2025-08-26 –, Potter Auditorium - Kenneth C Rowe Management Building
Enterprises and governments around the world are racing to adopt AI, cloud computing, and digital-first strategies to improve service delivery, operational efficiency, and application innovation. But despite heavy investments, many digital transformation initiatives fall short of expectations—not due to lack of ambition, but because of persistent gaps that are often overlooked.
In this keynote, I will dive into the critical gaps that challenge digital transformation efforts in both the public and private sectors. These gaps span organizational silos, fragmented cloud adoption, under-utilized data assets, security blind spots, rushed AI adoption, and the lack of strategic alignment between IT teams and executive leadership.
Through case studies from enterprise modernization projects, I will highlight what successful transformation looks like when governance, innovation, and agility are prioritized together. I will also address the importance of digital talent development, architecture standardization, and platform interoperability to ensure long-term resilience.
Description:
This keynote goes beyond specific technologies to examine the systemic gaps that both public and private sector organizations face during digital transformation. It offers a strategic perspective on why many transformation initiatives struggle or stall despite significant investment. The goal is to help technology and policy leaders gain a realistic understanding of their current digital maturity and to rethink their transformation roadmaps with clarity, pragmatism, and long-term vision—bridging the gap between where they are and where they need to be.
Target Audience:
Government CIOs, enterprise CTOs, heads of digital transformation, IT executives, public sector innovation leaders, and policymakers driving digital agendas.
Key Takeaways:
• The key reasons why digital transformation efforts often fail to scale or deliver expected outcomes
• Lessons learned from real-world AI adoption and digital maturity challenges
• Strategies for securely integrating AI and cloud technologies into modern application stacks
• Governance frameworks for balancing regulatory compliance, innovation, and operational agility
Dr. Lu Yang holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of New Brunswick and brings with him a wealth of experience in enterprise-level High-Performance Computing (HPC) administration and management, spanning over 15 years. His expertise extends beyond HPC to encompass cloud computing and Generative AI, particularly in the context of ocean AI, data analytics, and cloud architecting projects at DeepSense. Prior to his current instructor role at the Faculty of Computer Science (FCS) of Dalhousie, Dr. Lu Yang served as the Senior Cloud Solutions Architect at DeepSense, Cloud Solution Engineer at JUUL Labs, and senior HPC Systems Specialist at ACENET and DeepSense.
Throughout his career, Dr. Lu Yang also demonstrated his passion for teaching by delivering a diverse range of Computer Science courses at various universities. With an avid interest in all aspects of cloud-related topics, Dr. Lu Yang has been helping industries and public sectors plan and develop the end-to-end data-centric architectures for various use cases.