Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian will lead the opening keynote on April 22, which may include major product announcements as well.
“The most successful AI projects aren't just ‘AI projects’; they are business transformation projects. Currently, the most effective alignment happens when organizations solve for access and control,” says Arun Sundaram, director of Google services and solutions at CDW.
Sundaram and Kristi Dazevedo, senior cloud campaign lead and Google strategist at CDW, offer their insights on what to expect during the conference. Attendees can also check out CDW’s booth on the expo floor and listen to a session about moving AI agents from pilot to practice.
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Ready, Set, Go: Businesses Are Taking Off With AI Agents
Organizations are shifting conversations from entry-level “what is generative AI?” to more advanced questions about building autonomous agents, especially for nontechnical teams. Which internal data sources should these agents access? How can they execute multistep processes with very minimal intervention and without hallucinations as outputs?
Data readiness will be a major component of these discussions, Sundaram notes: “Businesses understand that it’s not just throwing a lot of data at an agent — they need to have quality data, data that’s relevant, contextual data, so how can businesses break down the silos that they have around data? That’s becoming a major consideration from an adoption standpoint.”
Compliance and security will be another focus area because AI tools and capabilities are evolving so rapidly. For industries such as healthcare and finance that have stringent compliance expectations, how can agentic AI adhere to those rules while reducing administrative burdens?
“Teams should be able to audit these AI agents. Are they given the same permissions that a human agent would have to complete a task? It should be nothing more, nothing less. If an agent is completely autonomous, do we have appropriate audit trails and metrics to measure its success? These aspects all become important to making an AI agent work,” Sundaram says.
How Strategic Partnerships Turn AI Ambition Into Action
AI may still be too complex for most nontechnical users, and while true democratization is on the horizon, businesses need significant support to get there. That's where strategic partnerships become critical, particularly for organizations that feel outpaced by how quickly the technology is evolving or find themselves stuck in an extended testing phase.
Depending on the size of an organization, it may make sense to establish an AI Center of Excellence, Sundaram notes — a dedicated team focused on AI adoption that can work alongside a partner for added expertise and an outside perspective.
“We understand what's happening in the market,” he says, “so we can provide knowledge on where the technology is going, what's expected to change, what's supported today and what's coming up in a roadmap.”
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