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Kalman Tiboldi - CTO & Founder at GemOne-TVH - Simplify or Die: Why Complexity Is the Real IT Challenge
Germany Oct 20, 2025 Country Members Virtual german
Die Realisierung des Potenzials von KI und datengesteuerten Strategien stellt nicht länger nur einen Wettbewerbsvorteil dar, sondern ist Heute auch entscheidend für den langfristigen Erfolg eines jeden Unternehmens. Unsere Wissensaustausch-Briefings "AI & Data Knowledge Transfer" zielen darauf ab, CIDOs und Senior Digital Leaders praktische Anwendungen aufzuzeigen und umsetzbaren Erkenntnissen von Fachexperten zu vermitteln, die den Weg für die transformative digitale Reise ebnen und beschleunigen.
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Belgium Oct 21, 2025 Invitation Only Physical english
In today's competitive landscape, customer expectations have never been higher. They demand a personalised, seamless experience at every touchpoint, from initial marketing contact to post-sale service. Unified data is at the heart of creating engaging customer experiences and is meant to fuel the 360 profile. However, for many organizations, a complete picture of the customer is fragmented, with critical data scattered in disconnected systems and departments. This exclusive roundtable will bring together Digital Leaders active in multiple industries to discuss a critical challenge: breaking down data silos to build a true 360° view of the customer. We will explore how to solve the complex integration challenges that prevent a unified view, and how to transform disparate data into a single source of truth. Join us to: Discover how to overcome the technical hurdles of integrating critical business systems, such as ERP and CRM platforms, to unify customer data. Explore real-world case studies on how organisations have successfully created unified customer insights to enhance personalisation and boost commercial and operational efficiency. Discuss best practices for turning fragmented data into actionable insights that can anticipate customer needs, drive revenue growth, and foster long-term loyalty. This is a unique opportunity for Digital Leaders who are ready to transform their customer engagement strategy and unlock the full potential of their data.
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Spain Oct 22, 2025 Country Members Physical spanish
Descubre cómo las organizaciones están utilizando la tecnología para impactar en el negocio a través de casos reales de uso y aprendizajes clave en áreas como ciberseguridad, automatización o data, contados por los protagonistas. Un espacio diseñado para inspirarte, conectar con expertos y potenciar la innovación en tu organización.
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Belgium Oct 22, 2025 Invitation Only Physical english
Enterprises are questioning whether private networks and stacked firewalls are still worthwhile investments. A newer approach operates on the open internet with Zero Trust, eliminates perimeter complexity, and reframes cybersecurity as a business performance metric for boards and audit committees. This is a closed-door, peer discussion, not a lecture. We’ll examine the promise and its pitfalls: Are the promised savings significant, or are they too good to be true? What risks do you introduce? How does this collide with your installed base, legacy OT, entrenched processes and team competencies, and how do you overcome that without breaking operations or credibility with the board? Two senior leaders from global companies will spark the dialogue with lived experience: Kurt De Ruwe, CIO AkzoNobel Frank Bolata, CIO Syensqo
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Poland Oct 23, 2025 Invitation Only Physical Polish
Cloud UP! ’25 to miejsce spotkań managerów, którzy chcą świadomie i skutecznie rozwijać swoje organizacje, wykorzystując najnowsze technologie. Nieformalnym hasłem tegorocznej edycji jest “Chmura gotowa na AI” - będziemy rozmawiać o tym, co sztuczna inteligencja naprawdę potrafi oraz pokazywać, jak wdrażać ją w praktyce. Wspólnie z ekspertami przeanalizujemy, jakie warunki muszą zostać spełnione, aby wdrożenia AI były zarówno skuteczne, jak i bezpieczne. Zerkniemy za kulisy najnowszych rodzimych produktów AI-owych, by zobaczyć ich możliwości, a także poznamy najciekawsze wdrożenia z wykorzystaniem Agentspace. Po raz kolejny spotkamy się w formule Share.Explore.Execute. Stawiamy na wymianę wiedzy i doświadczeń zdobytych podczas realizacji projektów. To one stanowią punkt wyjścia do odkrywania, testowania i skutecznej implementacji najlepszych rozwiązań w organizacjach. Cloud UP! ’25 to cztery ścieżki tematyczne, na które złożą się prezentacje, rozmowy, sesje live-demo oraz pogłębione dyskusje w formule roundtables: AI: Beyond the Hype Data Mastery Resilience & Regulatory Advanced Practitioners Dołącz do liderów chmurowych innowacji w Polsce i spotkaj się z nami już 23 października w Event Hall w Fabryce Norblina.
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Belgium Oct 23, 2025 Invitation Only Physical english
How to lead responsibly when technology can deceive better than a human? AI’s ability to shape our perceptions and create new realities is becoming increasingly sophisticated. While it opens significant opportunities, it also carries risks. What happens when AI goes beyond data and algorithms to influence - or even deceive - our senses? How does this change not only our understanding of reality but also the foundations of trust, creativity, and truth in business? AI isn’t just transforming business, it is altering how we experience and interpret everything around us. From AI-generated deepfakes to personalised experiences designed to influence behaviour, the line between truth and illusion is increasingly blurred. This event combines a roundtable discussion among peers with a hands-on sensory workshop, where you will experience illusions through sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch. Through these experiments, we will confront the ethical dilemmas that arise when AI has the power to fabricate realities and influence decisions.
