We were doing a little office cleaning recently and came across the brochures for the last few Fusion conferences in the bookcase. This made us quickly check our calendar to see that Fusion 2016 is right around the corner. With it being so close, we wanted to share some past insights and resources for this year's Fusion 2016 Symposium.

Fusion | The Past

The Fusion conferences have been among the most worthwhile and thought provoking conferences that we've attended. The topics are on-target and consistent with what IT leaders are struggling with, anticipating, researching, or working into the future road map. With this is in mind, we spent some time flipping through the agendas of the last few years and comparing them to the upcoming agenda.

This past year's Fusion review told an interesting story of evolution and where technology has been and is going. Two years ago there was a topic called Software-as-a-Service: Threat or Executive Opportunity that explored thoughts about if cloud computing would be a threat to stability, reliability and efficiency of IT computing. A mere two years later, cloud computing is a given as a source of stability, reliability, efficiency and flexibility. Fusion sessions in 2016 are looking at how this flexibility can be used to evolve the workplace as well as customer relationships.

Fusion is at the Center of IT Innovation

We've found the most striking thing as we review these agendas (and what's making us the most excited about this upcoming session) is the change in tone over the last three years. In Fusion 2013 there was a heavy tone of protecting against threats. Terms like threat, protect, and extreme politics are sprinkled throughout the agenda. There was a theme of reinvention of IT in Fusion 2015, emphasizing how to change the conversation with business partners and to look toward the future. It also highlighted how to better serve your business partners and how to keep up with the marketing divisions.

Coming up in Fusion 2016, the agenda moves in a big paradigm shift from IT supporting and protecting the business to IT driving the business. Fusion 2016 agenda items:

Driving revenue
Improving customer experience
Shaping employee experience.

This is a big change from previous years. We are now in a world where no matter what industry you are in, your customers are expecting you to have an online presence at the bare minimum. Even more, they likely prefer to interact with you through technology. With the expectations of the quality, speed, and ease of these interactions ever increasing, it is an exciting and challenging time for IT leaders across the spectrum.

Fusion CIO-CEO Symposium 2016 Details

This year's Fusion symposium is, by all accounts, going to break barriers by helping us learn to better Deliver Customer Experience Value through Disruptive Business Models Powered by Digital Investments.