InfoWorld’s 2024 Technology of the Year Award winners

Artificial intelligence, including generative AI, continues to evolve rapidly across enterprise organizations, despite a lot of heavy lifting still required of software developers and data scientists. Many organizations continue to struggle to move generative AI applications, and the large language models that fuel them, from pilots into production.

The good news is that AI remains fertile ground for innovation, with software vendors infusing the technology into a variety of tools across the broad ecosystem of applications and development tools. Many of these innovations stand out among 60 finalists and 25 winners of InfoWorld’s 2024 Technology of the Year Awards.

The InfoWorld Technology of the Year Awards recognize the best and most innovative products in AI, APIs, applications, business intelligence, cloud, data management, devops, and software development. Read on to meet our finalists and winners.

To read about InfoWorld’s 2024 Technology of the Year Award winners in PDF format, download the file below (no registration required).

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Award categories

AI

AI and machine learning: Applications

AI and machine learning: Development                

AI and machine learning: Models

APIs

API management

Applications

Application management

Application networking

Application security

Business intelligence

Business intelligence and analytics

Cloud

Cloud backup and disaster recovery

Cloud compliance and governance 

Cloud cost management

Cloud security

Data management

Data management: Databases 

Data management: Governance

Data management: Integration

Data management: Pipelines

Data management: Streaming

Devops

Devops: Analytics

Devops: CI/CD

Devops: Code quality

Devops: Observability

Devops: Productivity

Devops: Security

Software development

Software development: Platforms

Software development: Tools

AI and machine learning: Applications

Finalists

Bitsight Discovery and Attribution Engine

Gong Revenue Intelligence Platform

Outset 

Winner

Gong Revenue Intelligence Platform

From the winner

Gong transforms revenue organizations by harnessing customer interactions to increase business efficiency, improve decision-making, and accelerate revenue growth. Gong’s Revenue Intelligence Platform uses AI to help teams capture, understand, and act on all customer interactions in a single, integrated platform. Gong captures and analyzes interactions with customers and prospects, enabling teams to identify key moments within the funnel, provide actionable guidance on the most effective next steps to take, and automate tasks. This leads to more (and more significant) wins, improved customer satisfaction, deeper engagement, more accurate forecasts, and stronger loyalty.

From the judges

“Pulling ambient information from emails and phone calls into the CRM system to help improve sales is a perfect use case for AI because it helps sales with a tedious but essential task. We need more solutions like this!”

AI and machine learning: Development

Finalists

Clarifai

Sony Semiconductor Solutions AITRIOS

Trustwise Optimize:ai

Winner

Optimize:ai

From the winner

Trustwise is building the trust layer to AI, ensuring that generative AI applications are reliable, safe, and efficient. Trustwise’s flagship product, Optimize:ai, empowers enterprises to confidently adopt AI solutions, knowing they are optimized for safety, cost, and compliance. Delivered as a single API, Optimize:ai is a first-of-its-kind generative AI application performance and risk management API that provides a robust AI safety, cost, and risk optimization layer for high-stakes enterprise environments. By rigorously stress testing and optimizing generative AI workloads using its advanced APIs, datasets, and AI safety and alignment controls, Trustwise safeguards enterprises from potential AI failures, excessive costs, and growing environmental concerns.

From the judges

“This is something every AI business would need. As ESG efforts are scrutinized, given how power-hungry AI systems are, this will be the tool that AI companies would want to embrace.”

AI and machine learning: Models

Finalist

Iterate.ai Interplay-AppCoder LLM

Winner

Interplay-AppCoder LLM

From the winner

Interplay-AppCoder LLM is a high-performing code generation model. It excels in producing clear, functional code for generative AI projects. Scoring high on the ICE benchmark test, the model has been fine-tuned with advanced AI libraries and frameworks, delivering practical solutions for complex coding tasks. Examples include Python scripts for YOLOv8, Vertex AI, and LangChain. Interplay- AppCoder LLM represents a significant advance in AI-driven code generation, enhancing enterprise project efficiency and capability.

