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CIONET - What's next

Connecting ambitious digital leaders and businesses around the globe.

Catch up on the upcoming CIONET Events

             
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Germany Sep 9, 2025 Country Members Physical german

Frankfurt: AI Driven Logistics

Vom ersten Use Case zur strategischen Neuausrichtung CIONET lädt bereits zum vierten Mal zu einem exklusiven Roundtable für CIOs und Digitalverantwortliche aus Logistik und Handel ein. Im Mittelpunkt des Abends steht die Frage, wie Unternehmen ihre KI-Initiativen erfolgreich skalieren und aus ersten Use Cases echten strategischen Mehrwert schaffen. Microsoft 365 für Frontline Worker: Moderne Tools, die Mitarbeitende im Tagesgeschäft entlasten ServiceNow für Prozessintegration: Automatisierte End-to-End-Workflows – vom Schadensfall bis zur Retourenabwicklung KI-gestützte Disposition und Planung: Mit smarten Algorithmen zur optimierten Supply Chain Digitale Lieferketten und letzte Meile: Transparenz, Effizienz und Kundenzentrierung durchgängig gedacht

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Belgium Sep 13, 2025 All Members Physical english

CIONET Cycling Event

Join us for a wonderful ride. The ride is accessible to all levels of riders and doesn't require extensive technical skills. More information will follow soon. Looking forward to ride together!

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Germany Sep 17, 2025 Country Members Physical german

München: Cyber Security Fatigue

Cybersecurity ist längst kein reines IT-Thema mehr – sie betrifft das gesamte Unternehmen. Doch während die Bedrohungslage zunimmt, geraten viele Security-Verantwortliche an ihre Belastungsgrenzen: zwischen 24/7-Verantwortung, wachsenden Anforderungen und dem ständigen Innovationsdruck.

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Germany Sep 17, 2025 Country Members Physical german

Köln: CIO & CISO, das Rezilienz-Power-Duo

IT-Betrieb und Cybersicherheit stehen heute unter extremem Druck: steigende Komplexität, wachsende regulatorische Anforderungen (NIS2, DORA, KRITIS), chronische Ressourcenknappheit – und gleichzeitig eine Bedrohungslage, die keine Verzögerungen duldet. Trotzdem agieren viele IT- und Security-Teams noch immer in Silos. Die Folge: ineffiziente Abläufe, Tool-Wildwuchs, langsame Reaktion auf Vorfälle und unklare Verantwortlichkeiten.

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Germany Sep 18, 2025 Country Members Virtual german

Online: Nachhaltige IT - CIDO Priorität

Nachhaltigkeit ist für CIOs nicht nur ein „Nice-to-have“, sondern eine strategische Priorität – sie beeinflusst direkt die finanzielle Performance, die operative Effizienz und die langfristige Wettbewerbsfähigkeit.

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Belgium Sep 18, 2025 Country Members Physical french

Les Rencontres: La dette technique : Un défi stratégique pour les entreprises

La dette technique est comparable à la négligence des réparations d'une maison. Ignorer un toit qui fuit peut faire gagner du temps aujourd'hui, mais cela pourrait conduire à l'effondrement du plafond plus tard. Pour remédier à la dette technique, il faut trouver et réparer ces fuites dès maintenant et mettre en place un plan d'entretien de la maison afin qu'elle soit prête pour les extensions futures. Pour résoudre ces problèmes, il faut définir des priorités stratégiques, communiquer clairement avec les parties prenantes et établir une feuille de route à long terme pour la modernisation. Cet événement se déroulera entièrement en français.

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Recent Cases

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World Bank invests in greater efficiency and security with Microsoft Azure Arc

The World Bank’s IT and Information Security Office teams were using a duplicative decentralized solution for network monitoring and management. Recognizing an opportunity to improve efficiency and reduce costs, World Bank replaced their existing technology stack with a new solution based on Azure Arc.

