Enterprise leaders seeking reduced overheads are turning to autonomous operations to drive efficiency across distributed assets. In IoT, it’s ensuring reliable data capture and processing, often in challenging environments, that’s the key to positive change. In Cloud and Big Data operations, interoperability and cybersecurity feature as the big issues that affect autonomous actions.
The different tracks at the TechEx Global event this week at Olympia in London covered many industries and sectors, yet the issues and challenges to automation discussed over the course of day one had much in common.
The internet of things
The co-located IoT Tech Expo Global and Edge Computing Expo showed that autonomous systems are ready (AI at the edge, IT/OT integration), but organisational and security changes were necessary for the enterprise to get full value from their investments. The panel on “Lights-Out Manufacturing” showed the audience how manufacturing plants could run with little human intervention on the factory floor – but how would this massive change impact the rest of the business?
And as is often the case, the larger the fleet of IoT devices being integrated into smart systems (think complex supply chains involving several suppliers and partners), the greater the ramifications to getting the cybersecurity and reliability elements badly wrong. The Edge Computing Expo’s “Scaling the Edge” addressed these challenges, and specifically to the IoT sector, how different networking and communications protocols attempt to communicate.
Moving from connected machines to fully autonomous environments requires operational and cultural changes. A panel on “Lights-Out Manufacturing” explored the shifts necessary to support factories running with minimal human intervention. And deploying a single autonomous unit is very different from managing a fleet. Supply chain executives face complexity when scaling these deployments.
The panel “Scaling the Edge” addressed interoperability and cost management in large-scale roll-outs. Edith-Clare Hall of ARIA and Matthew Howard from IEEE Robotics & Automation Society shared lessons on the operational complexity arising when disparate systems attempt to communicate. Here the message was that safety protocols need to be embedded early, especially where robots interact with human co-workers.
All things secure
In the Cyber Security and Big Data Expo track, the message was similar – devices that need to be monitored and controlled. When we consider cybersecurity as users, we think about digital identity as something we as users play a part in. But the fleets of servers and machines that interact with one another behind the scenes also have identities that have to be proven in order to keep the enterprise’s networks safe.
Cyber security a decade ago was very much concerned with securing a perimeter. But in a post-COVID world, where working from home and remote working are the accepted norms, per-device security operating in zero trust environments becomes at least, if not more important. Darren James from Outpost 24 spoke on day two of the event on how identity and trust define zero-trust networks.
The implications of agentic AI are organisation-wide, transcending industry sector and business functions. Trust and identity have ramifications in automated environments – a common parallel drawn by multiple speakers and panellists was between the privileges and workflows of humans and their agentic ‘colleagues’. By building-in guardrails and trust frameworks, forward-thinking organisations can begin to deploy agents in operational roles, albeit while retaining humans ‘in the loop’ – at least in initial phases.
In the AI & Big Data and Data Centre Expos (two of TechEx Global’s seven co-located events), silo-ed date continues to be an issue with enterprise-wide implications. Paul Fermor from IBM Automation said traditional thinking about automation (in perhaps a continuation of the RPA era) can underestimate the complexity of AI adoption, citing an “illusion of AI readiness.” Silo-ed data hampers agentic workflows and can produce sub-optimal results, leading to distrust among human employees in the automation platform. And if the workforce doesn’t invest its trust in its tools, any technology will yield less return; a cyclical problem.
The show must go on
At the time of writing, the TechEx Global event continues into day two. There’s a strong focus on developer activities on the show floor, and naturally enough, it’s AI’s role in the developer toolkit that is a common theme. A panel comprising of Fuzzy Labs’ Matt Squire, Santosh Singh, senior software development manager at Prime Video & Amazon MGM Studios, BlackRock’s Mari parry and Nikita Koselev from Mastercard will come together in a panel discussion under the banner of ‘Scaling AI Across the Enterprise: Practical Lessons for Developers’.
Over the course of the two day event, attendees, speakers, and experts from all over the world have met, discussed, and showcased current practices and platforms that are changing the face of business in 2026. The TechEx series of events continues in the heart of Silicon Valley in May, and travels to Amsterdam in the autumn.
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