From the judges

“This AI model enables enterprises to accelerate software development while ensuring functional accuracy, reducing human error, and enhancing productivity through innovative code-generation technology.”

API management

Finalists

Hasura Data Delivery Network

Solo.io Gloo Gateway

Postman API Platform

Winner

Hasura Data Delivery Network

From the winner

The Hasura Data Delivery Network (DDN) is an industry-first, metadata-driven solution that lets users fetch only the data they need from enterprise sources and deliver it to any client or user worldwide quickly, securely, and reliably. It gives them rich self-serve composability via a unified API, and makes the effort of building and operating such a delivery network for data trivial. Hasura DDN features modularized metadata, enabling domain teams to manage and iterate on just their team’s metadata in independent repositories. This lets teams enjoy the benefits of metadata-driven APIs—such as automation, governance, and standardization—in a multidomain environment.

From the judges

“The Hasura Data Delivery Network stands out … It is the first metadata-driven solution that lets users grab data they need and deliver it to any client or user anywhere quickly and reliably while maintaining security.”

Application management

Finalists

Mirantis k0smotron

wasmCloud

Winner

k0smotron

From the winner

k0smotron is a cutting-edge Kubernetes control plane designed to simplify and streamline cluster management for businesses of all sizes. Built on the robust foundation of k0s, an open source Kubernetes distribution, k0smotron offers unparalleled ease of use, scalability, and security. At its core, k0smotron provides a seamless and automated way to manage multiple Kubernetes clusters across private clouds, public clouds, bare metal, edge infrastructure, and hybrid arrangements. It eliminates the complexities, inefficiencies, and de facto lock-in typically associated with traditional cluster management on single infrastructures. k0smotron’s user-friendly interface and comprehensive documentation make it accessible even to those with limited Kubernetes experience.

From the judges

“k0smotron brings a fresh, smart way to manage Kubernetes more efficiently. … It’s a clever improvement that makes existing systems work much better.”

Application networking

Finalist

The Istio Authors/Cloud Native Computing Foundation Istio Ambient Mode

Winner

Istio Ambient Mode

From the winner

Ambient Mode is a new functionality within the popular open source service mesh project Istio. It provides a new deployment model and data plane architecture, free from the constraint of traditional, resource-intensive sidecars deployments. Ambient Mode focuses on delivering an open source service mesh experience that is secure, yet simplified and performant, helping reduce resourcing and cost requirements while helping enterprises expedite their workload migration to a microservices-based architecture. Benefits include: tailored deployment choices for Layer 4 (L4) and Layer 7 (L7); cost and operational optimization to help reduce resource and operational expenses; and zero-trust security for sidecar-less architecture.

From the judges

“A simpler approach to the service mesh that does away with sidecars, dramatically reducing resource overhead, infrastructure costs, and operational complexity, while improving application performance and preserving support for zero-trust security.”

Application security

Finalists

Contrast Security Application Detection and Response

OpenText Cybersecurity Fortify Aviator

VMware by Broadcom VMware vDefend Advanced Threat Prevention

Winner

VMware vDefend Advanced Threat Prevention

From the winner

VMware vDefend Advanced Threat Prevention (ATP) is an auto­mated, distributed, and enter­prise-wide solution for preventing advanced threats. It combines multiple detection technologies— Intrusion Detection, Network Sandboxing, and Network Traffic Analysis—with aggregation, cor­relation, and context engines via Network Detection and Response. Threat prevention, as well as re­stricting lateral movement, are enabled through distributed and/ or gateway firewall and intrusion prevention. VMware vDefend ATP combines alerts across different assets into a single campaign, providing comprehensive re­al-time threat visibility. This allows incident response teams to quickly understand the scope of a threat and prioritize its response.

