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Kalman Tiboldi - CTO & Founder at GemOne-TVH - Simplify or Die: Why Complexity Is the Real IT Challenge
Italy Sep 25, 2025 Invitation Only Physical italian
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
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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Germany Oct 28, 2025 Country Members Physical german
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
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
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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Burns & McDonnell reduces costs by 30% by following AWS well-architected framework best practices
Reduces costs by 30% by following AWS well-architected framework best practices
OVERVIEW
Consulting solutions firm Burns & McDonnell may be well over a century old, but its adoption of cloud infrastructure for both customer and internal use cases shows that it is focused on the future. The firm has been using Amazon Web Services (AWS) since the early 2010s. But by 2019, it wanted better visibility into its cloud practices to tighten security and identify cost savings through more efficient use of AWS services.
Burns & McDonnell turned to the AWS Well-Architected Framework, which helps organizations review the state of their workloads and compare them to the latest AWS architectural best practices. To better use this framework, Burns & McDonnell worked alongside AWS Advanced Technology Partner Trend Micro, which provides security services for organizations that are building in the cloud. By using Trend Micro Cloud One – Conformity (Conformity), Burns & McDonnell obtained a full report containing cloud security recommendations and opportunities for cost efficiency in just 20 minutes. Conformity is an AWS Well-Architected Partner Solution that uses AWS Well-Architected APIs to automate much of the risk discovery process when a company runs an infrastructure review. By using Conformity and adopting the AWS Well-Architected Framework, Burns & McDonnell has seen significant benefits, including a 50 percent reduction in mean time to resolution using the database to remediate cloud service misconfigurations. It has also reduced costs by 30 percent year over year.
"We saved about 30 percent of our overall AWS bill in the first week by taking action. We drastically reduced waste by identifying whether any instances were overprovisioned."
Jason Cradit
Principal Cloud Architect, 1898 & Co.,
a subdivision of Burns & McDonnell
THE SOLUTION
Flipping the Old-School Information Technology Mentality on Its Head
Founded in 1898 and 100 percent owned by employees, Burns & McDonnell is an engineering, architecture, construction, environmental, and consulting solutions firm based in Kansas City, Missouri. Its 1898 & Co. subdivision builds and implements digital solutions for customers, often using AWS. In 2019, the newly formed 1898 & Co. recruited Jason Cradit as principal cloud architect to enhance its cloud architecture following his AWS re:Invent 2019 presentation on how older businesses can use the cloud to differentiate and build products.
Cradit’s job was to maximize the agility and performance benefits that Burns & McDonnell could gain from using cloud services. “We were already using the cloud, but we wanted to improve our governance framework around it,” Cradit says. “We were treating cloud and AWS services like on-premises servers and networks, controlling access and using some highly regimented processes. I wanted to flip that on its head.” Cradit believed that using the AWS Well-Architected Framework and Conformity together would enable Burns & McDonnell to gain visibility into security risks and inefficiencies within the cloud environment and perform better by filling those gaps. In addition, he hoped it would free employees to innovate without the fear of committing security breaches or creating cost inefficiencies.
Reducing Costs and Mean Time to Resolution
When Cradit signed Burns & McDonnell up for a Conformity trial, he received a full report with cloud security recommendations and opportunities for cost efficiency in just 20 minutes, rather than waiting days for the results. To generate data-rich reports, Conformity scans an organization’s cloud infrastructure and scores it against approximately 800 best practices, including the design principles outlined in the AWS Well-Architected Framework. This approach enables customers to evaluate their architecture based on the AWS Well-Architected Framework’s pillars of operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, and cost optimization. Conformity rapidly sorts the results according to the risk level of each misconfiguration.
Every recommendation in the report links to Conformity’s knowledge base, which describes how to remediate it using the AWS Management Console—a web interface where users can manage their AWS accounts—or command line interface. Conformity customers also get frequent updates on new configuration checks within the application and new cloud services best practices.
Burns & McDonnell immediately used the visibility and contextual insights Conformity produced. “We saved about 30 percent of our overall AWS bill in the first week by taking action,” says Cradit. “We drastically reduced waste by identifying whether any instances were overprovisioned.” By using Conformity to better adhere to the AWS Well-Architected Framework, Burns & McDonnell has reduced its AWS bill by 30 percent year over year. In addition, it’s seen a 50 percent reduction in mean time to resolution when using Conformity’s knowledge base and step-by-step guides to implement recommendations.
Using the AWS Well-Architected Framework and Conformity in tandem has given Burns & McDonnell freedom to innovate and gain new customers by saving time and money. “When we save money, we can spend it elsewhere and explore new things. That helped us win a large utility contract because we were able to reuse our funds to help that customer,” says Cradit. “Likewise, by building efficiencies into our practice, we have more time to explore. We don’t have to worry about micromanaging our infrastructure because we’ve delegated that to Conformity.” In addition, Cradit says sharing Burns & McDonnell’s cloud assessment reports with customers provides transparency into its cloud environment, giving customers peace of mind. Using Conformity also helps Burns & McDonnell comply with many regulatory requirements, such as the North American Electric Reliability Corporation Critical Infrastructure Protection standards that energy and utility customers must adhere to.
Developers at Burns & McDonnell have more freedom to innovate because of the guardrails Conformity provides. The application has also been useful for training purposes. “The daily active user count has gone up,” says Cradit. “More people can build without the worry of a data breach or similar fears. For people who don’t have a lot of experience, it provides a great educational mechanism because when you want to resolve an issue, it walks you through the step-by-step procedure to get you there. One team member just passed the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate test, and he attributes a lot of that to using Conformity.”
Achieving More through Enhanced Visibility
Looking toward the future, Burns & McDonnell plans to further embrace cloud computing by architecting a cloud center of excellence. “In the last year, we’ve used AWS to determine how to build data warehouses more efficiently or ingest Internet of Things data and the like,” says Cradit. Burns & McDonnell also wants to help its energy and utility customers achieve more sustainable solutions by using AWS services for efficient, agile performance.
After experiencing the cost-saving and security-enhancing results of using the AWS Well-Architected Framework and Conformity together, Cradit recommends the solution to any business seeking better visibility into its cloud infrastructure. “By using the design principles of the AWS Well-Architected Framework that Conformity automates, you’re going to save money,” he says. “No matter how good you are, this solution will show you that you can do more.”
Founded in 1898 and 100 percent owned by employees, Burns & McDonnell is an engineering, architecture, construction, environmental, and consulting solutions firm based in Kansas City, Missouri.
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CIOFEST 2025 - From Order Taker to Proactive Disruptor
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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