
                Carriages

Venue

Set beside Spitalfields Market, where the City meets Shoreditch, Fora Folgate Street is a light-filled, design-led workspace with a striking glass atrium and a beautiful conservatory event space. The venue is a short walk from both Shoreditch High Street and Liverpool Street stations.

Fora Folgate Street