Over 120 CIOs, IT leaders and sales executives gathered on the 20th floor of The Venue Green Park in Morningside. Set against panoramic views of Sandton business district, the event delivered on its promise: four-minute pitches with absolutely no fluff.
The one night a year CIO South Africa lets the sales pitch in. That's how 28 July played out at The Venue Green Park in Morningside, Sandton, as a room full of CIOs and IT decision-makers watched sales partners – from global players like Kaspersky and Workday to homegrown iOCO – take the stage for the 2026 Pitch Parade.
Attendees ended their busy work day to mingle and make new connections at this year’s Pitch Parade where vendors were given just four minutes to sell their product.
The evening kicked off with a firecracker introduction by comedian Bongani Dube. Just five minutes into his set, the Limpopo-born comic had the room in stitches as he engaged directly with audience members. Bongani’s witty observations spared no one and set the tone for an electric evening of comedy, countdowns, canapés and an open bar.
AI, business and legacy
The first pitch came in the form of a case study from Mordechai Serraf, director at Entelect and principal consultant Chelcie Reynolds. They presented a case study of how two work groups handled AI. One team was told to “figure it out” while the other team learnt how to play with it.
“The difference comes down to the fact that every team is using AI. What mattered was how they used it, and having a trusted partner to coach the team was definitely what resulted in a win,” Mordechai said.
Then came Jannie Malan, principal solutions consultant at Workday, who told attendees that Workday had built agent teammates powered by Sauna (an advanced multiplayer AI coworker and cloud agent platform developed by Wordware). “They don't learn the rules – they inherit them from day one. This allows people to fundamentally change how they work with Workday.”
Then, Chris Norton, GM at Kaspersky, took the stage. He began by explaining the company’s long history with cybersecurity, AI and machine learning, emphasising that the firm is not a Gen Alpha creation.
“Kaspersky has been doing machine learning since the days of antivirus when the virus packet first came, and we've continued that into AI,” said Chris.
Dr Marchant van den Heever, head of product at Change Logic, was up next speaking about the challenges related to how effectively people adopt new technologies. He showcased AMP, a behavioural adoption intelligence engine that turns user signals into measurable evidence.
“AMP surfaces insights across user, team, business units, initiatives and identifies the
exact constraints that are blocking adoption and gives you the intelligence to solve it while the programme is still running,” he said.
Girish Gopalarao, vice president at HCLTech India, closed off the first round of pitches by telling attendees AI transformation starts with the right infrastructure, operating model and ecosystem. “We also do a lot of work with data. We help customers clean their data and make sure that it is AI adoptable.”
Then it was time for a quick Q&A with execs before drinks and delicious finger foods were served while CIO community members mingled and made new connections.
Race to beat the buzzer
Round two of the pitches saw sales execs determined to beat the clock.
Lesego Molwantwa, business executive, cloud cybersecurity and AI iOCO Technology Group, began rather unconventionally, using two minutes to observe silence for CIOs. “Gosh, I feel sorry for you guys. Every single year we start off with: ‘This year is our year of digital transformation,’ and you are supposed to deliver on that,” he said.
He ended his pitch by putting up a QR code for attendees to scan for more information rather than trying to sell an intricate IT solution in four minutes and was the only executive to complete with a full minute to spare.
It was a hard act to follow, but Derren Naidoo, sales manager at Hyland, gave it his best shot. He tackled how companies are being snowed under an avalanche of content and data from multiple sources such as claims, contracts, emails, images and records.
“So let's ask the question, ‘What does the enterprise need?’ Not more pilots in this world of air traffic control; it needs a control tower,” said Derren, also ending his pitch with a QR code – and 11 seconds on the clock.
Up next was MagicOrange’s VP for customer success Tian van der Walt and VP of sales Stephen Coull, who tackled exco expectations for the CIO. The CFO wants to reduce costs and the CEO wants AI.
Tian and Stephen told attendees about MagicOrange’s “technology economics” model.
“We've delivered technology economics for customers globally and in South Africa across finance, banking, insurance, telco, retail and public sector. If your tech budget is coming under pressure, cost cuts on the one side and our transformation on the other, and you're battling to understand how you deliver technology and how you perceive your budget, come chat to us,” concluded Stephen – just as the buzzer sounded.
Boyd Chislett, chief commercial officer at Cassava Technologies, had the audience enthralled with his presentation on Sovereign AI. Boyd began his presentation with contentious news headlines seen in global media reports in the past 18 months, one relating to the conflict in the Middle East, the second on Washington’s decisions on AI usage and an AWS server that went down in Virginia, impacting over 1,000 businesses.
“What does this mean? It means that war, policy, or just pure failure, are different causes. But actually, there's one lesson for all of us sitting here today: your data and your AI lives on someone else's infrastructure and their downtime becomes your risk.”
He ended the second round by urging CIOs to advance the conversation on data sovereignty and security, saying the US Cloud Act gives American companies access to company data.
Integration, trust and customer service
After another round of drinks and snacks, Alan De Waal-Smit, head of sales at ITR Technology, spoke on integration. “This integration also drives compliance. When you combine identity and access management, endpoint management and a security information and event management (SIEM) solution, you can manage compliance from a single pane of glass.”
Sharon Maasdorp, chief operations officer at MakwaIT, highlighted the growing demand for continuous, uninterrupted service. “It is all about the power of now and the power of zero: zero time to provision, zero time to deploy, zero time to find a problem and zero time to resolve it. If we fail to stick to that agenda and fulfil that mandate, we lose our customers' trust,” she said.
Then, Prabith Kalathil, Nihilent vice president and regional head for Africa and Vikash Gokul, Nihilent vice president, tackled the problem associated with getting AI pilots into production. “A lot of preparation goes into making an AI implementation land successfully. This is why Nihilent built the TriHelix™ framework. The TriHelix™ framework focuses on removing operational friction before scaling the technology,” explained Prabith.
Craig Selby, SVP sales Clickatell, started with an automated call waiting sound – telling execs that none of them wanted to put their customers on hold. “Other companies open tickets – Clickatell closes tickets,” Craig said, beating the clock by 28 seconds.
The evening ended on a sweet note, with desserts and a final round of networking.