Access to basic financial services is essential to building economies and lifting individuals out of devastating poverty. Yet, these life-changing offerings are not available in developing countries where they are needed most. The World Bank is working tirelessly to end extreme poverty and boost prosperity on a livable planet. To achieve its mission, the organization offers lending services in developing countries around the world.

The World Bank is among the world’s largest sources of funding and financial knowledge for 189 developing countries. It employs a diverse workforce representing more than 170 countries in more than 130 locations. The World Bank IT team was using multiple cloud providers and tools to manage the complex backend of the global institution.

“It was completely non-centralized. There were three, four different tools and places to go to monitor things. Even the security office was using different software to monitor security risks for all our servers,” recalls Chandra Kala Macha, Information Officer II, World Bank.

Multiple issues, one solution: Azure Arc

Both the IT and Information Security Office teams began forming a technology punch list to improve efficiency and reduce costs. At the top of the list: a cloud-based solution that would offer centralized monitoring, performance, resource consumption, and security management, all in a single package. This would enable them to deprecate duplicate licenses, reduce operating costs, and centralize data storage. That was particularly important, as the IT and Information Security Office have a constant need to share information.

The ideal solution would also enable World Bank employees to better manage their inventory of data workloads and perform maintenance tasks such as backups and patches more efficiently. The teams also sought a solution that would enable them to better assess the database environment using features such as cloud security assessment. Also on the list: a way to extract insights on migration readiness. The solution: Microsoft Azure Arc.

“We came across Azure Arc last year because initially our server team started this project. They wanted to work on the SQL Server infrastructure, and we knew that was a capability of Azure Arc,” Kala Macha recalls, adding that her team wanted to leverage it for SQL Server instances. With approvals from both management and the Information Security Office, the team selected a solution that included Microsoft Azure Arc, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Azure Monitor, and Microsoft Purview. 

Compatibility played a big role in the decision making process. World Bank wanted a solution that could be used to manage both Azure and AWS servers, but that would also work with its Microsoft SQL Server stack. Today, Azure Arc is the only native manageability solution available for Microsoft SQL Server, giving it an advantage over the competition. Most importantly, it could manage both World Bank clouds.

“We wanted to implement Azure Arc so we could utilize all the features and manage all our on-premises and cloud servers, including the AWS ones, from one location,” Kala Macha explains. “With Azure Arc, we can manage everything at the operating level and on the SQL Server side as well—all from a single pane of glass. It’s made a huge difference in our efficiency.”

Another point in its favor: the Information Security Office team was already using the technology. As a financial institution, World Bank deals with extremely sensitive data—which presents an attractive target for attackers. Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides comprehensive hybrid and multicloud security required to help protect the organization’s compute resources and data workloads. The team uses Azure Monitor to gauge performance trends and identify potential anomalies. The solution has proven extremely beneficial across the company, Kala Macha says. 

The World Bank team utilized Azure Arc to streamline its cloud migration journey, leveraging the tool to meticulously assess the on-premises environment and gain a comprehensive understanding of dependencies, resource utilization, and migration scale. That analysis facilitated the imposition of governance and compliance requirements seamlessly across all environments.

“By employing best practices assessment reports, we delved into both on-premises and multi-cloud resources, pinpointing configuration issues, security vulnerabilities, and operational best practice violations,” Kala Macha says. “These reports served as invaluable guides, offering clarity on potential problems and improvement areas prior to migration. The reports spotlighted security gaps and non-compliance issues, enabling us to resolve these challenges preemptively or during the migration process.”

The reports also provided key insights into performance optimization, identifying configuration settings that would benefit from refinement, Kala Macha adds. “Addressing these findings ensured our on-premises resources were meticulously prepared for migration to Azure, guaranteeing a smoother and highly successful migration experience.”

Greater efficiency, greater insights, greater good

As of 2023, World Bank had connected about 25 percent of its SQL Server estate to Azure Arc. They plan to triple the instance count in 2024 based on initial results. Today, performance, insights, security, and compliance all can be managed in a single, centralized tool. All monitoring can be done in one location, making it simpler for teams to manage issues and requirements around vulnerabilities. 