From the judges

“Great concept offering an automated, distributed, and enterprise-wide solution for preventing advanced threats.”

Business intelligence and analytics

Finalists

Culture15

insightsoftware Logi Symphony

Pecan AI

Winner

Pecan AI

From the winner

Pecan revolutionizes predictive analytics with its automated, AI-driven solution that empowers businesses to create and implement predictive models from raw data, with no data science expertise required. Some exciting features of Pecan include automated model build­ing, an AI assistant for chat-based guidance, SQL code generation, streamlined data integration, and single-click deployment. Pecan stands out by democratizing AI and enabling rapid experimenta­tion. It equips data analysts and business teams across sales, marketing, supply chain, and finance to harness AI for lead scoring, demand forecasting, campaign optimization, and revenue projection. Offered as a subscription service, Pecan prior­itizes data security with top-tier certifications.

From the judges

“Its automation of complex processes accelerates time-to-value and reduces reliance on specialized personnel, offering strong business impact through scalability and cost-efficiency.”

Cloud backup and disaster recovery

Finalists

Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage

Cayosoft Guardian Forest Recovery

Clumio AWS Backup as a Service

Winner

Cayosoft Guardian Forest Recovery

From the winner

Designed to protect businesses from costly Microsoft Active Directory (AD) outages that cripple operations and infrastructure, Cayosoft Guardian Forest Recovery is the industry-first, patent-approved AD backup and recovery solution that guarantees instant AD forest recovery for all Microsoft environments. No other solution delivers instant AD recovery, and Cayosoft helps customers achieve it by maintaining an up-to-date standby forest in an isolated cloud, replicating an organization’s AD in an uncompro­mised and clean environment, ready to be called upon if an AD outage occurs. No compa­ny’s AD is off-limits, and rapid recovery is more important than ever before.

From the judges

“This product addresses a real need of this community. Businesses that can recover AD faster will be more efficient and resilient.”

Cloud compliance and governance 

Finalists

Kion

LightBeam.ai LightBeam PrivacyOps

Winner

LightBeam PrivacyOps

From the winner

LightBeam PrivacyOps converges data security, privacy, and AI gover­nance, so businesses can secure their data across cloud, SaaS, and on-prem locations. Leveraging generative AI, PrivacyOps ties together sensitive data cataloging, control, and compliance across structured (databases), unstruc­tured (file repositories), and semi-structured (ticketing systems) applications. PrivacyOps aims to create a secure, privacy-first world by helping customers automate compliance against a patchwork of regulations. Its ability to continu­ously monitor applications, includ­ing Microsoft 365, Google Work­space (formerly G Suite), ServiceNow, Snowflake, Amazon RDS, Amazon S3, and various data­bases and file repositories, alerts customers to issues in real-time and can automatically delete, redact, or archive sensitive data.

From the judges

“Works across multiple platforms (SaaS, cloud, etc.). … LightBeam’s AI platform detects sensitive data hiding in images, screenshots, HTML pages, and JSON objects, along with text and documents.”

Cloud cost management

Finalists

CloudBolt Software CloudBolt Platform               

Hyperglance

Kubecost

Winner

CloudBolt Platform        

From the winner

The CloudBolt Platform is what some analysts call a third-generation finops solution. CloudBolt differentiates through its leadership in Augmented FinOps. Leveraging a sophisticated data layer, the platform enables AI/ ML-driven actions to remedy discov­ered inefficiencies and anomalies and proactively prevent issues from occurring in the first place by applying intelligent automation and orchestra­tion. CloudBolt does this across an organization’s entire IT estate, including all major public clouds, private clouds, and data centers. Leveraging the FinOps Foundation’s FOCUS data spec, CloudBolt can apply AI/ML to rationalize all cost information across an entire cloud fabric to provide advanced functions like optimal workload placement, granular unit cost, and accurate forecasting.

