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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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Italy Sep 25, 2025 Invitation Only Physical italian

Innovation in Balance: governing the power of data and automation

Nel percorso verso l’AI e la trasformazione digitale, dati e automazione sono gli elementi centrali di ogni strategia tecnologica. Ma senza una governance chiara, rischiano di diventare non solo fonte di inefficienza, ma anche di rischi e incoerenza.   Come garantire che i dati siano completi, accessibili e affidabili? Come automatizzare le operation IT e i processi aziendali mantenendo controllo, compliance e sicurezza?   Durante questa roundtable esclusiva, organizzata da CIONET Italia e IBM, affronteremo:   La governance come abilitatore di dati affidabili e automazione sicura. Come prepararsi a un’adozione dell’AI realmente scalabile. Il ruolo di controllo, resilienza e gestione del rischio nell’innovazione.

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Belgium Oct 16, 2025 Invitation Only Physical english

CIONET Round Table - Rethinking AI

AI isn’t just another tool. It changes how we work, how we think, how we organise ourselves.Yet most organisations still approach it like a digital upgrade, deploying assistants, automating workflows, testing use cases inisolation.The results are predictable. Short-term wins. Long-term confusion.Effort spent. Value unclear.Many companies can’t connect AI to their actual strategic goals,and the promised ROI never materialises.At the same time, something deeper is shifting.AI can now reason, decide, adapt. Not just mimic processes butcontribute to them.The technology is evolving, but the way we implement it hasn’tcaught up.If your AI still fits inside a single department, you’re likely solvingthe wrong problem.If it works only for individuals, you're missing how your teamsactually deliver value.If it replaces people instead of supporting them, you're buildingfor today, not tomorrow.The next step isn’t more AI. It’s the right AI.Built for your business, your teams, your way of working.Not a tool to add but a structure to build around.Are we ready to treat AI as a shared capability, not a scatteredexperiment?Can we move beyond individual efficiency and build systems thatcollaborate, learn and adapt with us?Those are the questions we’ll explore at the round table.

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Poland Oct 17, 2025 Invitation Only Physical & Virtual Polish

IT EXECUTIVE MASTERCLASS 5

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Germany Oct 28, 2025 Country Members Physical german

Köln: Powershift

Am 28. Oktober lädt CIONET CIOs und Digital Leaders nach Köln ein: hier stellen wir reale Anwendungsfälle vor, in denen KI-Agenten Aufgaben autonom übernehmen, Prozesse beschleunigen und Entscheidungen vorbereiten – mit messbarem Nutzen für das Business.

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France Nov 4, 2025 Country Members Physical french

Maîtriser la souveraineté numérique: du réseau à la donnée

À l’ère des mutations géopolitiques et réglementaires, l’établissement d’une souveraineté numérique est devenu un élément stratégique essentiel pour les entreprises. Ce dialogue stratégique mettra en lumière le rôle fondamental du réseau dans la mise en place du contrôle, de la confiance et de la résilience. Nous explorerons comment une infrastructure moderne et résiliente permet d’appliquer des politiques de gestion des données et d’assurer la continuité opérationnelle. Ce dialogue stratégique, réservé à un groupe restreint de pairs, est conçu pour permettre aux leaders du numérique d’échanger sur l’un des enjeux les plus urgents aujourd’hui. Nous discuterons des réseaux « sovereign-ready » et débattrons des préoccupations croissantes autour de la souveraineté des données, qui motivent l’adoption de politiques de confidentialité et de protection des données de plus en plus strictes à l’échelle mondiale.

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Netherlands Nov 10, 2025 Public Physical english

Reis mee: CIO Innovation trip Web Summit 11 nov 2025 Lissabon

CIONET Nederland vertrekt met een groep Nederlandse CIO's en digital leaders 10 t/m 12 november 2025 voor de geheel verzorgde CIO Innovation Trip naar de Web Summit in Lissabon, Portugal. Reis jij mee of neem je collega(s) mee!

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Recent Cases

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HPE transforms to cloud-native endpoint management with a rapid Intune migration

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), a global IT services and equipment manufacturer, has implemented an enterprise-wide solution using Microsoft Intune for Mobile Application Management without enrollment and Windows mobile device management. This cloud-based solution has streamlined IT operations, improved cybersecurity, and enhanced user satisfaction.

Cloud-native endpoint management with Intune was definitely the right choice for us. All the savings we see from comprehensively securing and patching our endpoints, along with all the options and agility we get, and freeing up our IT time for other activities—it all more than pays for itself. 

Kregg Nelson: End User Compute Manager

HPE

 
 The HPE workforce uses more than 70,000 mobile devices and 115,000 Windows laptop PCs. For many years, HPE managed the Windows devices using a Microsoft Configuration Manager solution housed in a third-party datacenter. This on-premises solution served the company well for years but required ongoing hardware lifecycle management, relied on manual IT interventions, and suffered increased exposure to security breaches due to the lack of cloud-managed bug fixes and updates. Seeking to reduce complexity and modernize its operations, HPE saw a chance to vacate the third-party location and move device management to the cloud.

“We have at least 15 internal device SKUs that constantly need patches, updates, and new drivers, so the burden of doing this all with an on-premises system posed many challenges,” says Kregg Nelson, End User Compute Manager at HPE. “We realized that a cloud-based solution would not only make us more efficient but also open up new ways of integrating with other HPE workstreams, like security operations and human resources.”

In the case of HR, for example, the onboarding process for new devices was past due for modernization. Whenever a new employee or contractor joined the company, setting up their devices typically entailed multiple phone calls between IT, the user, and often the user’s manager. With the right collaboration between IT and HR, Nelson’s team knew cloud-based device management could help increase the speed and efficiency of making workers productive.

