AI Readiness Blueprint and Defender for Cloud

SAVE THE DATE! - May 4th 2026, 7:00 pm -8:40pm

AGENDA

7:00 pm - Welcome and House Keeping

Speaker 1 -Kiran Kumar Ramanna | Senior
Staff Machine Learning Engineer @ ServiceNow

Kiran Kumar Ramanna is a seasoned AI/ML Engineer and GenAI/Agentic AI Architect with over 14 years of experience delivering enterprise-grade AI solutions that power mission-critical workflows. Known for building production-ready systems, not demos, Kiran specializes in Agentic AI frameworks, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), LLM orchestration, and AI Search, with measurable impact on latency, reliability, and workflow deflection.

Session - AI Readiness Blueprint: From Azure AI Pilots to Scalable Enterprise Impact

Many organizations running AI workloads on Azure launch numerous proofs of concept, yet only a small fraction ever reach production. The barrier is rarely Azure services or model capability. More often, it is a lack of enterprise readiness fragmented data estates, unclear ownership, misaligned stakeholders, and weak governance that prevents AI initiatives from scaling beyond isolated pilots.

This session introduces the AI Readiness Blueprint, a practical framework designed to help Azure teams move from experimentation to operational AI. Rather than serving as a static maturity model, the blueprint emphasizes execution through facilitated, cross-functional workshops that bring together business leaders, architects, engineers, and data owners. These sessions identify readiness gaps and produce actionable roadmaps aligned to Azure-native capabilities. Progression is managed through clearly defined stage gates, ensuring teams do not advance to pilots or production workloads without meeting foundational criteria. This discipline helps reduce pilot sprawl by consolidating disconnected Azure AI initiatives into a small number of enterprise-aligned capabilities. Readiness is evaluated across five interdependent pillars: data preparedness, process adaptability, infrastructure scalability on Azure, governance and responsible AI, and cultural enablement. Each pillar includes maturity indicators across five stages, from foundational capability to optimized, repeatable operations.

A real-world manufacturing example demonstrates how an Azure-based predictive maintenance initiative progressed by strengthening data platforms, implementing automated data quality monitoring, formalizing governance, and expanding AI literacy. Attendees leave with practical tools including an assessment canvas, workshop facilitation guidance, and stage-gate criteria to enable disciplined, production-ready AI on Azure.

**Speaker 2 - Hassan Fadili FadiliCT Consultancy, DevOps / CICD Expert, MVP Visual Studio Tools & Developer Technologies, DevOps Ranger at Microsoft, Community Leader (NL + MA), Trainer / Speaker

Dev & DevOps Freelance at FadiliCT Consultancy, CICD Expert, MVP Visual Studio & Developer Technologies, DevOps Ranger at Microsoft, Community Leader (NL + MA), Trainer / Speaker.

Husband, Father, Soccer Referee and Mosque Board Member. All for the Humanity and a safe world!

Session: Defender for Cloud & Defender for DevOps vulnerability detection in code as part of DevOps Journey

Security, compliance and governance are a must in our DevOps journey nowadays, therefore we must be patient and accurate on the way we expose our source code and detect vulnerability at time before heating production Systems. Defender for Cloud and Defender for DevOps can help out there.