Clarity Ahead: Agentic AI, Grounded in your Data

Overview

From pilots to scalable, explainable assistants – without rip-and-replace.

As we step into a new year, Elastic invites you to an evening of renewal, connection, and insight, bringing together industry peers to reflect on 2025 and look ahead to an even brighter 2026.

We’ll open with networking drinks, followed by a fireside chat with industry leaders on how trusted, transparent AI is shaping the next era of innovation. Afterwards, we’ll continue the conversation over dinner – a chance to reconnect, share ideas, and set the tone for the year ahead.

In 2025, organisations across industries found themselves flooded with data yet still searching for clarity. As AI takes centre stage, the real challenge isn’t building more models, it’s building better data foundations. This discussion will explore how AI leaders are:

Unifying fragmented systems and data into trusted, AI-ready foundations

Building explainable, governed AI that stands up to regulatory and board-level scrutiny

Strengthening oversight, transparency, and decision assurance for AI-driven decisions

Reducing operational complexity across on-prem, hybrid and cloud environments

Improving delivery velocity and cross-team alignment around AI initiatives

At the heart of this conversation is Elastic’s vision: bringing AI to your private data, not the other way around. With trusted data foundations, explainable assistants, and transparent governance, enterprises are unlocking clarity, resilience, and agility at scale.

Through real-world stories from global organisations, we’ll look at how data unification and trusted AI are already driving meaningful outcomes, and what that means for the year ahead.

Join us to welcome the new year by celebrating progress, connection, and a shared commitment to clarity, and to raise a glass to the trusted AI future ahead.

What to expect

• Networking Peer-Driven
• Discussions Interactive
• Panelists & Industry Analysts 3+
• Hours 2.5
• Senior Executives 10+

Agenda

• 5:30 pm Guest Arrival, Registration and Networking(Executive Dinner)
• 6:15 pm Finding Clarity in a Data-Driven World(Executive Dinner) As organisations continue to be overwhelmed by data, the challenge is no longer collection but clarity. This discussion explores how leaders are cutting through complexity to transform fragmented systems into unified intelligence — enabling faster decision-making, sharper customer insight, and operational resilience.
• 6:35 pm Peer perspectives: Building Trust in the Age of AI(Executive Dinner) As AI takes centre stage in business strategy, transparency and governance have become the cornerstones of adoption. This conversation examines how enterprises are ensuring trusted, explainable AI — bringing intelligence to their private data while maintaining control, compliance, and confidence in every decision.
• 7:00 pm Sit Down Dinner and Peer Connect(Executive Dinner)
• 7:50 pm Wrap‑up and key takeaways: what will you take back to your team?(Executive Dinner)

Speakers

• Mark Puddick · Senior Principal Search AI Specialist APJ, Elastic Mark Puddick is the APJ GenAI Specialist at Elastic, partnering with enterprises across the region to design and scale real-world GenAI, search, and observability solutions. Since joining Elastic in 2020, he has supported strategic enterprise customers across ANZ and APJ and was recognised as the top-performing Solutions Architect in the region. With over two decades of experience spanning VMware Tanzu/Pivotal, MongoDB, Optus, Macquarie Bank, Deutsche Bank, Sun Microsystems, and Nortel, Mark brings deep expertise in technical pre-sales, solution architecture, and leadership. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Information Systems Engineering from the University of Surrey.
• Luis Huertas · DBS, Executive Director Head of Automation, Infrastructure for Big Data, AI and Analytic, DBS Luis Huertas is an Executive Director at DBS Bank and Head of Automation, Infrastructure, Big Data, AI and Analytics, with over 20 years of experience leading enterprise-scale technology and data transformations. Formerly an IBM Enterprise Innovation Architect and Master Inventor, he specialises in cloud, AI, big data and automation, and now drives the strategy, scalability and innovation of DBS’s data and AI platforms.
• Pankaj Pophole · Chief Information Officer (CIO), HSBC Pankaj Pophale is the CIO for HSBC Life Singapore. Pankaj started his career at IBM as a software developer before joining HSBC, where he has worked for over 20 years in various technology and leadership positions, the last being Group CTO for Insurance. He has experience across diverse technology stacks and is a strong evangelist for driving business innovation through technology. As CIO, he is responsible for overall technology strategy, standardisation and delivery, leading cross functional and multi location teams. He is also responsible for the large scale migration and integration of systems as part of HSBC’s ongoing M&A acitvities in Singapore.

Partners

• Elastic At Elastic, we help organizations, their employees, and their customers accelerate the results that matter. With solutions in Enterprise Search, Observability, and Security, we help enhance customer and employee search experiences, keep mission-critical applications running smoothly, and protect against cyber threats. Delivered wherever data lives, in one cloud, across many clouds, or on-prem, Elastic enables more than 50% of the Fortune 500, and 17,000+ customers including Netflix, Uber, Slack, and Microsoft, to achieve new levels of success at scale and on a single platform. Learn more at elastic.co.

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