Obsidian Systems will sponsor AI Expo Africa 2026 alongside Atlassian, Coder, and Red Hat when the event returns to the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg on 28 and 29 October.

Now in its ninth year, AI Expo Africa brings enterprise technology buyers and suppliers together around practical uses of AI and intelligent automation. The 2026 programme includes demonstrations, case studies, and technical sessions, with more than 3,500 delegates expected over the two days. 

For Obsidian Systems, the event comes as enterprise conversations around AI increasingly move into the environments where software is built and operated. 

“AI is already finding its way into software development and day-to-day technology operations,” says Karl Fischer, CTO at Obsidian Systems. “Organisations still have to decide where these tools run and what access they should have. Control cannot be something that gets added once adoption is already under way.” 

Obsidian will use its presence at the expo to bring together technology from Atlassian, Coder, and Red Hat, each addressing a different part of how organisations are incorporating AI into enterprise technology. 

Atlassian is extending AI deeper into software delivery and teamwork. Rovo Dev, its AI agent for software teams, works across the development lifecycle and can assist with planning, code generation and review, as well as automated development workflows. For organisations already using Jira and other Atlassian products, this brings AI into the work and development processes teams use every day. 

AI without context is just pattern-matching. Atlassian's Teamwork Graph is the context layer that makes enterprise AI useful. It connects your people, work, knowledge, goals and tools across Atlassian and third-party systems into one living model of how your organisation actually works. That lets Rovo and your AI agents reason across your whole stack. Their answers draw on real work and respect the permissions you already have, instead of guessing from scattered apps. The model updates all the time, so when priorities change, the change flows through automatically, and there's no second plan to keep in sync. Teams spend less time searching, stay aligned on what matters, and move from trying AI to getting results, with AI that knows the context of their work. 

The event will also give Obsidian an opportunity to introduce Coder as a new vendor in its portfolio. 

Coder provides a self-hosted platform for AI coding agents and cloud development environments that run on infrastructure controlled by the organisation. Developers can use approved AI tools within standardised workspaces, while platform and security teams retain visibility into the environment where that work takes place. 

Fischer says this becomes more relevant as coding agents gain greater access to enterprise systems and source code. 

“Developers are going to use AI because it can remove a lot of friction from their work. The enterprise challenge is allowing that to happen without giving up control of the development environment,” he says. “Coder gives us another way to approach that problem, particularly for organisations where source code and development infrastructure cannot simply move outside their control.” 

Red Hat brings another part of the enterprise AI environment into the discussion. Red Hat AI Enterprise, launched in February 2026, provides an integrated platform for deploying and managing AI workloads across hybrid cloud environments. It builds on technologies such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat OpenShift, providing organisations with an open platform on which AI applications and agents can be run. 

The technologies will not necessarily enter an organisation through the same team or at the same time. Developers may begin experimenting with coding agents while business teams encounter AI through the platforms they already use. Infrastructure teams are meanwhile being asked to support new workloads while retaining the security and operational controls required in production. 

Obsidian sees its role in connecting those conversations. 

“AI cannot sit off to the side as a separate technology project. It has to work within the platforms, development practices and controls the organisation already depends on. That is where implementation becomes far more interesting than the headline around the latest model,” says Fischer. 

This reflects a broader shift in Obsidian’s own work. The company builds and manages open source platforms, data pipelines, and DevSecOps toolchains used by South African enterprises, with AI increasingly influencing how those environments are designed and operated. 

At AI Expo Africa, Obsidian will showcase its vendors and help you work through those decisions on how AI can fit into existing enterprise technology environments without treating adoption as an isolated exercise.

AI Expo Africa 2026 takes place at the Sandton Convention Centre on 28 and 29 October, with a private VIP opening for sponsors, exhibitors and VIP guests on 27 October.