Azure Congress 2026

10:30 - Opening of the conference

11:00 - The Phoenix Protocol: Creative Destruction from Agile, DevOps, DORA, Cloud, IaC, SRE, UX to AI - Janusz Nowak, Cloud Domain Architect, BEC Financial Technologies | Microsoft Azure MVP

Continuous Improvement in the age of AI isn't about doing the same things 1% better; it’s about having the courage to change the "how" entirely. This session explores the evolution of the modern value stream through the lens of Creative Destruction. We will journey through the history of Agile, UX, DevOps, DORA, Cloud, IaC, and SRE, analyzing the legacy paradigms each one destroyed and the value they created.

However, yesterday’s "best practices" are becoming today's bottlenecks. We will demonstrate how to apply AI as the ultimate catalyst to these domains—or how to use AI to leapfrog them entirely if you haven't implemented them yet. From AI-driven autonomous infrastructure to generative user experiences, learn how to move beyond manual governance into a world of automated, high-velocity value delivery.

11:30 - Innovation with Microsoft Azure - information retrieval, machine learning, agentic ai - Urszula Oleszek, Microsoft

Presentation will touch various Azure Cloud technologies, that are relevant from software product or company innovation perspective, like Microsoft Foundry, Microsoft IQ, Microsoft Fabric, Agent 365 and what they mean from information retrieval, machine learning and agentic AI perspective. What they are and how to use them.

12:00 - Break and networking

12:10 - The Architect's Atlas: Navigating the Azure Agentic Ecosystem - Agnieszka Niezgoda, Microsoft

There are many ways to build AI agents on Azure and the ecosystem has evolved rapidly over the past two years. In this session, we will explore the key options available today and discuss best practices to help you choose the right approach for your projects:

1. Microsoft way vs Hosted: A deep dive into the trade-offs of building agents "the Foundry way," vs hosted agent environments.
2. The Foundry Framework: Leveraging Azure AI Foundry for robust, scalable agent management.
3. The Gateway Strategy: Why Azure API Management (APIM) is the unsung hero of secure, governed AI at scale.
4. The Ecosystem Play: How to bridge the gap between custom-built agents and Microsoft 365 Copilot for seamless interoperability.

This session is aimed at architects, developers, product owners, and anyone involved in designing, building, or delivering intelligent solutions on Azure.

12:50 - Break and networking

13:00 - How to Protect Your Business from Cloud Data Loss - Michał Cheba, XOPERO

Your data, your responsibility. Many people think that moving to the cloud means the provider takes care of everything, including all risks of data loss. That is a big mistake. I’m going to clear up this myth by explaining the Shared Responsibility Model and showing you threats that can still shut down your business. I’ll show you why having a solid backup isn’t just a "nice-to-have" but is the only way to keep your business running if something goes wrong. I will walk you through exactly what to look for in a backup system and how to improve your Disaster Recovery plan. 

13:40 - Lunch time

14:10 - Discussion Panel with speakers - Krystian Gorzkiewicz, Head of Cloud Center of Excellence, BEC Financial Technologies

Could your terminal read your mind? Well, maybe not quite—but in this session, we’ll show you how to use AI tools in the CLI (such as GitHub Copilot CLI, Azure CLI extensions, and more) to truly supercharge a DevOps engineer's workflow. Forget about tedious documentation searches; you’ll learn how to turn plain text into ready-to-use infrastructure commands, KQL queries, and CI/CD scripts.

15:00 - Break and networking

15:10 - How to use AI CLI tools in the DevOps process? - Piotr Stapp, Kajetan Duszyński, Microsoft MVPs

Could your terminal read your mind? Well, maybe not quite—but in this session, we’ll show you how to use AI tools in the CLI (such as GitHub Copilot CLI, Azure CLI extensions, and more) to truly supercharge a DevOps engineer's workflow. Forget about tedious documentation searches; you’ll learn how to turn plain text into ready-to-use infrastructure commands, KQL queries, and CI/CD scripts.

15:50 - Break and networking

16:00 - Azure Foundry Control Plane – centralized security for agents and data - Andrzej Kokociński, Microsoft MVP

Azure Foundry Control Plane is a centralized security and governance layer for AI agents built across Azure, Foundry, and Microsoft 365 environments. It enables assigning individual Entra ID identities to agents, enforcing security policies, and providing full visibility into their activity. Through integration with Defender for Cloud and Microsoft Purview, the platform delivers data classification, flow control, anomaly detection, and regulatory compliance. The Control Plane helps organizations deploy AI agents in an auditable, secure, and predictable way, preparing them for future operational scale.

16:30 - End of the conference