From the judges

“CloudBolt’s ability to apply AI/ML to rationalize all cost information across an entire cloud fabric and its ability to provide advanced functions like optimal workload placement … and accurate forecasting excites me. FinOps rocks, and this looks like a solid product.”

Cloud security

Finalists

Gigamon Precryption technology

Okta Identity Security Posture Management

Sentra Data Security Posture Management Platform

Winner

Okta Identity Security Posture Management

From the winner

Okta Identity Security Posture Management (ISPM) proactively identifies vulnerabilities and identity security gaps across Okta, third-party identity providers, and cloud and SaaS environments. With ISPM, companies can contin­uously assess their identity risk posture, uncover critical miscon­figurations and gaps—like inconsistent MFA enforcement and account sprawl—and prioritize and remediate the most pressing issues based on risk severity. ISPM empowers security and IT teams with a proactive, end-to-end identity security posture coverage solution—minimizing the attack surface and improving continu­ous compliance. The outcome? Lower risk and cost of identity-related attacks and breaches, and improved business efficiency.

From the judges

“Uses multiple technologies to understand vulnerabilities and gaps. ISPM delivers a dashboard of adherence to security frameworks, reducing the need for compliance audits and increasing confidence in security posture.”

Data management: Databases 

Finalists

Cockroach Labs CockroachDB                

Couchbase Capella Database-as-a-Service     

SingleStore Data Platform          

Winner

SingleStore Data Platform          

From the winner

Designed for building intelligent applications, SingleStore is the world’s only real-time data plat­form that can read, write, and reason on peta­byte-scale data in a few milliseconds—enabling customers to make timely decisions to achieve the best performance, and the makers of the world to unlock their creativity and innovation. As the fastest real-time data platform on the market, SingleStore is crucial for generative AI applications. SingleStore leads the data technology industry in empowering users to transact, analyze, and search the most recent and up-to-date data avail­able, even if it changes in a millisecond.

From the judges

“A comprehensive platform for diverse workloads. … It’s an ideal solution for businesses that require fast, scalable data storage and processing without sacrificing flexibility or performance.”

Data management: Governance

Finalists

Baffle Data Protection 

Casper Labs Prove AI

Solix Technologies Solix Common Data Platform            

Winner

Baffle Data Protection 

From the winner

Baffle is the easiest way to protect sensi­tive data. We are the only security platform that cryptographically protects the data itself as it’s created, used, and shared across applications, analyt­ics, and AI. Baffle’s no-code solution masks, tokenizes, and encrypts data without requiring any applica­tion changes or impact to the user experi­ence. With Baffle, enterprises easily meet compliance controls and security mandates, and reduce the effort and cost of protecting sensitive information to elimi­nate the impact of data breaches.

From the judges

“Data is cryptographically protected when it is created, used, and shared across applications, analytics, and AI. This is a great differentiator.”

Data management: Integration

Finalists

Airbyte Open Source, Airbyte Cloud, and Airbyte Enterprise     

SnapLogic Intelligent Integration Platform            

Tray.ai Tray Universal Automation Cloud              

Winner

Tray Universal Automation Cloud            

From the winner

The Tray Universal Automation Cloud is a compos­able AI integration and automation platform for enterprises to achieve a step-function business performance increase with AI implementations. Teams can deliver integration, automation, and API projects faster and more efficiently using low-code and AI-augmented development and infuse and integrate AI into every aspect of their business. Tray’s unified environment sets it apart: From a single integration development environment, teams manage all activities—data integration, process automation, API development, and tech stack connectivity. This streamlines processes, enhances consistency and reduces potential points of failure so teams can move fast from prototype to production.

From the judges

“This platform shows strong potential to enhance a company’s technological capabilities across infrastructure, application layers, and data processing. Tray.ai significantly reduces operational costs and improves development velocity, which has a direct impact on business operations.”

