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Across industries, business leaders are confronting a new reality: the systems and operating models that once served the enterprise are now slowing it down. They consume budgets, hinder transformation, and limit an organisation’s ability to adopt AI at scale. Recent Cognizant research shows that senior executives are pushing for major modernisation milestones within just two years, driven by competitive pressure and mounting concern that today’s technology environments cannot
support meaningful AI integration.

At the same time, organisations recognise a widening gap between ambition and capacity. Many expect to retire only a fraction of their technical debt this decade, even as they accelerate plans to rebuild core systems and data foundations. It raises the fundamental question: how can enterprises move at AI speed when their foundations weren’t designed for it? This tension has elevated modernisation to a board-level priority, not as a technical upgrade, but as the essential groundwork
for safe, effective AI deployment.

In this executive roundtable hosted by Cognizant and CIONET, we explore how CIOs and senior technology leaders can pursue a practical, phased, and self-funding path toward an AI ready enterprise. The conversation will examine how modern engineering, application and data transformation, cloud-enabled operating models, and increasingly autonomous IT operations can create the high velocity conditions in which innovation thrives.

With insights from Prasad Sankaran, President of AI Products and Platforms at Cognizant, the session will draw on global transformation programmes to illuminate what works, where organisations stall, and how a momentum building approach can unlock capacity, reduce operational drag, and accelerate progress.

Discussion topics include:

• The gap between enterprise ambition and the ability of current systems to support AI

• Reducing operational overhead and freeing investment and talent for innovation

• How AI led platforms are bringing about a paradigm shift in modernisation

• Modernising applications, data, and delivery models to build AI‑ready foundations

• Strengthening customer experience, resilience, and competitiveness through modernisation

• Proven approaches and real examples of successful transformation at scale

• How a phased, self‑funding model can deliver early wins and sustain momentum

Join senior peers for an evening of engaging conversation and practical insights on what it truly takes to prepare the enterprise for an AI‑driven future.