Driving parallel cloud journeys: Endpoint and identity access management

HPE knew it needed a cloud-based digital transformation to keep pace with business needs and security risks. The company chose Microsoft based on the capabilities of Microsoft Intune and accompanying technologies to simplify endpoint management and empower better user experiences. It also factored in the strength of the two companies’ past working relationship. “We got buy-in by showing our executives how deploying Intune would help reduce costs and make our employees more productive, and by presenting a Microsoft Defender for Endpoint P1 licensing plan that projected a positive ROI,” says Nelson. “Ultimately, our relationship with Microsoft sold the deal—we knew we’d benefit from their input and experience if we chose Intune to manage our thousands and thousands of endpoints.”

Side by side with the device management effort was the identity and access management journey Nelson’s team had been pursuing since 2018. HPE invested in Windows Autopilot and other Microsoft technologies at that time, including buying licenses for Intune in anticipation of implementing access management features. More recently, as part of its modernization, HPE simplified user authentication by using Windows Hello, streamlined deployment with help from Windows Autopilot, and used Windows Update to help ensure up-to-date devices during its ongoing Windows 11 migration.

“We learned that you can’t have modern fleet management without modern endpoint management, so we made it our focus to do both of these in the cloud,” says Nelson. “Migrating and consolidating our identity and access and device management systems put us onto a three-stage journey, going from on-premises to hybrid to fully cloud native.”

From there, Nelson’s team met with stakeholders across business groups and across the company to evaluate use cases and determine the best path forward for implementing the Intune solution. In April 2023, they rolled out full-scale device management capabilities to all Windows devices at HPE. Then, over the next five months, they did the same for implementing Intune with employees’ personal, unenrolled mobile devices using Mobile Application Management, enabling a centralized, highly secure way for supporting bring-your-own-device culture. By September 2023, only some mobile edge cases remained, which Nelson expects to fully resolve and complete the migration by early 2024.

You really want to help new employees feel productive right away, and getting them through first-time setup in 35 minutes or less is a great way to achieve that—it used to take two hours or more. Windows Autopilot has been critical for achieving this. We’ve had 4,500-plus people try it the new way since April, and customer satisfaction scores are at 98 percent—an all-time high. 

Kregg Nelson: End User Compute Manager

HPE

Streamlining workflows for IT, cybersecurity, HR, and users

The Intune rollout has led to improved collaboration between IT and HPE cybersecurity teams. The rollout has also enabled other security improvements, such as remote wipe—detecting a lost or stolen device as soon as it touches the internet and shutting down user access to sensitive apps and data.

Security postures and policies with the new system are also producing positive results. “We have new levels of granularity that let us operate more effectively and also sectionalize the business in helpful ways,” says Nelson. “A huge example is that by proving we can create profiles that have extremely granular policies and privileges, we’re now able to comply with government requirements that help us win contracts we couldn’t have qualified for before.”

Other benefits of moving to the cloud include running leaner, smarter IT operations and improving new employees’ experience with their HPE equipment. Nelson reports that he has been able to refocus the time and talents of his operations team on more innovative and revenue-driven activities. System patches that formerly took five to seven days to get installed on a user’s device now take only 24 to 48 hours at most, and many update processes are now automated. And by working with HR, Nelson’s team also reinvented the way first-day employees start using their devices to do work, helping them start contributing in their roles more quickly than in the past.

“You really want to help new employees feel productive right away, and getting them through first-time setup in 35 minutes or less is a great way to achieve that—it used to take two hours or more,” says Nelson. “Windows Autopilot has been critical for achieving this. We’ve had 4,500-plus people try it the new way since April, and customer satisfaction scores are at 98 percent—an all-time high.”

Simplifying and modernizing with cloud-native endpoint management

By dismantling its on-premises endpoint management infrastructure, HPE transformed its operations for a new era of efficient and agile cloud-based management for all devices. The key change, Nelson notes, has been simplicity. “Where it used to be time-consuming and costly to manage all the complexities of our on-premises environment, we can now perceive everything through a cloud-connected ecosystem with Intune and proactively manage the day-to-day,” he explains. “And with Microsoft, we achieved speed, not only by rolling it out steadily, but also by becoming more agile and responsive to users because we’re in the cloud.”

This success demonstrates that big companies can move device management to the cloud at a fast pace—even ones with hundreds of thousands of devices in use, and whose systems were fully on-premises less than two years ago. Nelson says his company’s return on investment has already proven beneficial. “Cloud-native endpoint management with Intune was the right choice for us,” he says. “All the savings we see from comprehensively securing and patching our endpoints, along with all the options and agility we get, and freeing up our IT time for other activities—it all more than pays for itself.”

Future plans include adopting Microsoft Intune Suite solutions, such as enabling endpoint privilege management in ways that further help secure new customer contracts by enabling device management without requiring administrative access. The company is also interested in trying Remote Help as a way of providing very secure, enterprise-level user support. Meanwhile, Nelson offers the following advice to other companies thinking about their own digital transformations:

  • Do all of your homework ahead of time so when you’re ready to implement your cloud-based endpoint management solution, you can move quickly and get it done. “We did a lot of pre-work over the first few months, meeting with stakeholder groups and identifying potential security hiccups,” says Nelson. “Then with help from Microsoft, we specified all of our use cases in one day, setting us on a clear path to a very smooth deployment.”
  • Always be moving forward, not backward. The need for modernization and future growth at HPE overcame the temptation to rebuild its on-premises solution, and Nelson says Intune was the obvious choice for his team. “Honestly, when I think about Intune, I really don’t feel like I have limitations,” he says. “The feeling is more like: What can Intune do for us today? How can we use Intune to configure and meet the demands of whatever challenges we’re currently facing?”

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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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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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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