Data management: Pipelines

Finalists

Apica Ascent Platform 

Coalesce.io Coalesce

Winner

Apica Ascent Platform 

From the winner

Apica keeps enterprises operating by providing full-stack visibility. The Ascent Platform delivers advanced telemetry, data management, and active observ­ability, enabling organizations to detect and resolve modern data challenges. Today, business operations depend on understanding the health of multicloud, hybrid, and on-premises environments to keep business-critical applications and systems online while providing an optimal user experience. Apica delivers a unified view of all information for the entire technology stack, helping reduce, prevent, and resolve outages. With the Ascent Platform, you can collect, opti­mize, store, transform, route, and replay your observability data, however, whenever, and wherever you need it.

From the judges

“The Apica platform stands out in technological advancements, particularly in the synthetic monitoring and dynamic scaling through the Kubernetes services. Also, it provides on-prem installation options, which is a good addition.”

Data management: Streaming

Finalist

Confluent Cloud

Winner

Confluent Cloud

From the winner

Confluent Cloud is the only complete data streaming platform on the market, so businesses can connect, stream, govern, and process their data in one place. Confluent Cloud eliminates the complexities of managing open source Apache Kafka and Apache Flink, a powerful stream processing technol­ogy, to unify disparate data systems and scale effort­lessly from managing a few applications to serving as a company-wide central nervous system. With Stream Governance, the only fully managed data governance suite for Apache Kafka, and more than 80 fully managed connectors, Confluent makes it easy to protect and connect data across the organization.

From the judges

“The unique offering by Confluent to have streaming and processing together, along with integration with connectors and libraries, will drastically reduce development and maintenance of the systems.”

Devops: Analytics

Finalist

Azul Intelligence Cloud

Winner

Azul Intelligence Cloud

From the winner

Azul Intelligence Cloud is a cloud analytics solution that provides actionable intel­ligence from production Java runtime data to dramatically boost developer productivity. It pinpoints what code actually runs to efficiently prioritize vulnerable code for remedia­tion (Vulnerability Detection) and unused and dead code for removal (Code Inventory). It works with any JVM from any vendor or distribution, including Azul Zulu and Zing Builds of OpenJDK, Oracle JDK, Amazon Corretto, Microsoft Build of OpenJDK, Red Hat Build of OpenJDK, and Eclipse Temurin, to dramatically slash time from unproductive tasks across an enterprise’s entire Java estate and free up developers for more important business initiatives.

From the judges

“Azul Intelligence Cloud is … like a smart assistant that watches how your Java programs work and suggests ways to improve them. It’s a new and exciting way to optimize Java programs, using real-time data to make smart decisions.”

Devops: CI/CD

Finalists

Buildkite Pipelines

Harness CI/CD

amazee.io, a Mirantis Company Lagoon              

Winner

Harness CI/CD

From the winner

Harness Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery redefines efficiency in the market with its blazing speed, robust security, and cost-effectiveness, achieved through smart caching, optimized test execution, and well-tuned cloud-build machines. It empowers teams with a streamlined, script-free platform, ensuring faster and more reliable software delivery that meets compliance needs without impeding innovation. Harness offers a fast, secure, and easy-to-manage software delivery platform with AI integrated throughout the software development life cycle.

From the judges

“Harness does shine in most aspects and some beyond the core CI/CD. Using AI to optimize the build and provide insights is quite useful.”

Devops: Code quality

Finalist

Sonar SonarQube Server             

Winner

Sonar SonarQube Server

From the winner

Whether human-written or AI-generated, it’s essential for code to be carefully and accurately checked for quality and security. SonarQube Server, an open source, self-managed tool, offers a streamlined solution for fixing and avoiding code errors at the start of the development process. It’s not focused on symptoms—it gets at the source to prevent issues in the first place. It provides automatic and efficient real-time code analysis, flagging and explaining issues as they are detected, to arm developers with the right resources to produce clean code. SonarQube Server allows developers to safely harness the power of AI while minimizing risk.

