The CIO Playbook: The Rise of Agentic Systems
Celebrating 12 years of thought leadership, the IDC CIO Summit – ASEAN returns on 27 March 2026 in Singapore as the region’s premier gathering of technology decision-makers.
2026 marks a defining year for the ASEAN digital economy. CIOs across Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia are navigating a moment of both extraordinary opportunity and accelerating complexity. With ICT investments in the region projected to surpass $170 billion, and AI spending growing 1.7 times faster than overall digital tech investments, the decisions made today will shape not just enterprise competitiveness but national innovation trajectories across Southeast Asia.
The CIO Summit 2026 is the region’s most forward-thinking IT and business leaders converge to reimagine what’s next. This exclusive one-day event in Singapore brings together senior executives, CIOs and digital transformation heads to exchange insights, benchmark strategies, and set the direction for the next wave of intelligent enterprise.
Low Han Yong
Low Han Yong is the Chief Information Officer at Kuok Group Singapore, driving digital transformation, enterprise architecture, and technology operations to deliver innovation and resilience. He brings extensive experience from leading U.S. multinationals, including General Electric, CA Technologies, and Oracle (acquisition of Sun Microsystems), where he managed large-scale IT programs and led Asia Pacific business operations. This unique blend of enterprise IT and global technology experience gives him a deep understanding of the entire IT ecosystem—from solution development to large-scale implementation. Combining strategic vision with technical expertise, Han Yong has guided Kuok Group Singapore to earn multiple industry awards for leveraging advanced technologies to deliver impactful business outcomes. He is recognized for fostering collaboration, driving pragmatic execution, and cultivating an innovative mindset that enables organizations to achieve digital competitiveness and sustainable growth.
Christina Lee
Zeljko Ivkovic
Expert Perspectives
Hear from thought leaders, visionary CIOs, and celebrity speakers redefining technology, leadership, and innovation across India.
IDC Opening Keynote: The AI Moment: Strategies for CIOs in ASEAN
AI, predicted to have a $19.9 trillion impact on the global economy by 2030, is reshaping economic landscapes, creating new revenue streams, and redefining competitive advantages. This session will provide unique insights and analysis drawn from IDC’s extensive study of CIOs and key decision-makers across ASEAN. It will provide a deeper understanding of current and planned AI strategies and use case road maps, covering key topics such as AI-ready data, unified governance, fit-for-purpose and scalable infrastructure, and AI talent.
Stephanie Krishnan | IDC
Associate Vice President, Manufacturing and Energy, Asia/Pacific
Stephanie Krishnan
Stephanie Krishnan is Research Director for IDC Manufacturing Insights, responsible for Industry 4.0 research. In this role, she responsible for the production, development and growth of the IDC Manufacturing Insights program in the Asia Pacific region. In this role, Stephanie will be delivering a research agenda that will appeal to technology buyers and vendors both in terms of subscription products and custom research in Industry 4-0 looking across ecosystems, value chains and supply chains of industrial industries.
Stephanie has more than 20 years’ experience in manufacturing and supply chain, with a diverse background that complements her years in academia and professional development consulting in multiple countries such as Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, UAE and Hong Kong among others. in addition to this, she advises startups in the areas of process automation and technology adoption, particularly in supply chain management. Stephanie has been most recently been conducting economic and supply chain market research as part of consulting in the Middle East.
Event Sessions
Friday, March 27 2026 10:15 am | Location:
IDC Opening Keynote: The AI Moment: Strategies for CIOs in ASEAN
AI, predicted to have a $19.9 trillion impact on the global economy by 2030, is reshaping economic landscapes, creating new revenue streams, and redefining competitive advantages. This session will provide unique insights and analysis drawn from IDC’s extensive study of CIOs and key decision-makers across ASEAN. It will provide a deeper understanding of current and planned AI strategies and use case road maps, covering key topics such as AI-ready data, unified governance, fit-for-purpose and scalable infrastructure, and AI talent.
Insights
Discover thought-provoking articles from IDC analysts, strategic partners, and end-user speakers. Explore expert viewpoints on the latest tech trends, real-world transformation stories, and forward-looking insights shaping the digital future.
Analyst Spotlight
The world is entering a defining moment for digital infrastructure. Artificial intelligence has moved from experimentation to ubiquity, and with it, a new operational paradigm is taking shape — one where agents rather than applications become the primary engines of digital value creation. This is the dawn of the agentic AI era, and its success depends on one thing above all else: robust, intelligent, and scalable infrastructure.
Matt Eastwood
IDC
SVP, WW Research
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Getting Your Data AI Ready.
It has become a common refrain – getting data governance right is key to a successful AI strategy! This conventional wisdom is very true, but it is not a new problem. For as long as I have been involved in IT, both as an analyst and as a CIO, companies have struggled with wrangling the various data sets across the applications running at the organization.
Bob Parker
IDC
SVP, Software and Services Research
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Unlocking AI Potential
Driving AI success requires more than technology—it starts with getting your data ready: clean, governed, and accessible. Equally important is selecting an AI platform that aligns with business goals while ensuring architectural agility to integrate emerging technologies seamlessly. While partnerships with technology providers remain essential, organizations should design for interoperability rather than rigid dependency.
Beyond technology choices, true value comes when businesses are willing to re-engineer processes to fully leverage the strengths of generative AI and traditional AI. This combination of data readiness, platform strategy, architectural flexibility, and process transformation positions enterprises to innovate faster and adapt confidently in an evolving AI landscape.