Steve Morgan

Senior Data Platform Architect Starburst

Conference Day 1: Tuesday 13th October 2026

AI models are commoditizing faster than most enterprises expected. The race that

matters now is not which model is best - but for the enterprise intelligence the model can

draw on.

Most organisations operate across data estates that were never built to converge:

mainframes, cloud warehouses, LOB platforms, regional systems, regulatory data stores.

Centralizing everything first is not just slow - it's often structurally impossible due to

technology incompatibility, effort to move & duplicate data, and constraining regulation

such as DORA and GDPR.The instinct to migrate and centralise data before activating AI is

not only stalling effort, it's often causing it be abandoned long before production.

The path forward is different: connect to data where it lives, organize it into trusted,

governed business context, and activate it for every agent, every analyst, and every

analytics workflow that depends on a defensible answer. Gartner named this architecture

at their Data & Analytics Summit in London, May 2026 as the "Context Layer". Not only

is it a core data & analytics infrastructure requirement, but it also foresees demand for

semantic transparency as a governance obligation.

In this discussion, we'll unpack what that looks like in practice:

• How zero-data-movement federation unlocks AI without touching data residency and

sovereignty constraints

• Why organized, governed business context — not raw data access — is what separates

AI at scale from AI in pilot

• How accountability travels with the data: governance embedded at the intelligence

layer, not applied at the storage layer

• What a 45-to-90-day path from conversation to live enterprise capability looks like for

an enterprise ready to move

Check out the incredible speaker line-up to see who will be joining Steve.

Address: IQPC Ltd, 129 Wilton Road,
London SW1V 1JZ
Telephone: 44 (0) 207 368 9300
Fax: 44 (0) 207 368 9301
Email: enquire@iqpc.co.uk