From the judges

“SonarQube is like a spell checker for your code, but it can do much more than just find typos. It can check your code for many different problems, like security vulnerabilities, bugs, and poor code quality. Overall, SonarQube is a highly valuable tool that can help businesses improve their software development process.”

Devops: Observability

Finalists

Dynatrace Platform        

Grafana Labs Grafana Cloud    

Honeycomb.io Honeycomb      

Winner

Dynatrace Platform        

From the winner

In today’s digital landscape, organizations need solutions that tackle cloud complexity, turning data into actionable insights for secure, high-performance digital environments. That’s where Dynatrace comes in. Its observ­ability and security platform provides end-to-end visibility into IT environments, offering comprehensive monitoring of applications, microservices, infrastructure, and end-user experience. What sets Dynatrace apart is its Davis AI engine. Leveraging causal, predictive, and generative AI, Davis analyzes billions of dependencies in real time, detecting anomalies, pinpointing root causes, and providing actionable insights without human intervention. This automation reduces mean time to resolution and eliminates operational blind spots, allowing teams to focus on innovation.

From the judges

“Dynatrace has a deep understanding of observability tech unlike any other and is now innovating with AI models for full-stack observability.”

Devops: Productivity

Finalist

Gradle Develocity

Winner

Develocity

From the winner

Develocity is Gradle’s platform for improving developer pro­ductivity and happiness. It’s the leading enabling technolo­gy for Developer Productivity Engineering (DPE), a practice pioneered by Gradle that views developer productivity as a technology challenge best addressed by engineered solutions, rather than a people problem. It focuses on process bottlenecks that most nega­tively impact the developer experience, including the toil and frustration associated with a lack of observability into build performance and failure root causes, slow builds, and inefficient troubleshooting. Develocity achieves this through a combination of cutting-edge acceleration technologies to maximize build and test performance.

From the judges

“The tech continues to be impactful in improving developer productivity so that features can be delivered to market quickly. Analytics and other dashboards provide insights into where the bottlenecks are across all systems.”

Devops: Security

Finalists

Backslash Security Backslash SAST&SCA          

Harness Security Testing Orchestration

Chainguard Images       

Winner

Harness Security Testing Orchestration

From the winner

Harness Security Testing Or­chestration (STO) is shift-left security built for customers’ pipelines and designed for developers. STO integrates with over 40 commercial and open source security scanners, allowing customers the flexibili­ty of running their preferred scanners without the complexi­ty of managing them as a set of individual tools. STO orches­trates tests anywhere across build pipelines and normalizes, deduplicates, and prioritizes vulnerabilities, thus reducing the vulnerability count in many cases by over 90%. By enabling a proactive application security testing approach, STO reduces the risk of vulnerabilities mak­ing it into production and greatly decreases engineering toil associated with remedia­tion rework.

From the judges

“There are several innovations here that can improve security for many devops teams, including the use of Harness AIDA (AI development assistance) to generate detailed, prescriptive remediation guidance that helps developers rapidly fix security issues in their code.”

Software development: Platforms

Finalists

Backstage Project Authors/Cloud Native Computing Foundation Backstage   

Crowdbotics Platform  

Onfleet

Winner

Backstage           

From the winner

Backstage is an open source framework developed by Spotify and donated to the CNCF. It centralizes tools, services, and documenta­tion behind a single pane of glass. Backstage helps manage the complexities found in a scaling developer workforce by providing developers a uniform over­view of all their resources, regardless of how and where they are running. It also allows the creation of new resources, such as back-end services running in Kubernetes, with a few clicks of a button, all without having to leave the Backstage interface. Backstage’s biggest value is its ability to improve developer effectiveness by reducing friction.

From the judges

“Backstage has significantly transformed the developer experience by centralizing tools and simplifying workflows, leading to improved efficiency and faster onboarding. Its open source nature encourages continuous innovation, allowing it to evolve rapidly with contributions from a thriving community.”

