Executive Summary

Enterprise leaders are actively rethinking the “digital core” to meet demands for agility, resilience, and speed in an environment defined by rapid AI advancement and increasing regulatory pressure. The conversation underscored a clear shift away from monolithic, long-lived systems toward cloud-based, modular architectures that can evolve continuously. Organizations are no longer treating AI as an isolated innovation initiative; instead, they are embedding it into core finance, operations, security, and customer-facing workflows, with a strong emphasis on reliability and governance.

A consistent message emerged: technology progress is outpacing organizational readiness. While AI and cloud platforms offer unprecedented capability, value is only realized when people, processes, and data are aligned. Enterprises that are succeeding are grounding AI adoption in concrete business problems, investing heavily in data foundations, and building cross-functional governance to control risk without slowing momentum. In regulated industries especially, human oversight, auditability, and accuracy are non-negotiable.

Looking ahead, leaders expect AI to become a standard operating layer across the enterprise, not a differentiator on its own. Competitive advantage will come from disciplined execution—integrating AI into end-to-end processes, training both technical and business teams, and scaling only after value and trust are proven.