Virtual Roundtable: Reimagining Resilience and Capacity

The extraordinary events of 2020 have ushered in a new era of transformation. Companies are rapidly pivoting their businesses, while also planning for a future that will be drastically different. The pandemic has compelled organizations to fundamentally reimagine what it means to be resilient and to re-strategize their capabilities.

For CIOs, this means ensuring that the workforce remains engaged and productive as daily work moves outside of the office. At the same time, they must also leverage digital technologies to help their organizations succeed in a new post-crisis reality.

With these challenges in mind, The IT Media Group brought together 14 cross-industry IT executives for a virtual roundtable entitled ‘Reimagining Resiliency and Capacity.’ The goals of the interactive session were to discuss strategies for social distancing and to share best practices related to approaches that support a ‘new normal.’

Moderating the roundtable was Jeff Ishii, Chief Technologist at The IT Media Group. Also participating were two executives from the session sponsor Hitachi Vantara, a world leader in data-driven solutions and technologies: Global Chief Technology Officer, Paul Lewis, and General Manager of Canada, Marcel Escorcio.

The interactive session included a combination of live-polling and panel questions covering the following topics:

• How to effectively manage remote workers
• Tactics for re-prioritizing portfolios and keeping key projects moving
• New investments required to support a virtual workforce
• Security risks and strategies for remote and edge computing
• Next-generation tools and architectures to enable a new normal
• Global best practices learned from overseas

When asked about key takeaways from the session, Paul observed, “We now have thousands of people at home, and we have to deal with the culture and technology to support that. The top CIO consideration needs to be health and safety. Then it goes to culture. How we communicate and collaborate. Finally, capability. How we create new expertise and new opportunity based on where we are in the new normal.”

Marcel added, “It was great to participate in the session. I was able to collaborate and hear things from a leadership perspective. We need to help leaders through the transition to the edge by helping them to solve their business and people problems.”

All participants will receive a strategic insights report highlighting key issues, best practices, and use cases discussed during the roundtable. A summary of the live polling results compared to recent national polls will also be provided.

Post session interviews

Paul Lewis, Global CTO, Hitachi Vantara

Marcel Escorcio, GM & VP Canada, Hitachi Vantara

Session highlights videos

Sustaining employee wellbeing and experience during isolation

IT investments for supporting current and future work environment

Strategies for effectively managing a remote workforce

Strategies and tools for reprioritizing projects

Security Risks and Strategies

Views on data access, governance and privacy

The IT Media Group’s CIO roundtables are one of the most successful event programs for IT executives in Canada, bringing together scores of senior-level peers for thoughtful private discussions around the top issues facing enterprise IT. For a better understanding of these events, please visit our Video section.

The IT Media Group is an award-winning producer of events and content for senior IT executives. Based in Toronto, our leadership team includes some of the most experienced and well-respected media, technology and business professionals serving the IT executive community in Canada.