Software development: Tools

Finalists

AudioEye Accessibility Testing SDK

The Dapr Authors/Cloud Native Computing Foundation Dapr 

Vercel v0

Winner

Vercel v0       

From the winner

Vercel v0 is the first tool that lets developers build an actual UI from scratch using nothing but text. These aren’t designs or visual representations of a UI. This is real code you can drop into your codebase and start serving to users. v0 was created to help anyone bring a website to life [regardless of] their level of technical knowl­edge. When building new products—whether you’re a Fortune 100 enterprise, an indie developer, or completely new to cod­ing—staring at a blank screen is overwhelming. v0 is an ideation partner as you take a feature idea from your head, describe it in simple terms, and bring it to the web.

From the judges

“The models implemented within the solution are highly specialized and tailored to the specific problem domain, which ensures that the system operates with precision and delivers optimal results.”

About the judges

Stan Gibson is an award-winning editor, writer, and speaker, with 40 years’ experience covering information technology. Formerly executive editor of eWEEK and PC Week, and senior editor at Computerworld, he is currently adjunct analyst at IDC. As principal of Stan Gibson Communications, he writes for many websites, including CIO.com, and is a popular host for online events.

Kieran Gilmurray is CEO of Kieran Gilmurray and Company, a globally recognized authority on AI, automation, and digital transformation. Kieran has authored two influential books and hundreds of articles that have shaped industry perspectives. His expertise has earned him 10 prestigious accolades, including being named a Top 50 Global Thought Leader and Influencer on Generative AI in 2024, a Best LinkedIn Influencer for AI and Marketing, and one of the World’s Top 200 Business and Technology Innovators.

Rich Heimann is a machine learning and AI leader whose former titles include Chief AI Officer, Director of AI, Chief Data Scientist and Technical Fellow, and adjunct professor. He is the recent author of Generative Artificial Intelligence Revealed: Understanding AI from Technical Depth to Business Insights to Responsible Adoption.

Arun Krishnakumar is an ecommerce expert, author, and masterclass instructor. With extensive experience as a product engineer, he has built impactful products for multibillion-dollar international brands used by millions of users. He specializes in leveraging a data-driven approach to fuel growth, customer acquisition, retention, and user adoption for consumer products. His work centers on enhancing digital experiences and empowering ecommerce platforms to drive growth through optimized product strategy and user engagement across online and offline touchpoints.

Gaurav Mittal is a seasoned IT manager with 18+ years of leadership experience, adept at guiding teams in developing and deploying cutting-edge technology solutions. Specializing in strategic IT planning, budget management, and project execution, he excels in AWS Cloud, security protocols, and container technologies. Gaurav is skilled in Java, Python, Node.js, and CI/CD pipelines, with a robust background in database management (Aurora, Redshift, DynamoDB). His achievements include substantial cost savings through innovative solutions and enhancing operational efficiency. Gaurav is recognized for his leadership, problem-solving abilities, and commitment to delivering exceptional IT services aligned with organizational goals.

Priyank Naik is a principal engineer with 20 years of experience in the financial industry, specializing in building complex, real-time, distributed, cloud-enabled systems for front office operations, risk management, and fixed income research.

Peter Nichol is chief technology officer at OROCA Innovations. He is a 4x author, MIT Sloan, and Yale School of Management speaker dedicated to helping organizations connect strategy to execution to maximize company performance. His career has focused on driving and quantifying business value by championing disruptive technologies such as data analytics, blockchain, data science, and artificial intelligence. He was a contributing author for CIO magazine and has been recognized for digital innovations by CIO100, MIT Sloan, BRM Institute, Computerworld, and PMI.

