How David Jones, Canva and Others Are Putting Agentic AI to Work
iTnews
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Details
- Date Published
- 6 Oct 2026
- Priority Score
- 2
- Australian
- Yes
- Created
- 8 Oct 2026, 04:00 am
Description
Meet around 600 customers, prospects and partners for two days focused on automation, integration and the growing role of agentic AI in enterprise operations.
Summary
This report previews the World of Workato event in Sydney, highlighting the shift toward agentic AI orchestration and autonomous workflow delivery within major Australian enterprises like Canva and David Jones. The discussion emphasizes the emergence of AI-driven, intent-based orchestrators (AIRO) that bridge the gap between investment and tangible business outcomes. While focusing on enterprise efficiency, the content addresses critical governance and safety guardrails necessary for managing multi-agent systems. Such frameworks are increasingly relevant to Australian AI policy as organizations move toward complex, autonomous systems that require consistent oversight to mitigate operational and security risks.
Body
Workato will host its flagship conference World of Workato (WOW) at ICC Sydney's Pyrmont Theatre on 13 and 14 October 2026, bringing together around 600 customers, prospects and partners for two days focused on enterprise AI and automation.
Workato is best known as an integration platform as a service, or iPaaS, used to connect systems such as Salesforce, Workday and ServiceNow, automating the workflows that sit between them. Over the past two years, the company has expanded into agentic AI, adding tools for building, connecting and governing AI agents across a business rather than just moving data between apps.
The Sydney event is part of Workato's expanding global WOW series, which runs in markets including the US, London, Singapore, Amsterdam, Tokyo and Tel Aviv. Each stop pairs the vendor's global product direction with local customer stories and networking, giving regional IT leaders a chance to see the roadmap applied in the context of their own market.
That global direction shifted noticeably at Workato's flagship conference earlier this year, where the company unveiled AIRO (AI-driven, Intent-based, Real-time Orchestrator), a multi-agent interface positioned as the new front end for its control and execution platform. Rather than deciding whether a job needs a recipe, workflow, agent or skill, users describe the outcome they want and let the platform work out how to deliver it. Workato has framed this as closing the ‘intent-to-outcome gap’ between how much enterprises are investing in AI and how much value they are actually getting back.
WOW Sydney will bring that story to an ANZ audience, with a lineup of local customer speakers set to share how their organisations are putting automation and agentic AI to work in practice. Confirmed speakers include:
Rahul Anhal, Head of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure at David Jones
Sharon Wyeth, Head of Digital Services at St John Western Australia
Pamela Whitfield, Head of Digital Transformation at AsureQuality
Tyson Jansen, Chief Information Officer at Burbank Group
Samantha Garrett, AI & Automation Platform Team Lead at Canva
Krishna Soni, General Manager, Information Technology at Village Entertainment
The spread of industries represented on stage spans retail, emergency health services, food safety, home building, design software and entertainment. Together, these organisations demonstrate the broad range of business environments where automation and AI orchestration can be applied across the ANZ enterprise landscape. It also gives IT and business leaders a rare chance to hear how peers running very different operations are tackling similar problems: integrating sprawling application stacks, governing AI use safely, and proving the business case for automation investment.
Across the two days, the 13th of October will cover three complimentary training sessions and the 14th of October, sessions will cover the themes driving Workato's roadmap globally:
Agentic AI orchestration
Enterprise AI governance and guardrails
Connecting AI to real business processes and data rather than isolated use cases;
Attendees can expect keynotes, customer case studies, hands-on training sessions and networking opportunities built around those topics, alongside product demonstrations and partner showcases
The timing is notable for Australian IT leaders. Many local enterprises are still working through the basics of application integration and process automation while simultaneously being asked to stand up AI agents, often without a clear view of which agents, models and automations already exist across the business, or how to govern them consistently. That is the gap Workato's global product direction aims to close, and WOW Sydney is where that direction will be brought to life for an ANZ audience, through customer examples, product sessions and discussions with Australian IT and operations leaders.
For those leaders, WOW Sydney offers a chance to see how local organisations, not just offshore case studies, are approaching the same challenges: where to start with agentic AI, how to govern it safely, and how to connect automation investment to measurable business outcomes.
WOW Sydney is a private event for current and prospective Workato customers and partners. More information and registration details are available here.