There have also been some unexpected efficiencies, Kala Macha notes. “For example, before Azure Arc, utilizing the on-premises SQL infrastructure required multiple teams to be aligned and coordinated, she says. “It took a lot of time, communication, and security clearances. Azure Arc has alleviated that bottleneck.”

Moving to Azure Arc has also had some notable financial benefits. For example, the IT team was using decentralized tools that were not capable of monitoring the entire SQL infrastructure (both on-premises and cloud). Plus, the team was only able to use the licensed tools on a few on-premises servers. For the same cost, World Bank can now enable Azure Arc on more than 300 SQL servers—10 times more than the previously licensed tools—to monitor performance, security compliance, and more. (A cost savings of 90 percent.)

The World Bank teams have also adapted Azure Arc and Microsoft Defender for Cloud throughout the company—not just in IT. “All our teams are using Azure Arc. It’s the common language for us now,” Kala Macha says. And that’s just the beginning. Today, World Bank and Microsoft are working together on additional functional elements to improve optimization of the Azure Arc platform. “We’ve already seen how Azure Arc can make us more efficient and reduce our operating costs. Now, we want to see how we can do more and save more,” Kala Macha says. “Because every dollar saved on the operation side is one more dollar that can go towards eradicating poverty.”

 

Checkout our CIONET COOKBOOK

cookbook

Embark on a culinary journey through the ever-evolving world of digital leadership with our third edition of the CIONET Cookbook: Recipes for Digital Success. Unveiling the intricate trilemma faced by today’s Master Chefs, our trailblazing European CIOs address a challenge at the nexus of customer interests, digital transformation strategies, and IT modernisation. Their secret? Synchronising the gearing between customer, business, and technology to create a frictionless movement through the digital landscape.

The CIONET Cookbook uses the analogy of a five-star restaurant to explain the importance of optimally integrated technology, with the CIO as Master Chef. In order to provide the best service to its customers, a top restaurant must have the right atmosphere, an inviting menu, a well-equipped kitchen, talented and committed front-of-house and kitchen staff and smooth-running processes that ensure an enjoyable experience for diners.

CIONET TV

 
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Kalman Tiboldi - CTO & Founder at GemOne-TVH - Simplify or Die: Why Complexity Is the Real IT Challenge

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Isabelle Droll - CIO for Airline, Corporate, Hotels & Resorts and Sustainability at TUI - Data, Diversity, and Destinations

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Sharon Prior - CIO in transition - How Great Tech Leadership Begins with Business Thinking

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José Antonio López, Group CIO at TOUS - Jewels, Data & AI: Inside the Digital Transformation of TOUS

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Tom Tanghe - General Manager ITC EMEA at Daikin Europe - Reinventing the CIO Role

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CIOFEST 2025 - From Order Taker to Proactive Disruptor

CIONET Reports

 
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Cybersecurity in critical infrastructure

Geopolitical tensions have dominated the headlines for over two years now. In this context, the cyber threat landscape is also evolving rapidly. The protection and security of critical infrastructure – both physical and digital – is becoming increasingly important.

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HDS - From Hype to Reality Navigating the Challenges of GenAI

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Integration In An Era Of AI: Challenges And Opportunities

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“The CIONET app provides a really cool platform to network and share insights.”

About CIONET

CIONET’s mission is to help IT executives become more at ease and above all more successful in their jobs. So they can do more than just keep up with change but ultimately define it. CIONET opens up a whole new universe of opportunities in IT management.

With the largest membership of corporate digital leaders across Europe, Latin America, US and Australia, CIONET has the expertise and pioneering vision to solve or address any IT management challenge.

Why join CIONET?

From our local and global events, from our publications and research to our executive education programmes, everything we do is aimed at making sure digital leaders maximise their potential.

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