Madrid 2025: A Familiar Venue, An Unfamiliar Feeling
On the 29th and 30th of October 2025, I returned to IFEMA for the annual Tech Show Madrid. This marked my third time attending this specific circuit—having first visited the Madrid edition in 2022 and subsequently attending the Paris edition, which was a standout experience.
Conferences are usually a place to seek inspiration, to feel the pulse of the market, and to see what the titans of industry are planning for the next fiscal year. However, as I walked through the halls this year, the feeling was distinctively different. It wasn’t just about who was there; it was about who wasn’t.
While the event provided a space for networking, my primary takeaway was unexpected. The solutions my team and I are delivering for Accenture and BBVA are not just keeping pace with the market—they are, in many respects, years ahead of it.
The Hyperscaler Vacuum
The most immediate observation upon entering the hall was the glaring absence of the “Big Three.” In previous years and at other major global summits, the presence of Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Microsoft Azure, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) serves as the gravitational centre of the event. Their absence created a vacuum that changed the entire dynamic of the show.
Instead of the hyperscalers driving the narrative, the floor was dominated by two very different groups. First, there was a massive presence from the Public Sector, with large, elaborate stands from municipal, autonomous, and national government bodies.
Second, there was Huawei. It is no secret that Huawei is facing significant geopolitical headwinds in the US and European markets. Consequently, their presence at IFEMA was aggressive and expansive—they are clearly fighting for every inch of market share they can get. While their technology remains robust, their dominance on the floor felt like a necessity of survival rather than organic market leadership.
However, amidst the government branding and hardware giants, there were gems. I was particularly pleased to see Eleven Labs with a physical presence. As a user of their generative voice AI services, seeing their practical application in a sea of generalists was a refreshing touch of genuine innovation.
A Time Capsule of Technology
As a consultant specializing in Data Governance and GCP, I attended the event hoping to see the “next generation” of data solutions. Unfortunately, much of the content felt like a time capsule.
To be frank, the conversations and keynotes felt anchored in the paradigms of 2021 and 2022. The vendors were discussing problems that we, at the enterprise level, solved years ago. While they pitched standard data cataloguing and basic pipeline management, my daily reality involves autonomous agents, complex AI integration, and near real-time ingestion at a massive scale for over 80 million clients.
This is not to disparage the vendors present, but rather to highlight a shift in the industry. Real innovation is no longer debuting on local expo floors; it is happening behind closed doors in the engine rooms of major banks and consultancies. The gap between what is sold at a generalist trade show and what is actually built in a high-maturity environment like BBVA has widened significantly.
AI: The Hype vs. The Reality
I spent some time at the AI Keynote Theatre (pictured above), hoping for a deep dive into the governance of Large Language Models or agentic workflows. The atmosphere, much like the rest of the event, was subdued.
The discussions remained largely superficial—high-level overviews of “how AI will change business,” rather than the nitty-gritty engineering challenges of implementation, cost-control, and ethical guardrails.
When you are working on the cutting edge, you stop caring about the “what” and become obsessed with the “how.” How do we govern an autonomous agent? How do we ensure data lineage in a non-deterministic model? These are the questions we answer daily at Accenture. Seeing the gap between our internal execution and the public conversation confirmed that we are on the right track. We aren’t waiting for the market to tell us how to do it; we are writing the playbook ourselves.
Security: The Baseline, Not the Feature
One of the clearer examples of this “maturity gap” was evident during a session on security, specifically regarding Zero Trust architectures. The speaker presented Zero Trust and “Minimum Privilege” as if they were new, avant-garde concepts that companies should aspire to adopt.
For a Data Governance professional, Zero Trust is not a feature; it is oxygen. In my work, the principle of least privilege is the absolute baseline of our architectural standards. We do not build towards Zero Trust; we build on top of it.
Seeing these fundamental concepts presented as “insights” was a stark reminder that the enterprise standards we uphold at a top-tier financial institution are significantly more rigorous than the general market average. It validated that the security frameworks we apply to our data pipelines are world-class.
Conclusion: Seeking Bigger Challenges
Reflecting on the event, and comparing it to my experience in Paris—which boasted significantly higher footfall and a more diverse range of mature tech strategies—I realise that my requirements for professional development have evolved.
Tech Show Madrid 2025 was less spectacular than its predecessors, with a noticeably quieter atmosphere and a lack of key industry drivers. However, it was valuable for a different reason: Validation.
I left IFEMA with the confidence that the work I am doing is cutting-edge. But growth requires friction. To continue challenging myself and bringing the best solutions to my clients, I need to look beyond the local circuit. It is time to set my sights on the global stage—perhaps Google Cloud Next in USA, AWS re:Invent, or a specialised European Data Summit.
We are doing incredible work. Now, it is time to go where that work is being challenged, not just echoed.
If you are navigating complex Data Governance challenges or want to discuss where the real innovation in GCP is happening right now, I’d love to hear your perspective. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn and send me a message.