Anton Novikau is a seasoned software development leader with eight years of experience spearheading innovative educational technology solutions. As Head of Mobile Development at Talaera, an EdTech startup, Anton drives the technical vision and execution of transformative learning experiences while pioneering AI integration across the company’s product suite. His expertise spans full-stack development, cloud architecture, and leveraging artificial intelligence to enhance educational outcomes. Anton’s contributions to the field extend beyond product development through published scientific articles exploring the intersection of software engineering, artificial intelligence, and education.

Shafeeq Ur Rahaman is an accomplished leader in data analytics and digital infrastructure, with over a decade of experience creating transformative, data-driven solutions that optimize business performance. Currently serving as the Associate Director of Analytics & Data Infrastructure at Monks, Shafeeq oversees advanced data pipeline automation, cloud architecture implementation, and strategic analytics initiatives. Recognized for his technical expertise and dedication to ethical data governance, Shafeeq brings a deep understanding of emerging technology trends and innovative applications to his role as a judge for the InfoWorld Technology of the Year Awards.

Rahul Patil, hailing from the vibrant city of New York, is a seasoned professional in the tech industry with 17 years of extensive experience. Currently working at a hedge fund, he has honed his skills in back-end development with a particular focus on Java. His deep passion for technology drives him to constantly explore and utilize cloud-native services like AWS and GCP. Rahul’s dedication to his craft and his commitment to staying on the cutting edge of technological advancements truly set him apart as a remarkable technologist.

Kautilya Prasad is an accomplished digital experience platform expert. With over 17 years of experience in leading digital transformation projects for multiple Fortune 500 customers, he stands at the intersection of artificial intelligence, digital experience, and data analytics, crafting solutions that enhance customer experiences. He actively engages in peer reviews, shaping the discourse around emerging technologies. He has been awarded Most Valuable Professional multiple times for his extraordinary contributions to the digital experience community. Kautilya regularly shares his thoughts by speaking at various events on topics like customer experience, ecommerce, and the impact of AI in digital marketing.

Ramprakash Ramamoorthy leads the AI efforts for Zoho Corporation. Ramprakash has been instrumental in setting up Zoho’s AI platform from scratch. He comes with a rich 12+ years of experience in building AI for the enterprises at Zoho Corp., where the AI platform currently serves over 5 billion requests per month and is growing strong. Ramprakash is a passionate leader with a level-headed approach to emerging technologies, and a sought-after speaker at technology conferences.

Monika Rathor is a lead application engineer at Level Home, where she is building smart home solutions with smart access, automation, and building intelligence solutions that improve apartment living and management in the most impactful, cost-effective way possible. She is also a performance improvement enthusiast, driven to achieving optimizations like cutting latency from 200ms to just 50ms. Monika also loves mentoring her team, helping them grow and learn. Before Level Home, Monika was at Meta, improving WhatsApp’s user integrity features. At Akamai, she had some big wins like boosting GraphQL caching hit ratios and making edge performance even better.

Isaac Sacolick is the president and founder of StarCIO, with the mission of guiding organizations in developing core competencies for digital transformation through its leadership, learning, and advisory programs. A lifelong technologist, Isaac has served in startup CTO and transformational CIO roles, then founded StarCIO believing that agile ways of working, product management, and AI/data-driven practices can empower diverse teams to drive digital transformation. Isaac is a writer, keynote speaker, and author of two books: the Amazon bestseller Driving Digital, a playbook for leading digital transformation, and Digital Trailblazer, where he shares dramatic stories and 50 lessons for transformation leaders.

Scott Schober is the president and CEO of Berkeley Varitronics Systems, a 50-year-old, New Jersey-based provider of advanced, world-class wireless test and security solutions. He is the author of three best-selling security books: Hacked Again, Cybersecurity is Everybody’s Business, and Senior Cyber. Scott is a highly sought-after author and expert for live security events, media appearances, and commentary on the topics of ransomware, wireless threats, drone surveillance and hacking, cybersecurity for consumers, and small business. He is often seen on ABC News, Bloomberg TV, Al Jazeera America, CBS This Morning News, CNN, Fox Business, and many other networks.