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ProRail accelerates IT processes from weeks to days with automation
Dutch rail operator ProRail, to prepare for growing traffic and new demand for operational technology, sought to make its IT network and infrastructure more efficient. By expanding its use of Red Hat® Ansible® Automation Platform with help from Red Hat Consulting, the company has adopted standardized processes for network switch modification and more.
Dutch rail operator ProRail is responsible for the Netherlands’ entire railway network. To prepare
for growing traffic and new demand for operational technology, ProRail sought to make its IT
network and infrastructure more efficient. By expanding its use of Red Hat Ansible Automation
Platform with help from Red Hat Consulting, the company has adopted standardized processes
for network switch modification and more. A new automation community of practice (CoP) has
simplified cross-team collaboration and established a foundation for ongoing innovation.
Preparing IT to support future increase in railway traffic
ProRail is responsible for maintenance, expansion, and safety operations of the Dutch railway
network, including more than 7,000km of track, 11,600 signals, and 160 million km of yearly train
traffic. Its mission to connect people, cities, and companies focuses on making travel pleasant and
safe on sustainable transportation.
In response to its projections that passenger rail traffic will increase by 30% and freight traffic by 50%
by 2030, ProRail needs to run more trains—and with less disruption. Focusing on this growth means
not only the railway manager’s IT team, but also its signaling and track operations department were
increasingly reliant on information and communications technologies (ICT).
ProRail established a more efficient IT organization, but complex processes coupled with a massive
volume of documentation caused delay and difficulty. The railway manager decided that modernizing
and standardizing these processes with automation would help the IT team support more demand
with less time and effort.
“As ICT use across our organization increases, the demand on our IT network is going to grow
exponentially,” said Coert Busio, IT4IT and IT4OT Manager, ProRail. “We knew we needed to become
much more efficient and do things in a standard way to achieve our goal of preparing for the coming
increase in rail traffic. As network projects bring a large number of new services, automation will
ensure the projects are standardized and progress faster.”
Expanding end-to-end automation platform to new processes
ProRail decided to expand use of its existing automation technology, Red Hat Ansible Automation
Platform, to address this new IT challenge. The railway manager has successfully used Ansible
Automation Platform to automate its Linux® environment for more than 5 years.
Red Hat’s automation platform uses human-readable scripts, or playbooks, to replace routine,
manual processes and tasks with repeatable configuration management that simplifies
complex deployments.
“Applying Ansible Automation Platform to our network environment was the logical step forward,” said
Busio. “Doing so would allow us to integrate our existing Ansible Playbooks so we could use and reuse
them. And according to our engineers, writing new playbooks when we need them saves
time and provides quality processes.”
The railway manager now uses Ansible Automation Platform to manage deployment of connectors for
its TIBCO enterprise service bus (ESB), integrating all of its applications. Network domain
backup tasks are also automated using Ansible Playbooks. ProRail’s IT operations team also uses
the platform to automatically fetch IP information from the domain name server (DNS) network
to deploy a new application or server.
In addition to initial guidance on creating playbooks, Red Hat Consulting provides ongoing guidance
to ProRail management on reaching the organization’s automation goals, including expanding
adoption of Ansible Automation Platform.
Adopting an automation-centric approach to IT development and
management
Saved time from 60 minutes to 20 minutes
By automating software installation and other IT network management tasks, ProRail has reduced the
time and effort needed to roll out new systems, applications, and tools. The railway manager can now
complete these tasks faster and more efficiently.
For example, ProRail’s network team needed days to manually modify general settings in 3,000
switches when a new DNS was introduced. By automating those changes with Ansible Automation
Platform, they can be completed within several hours.
“Previously, our network operations staff had to log onto each switch to make the change, which
took 2 or 3 minutes each,” said Busio. “Ansible Automation Platform can change each switch in
just a few seconds.”
As ProRail continues investing in building teams’ knowledge and support, the company anticipates
additional efficiency and quality improvements.
Established cross-functional automation community of practice
ProRail is working on improving the lengthy and complex change process for its engineering teams.
With approved Ansible Playbooks producing standard documentation, modifications can move
forward from concept to production more quickly.
In addition, standardizing processes with automation has also created new opportunities for
collaboration between IT teams. With guidance and initial website content from Red Hat Consulting,
ProRail has established an automation community of practice (CoP). The group has grown from 30
network domain engineers to almost 60 participants, including ESB engineers and others eager to
share their automation experience and tips.
“The goal is to use playbooks across the different teams, such as Network, ESB and Operating System,
to ensure the service is provided,” said Busio. “The interaction we’re seeing between the engineers is
fantastic. Mindsets are changing as people are thinking about how to
automate and how to collaborate.”
Improved talent acquisition with innovative technology
In an aging workforce where many engineers are approaching retirement, adopting modern
technology like Ansible Automation Platform is helping ProRail attract new talent.
“In addition to giving our current staff access to the most innovative tools, we need to encourage
young people to join us. Using and supporting modern technologies that our employees are eager to
work with, such as Ansible Automation Platform, helps with those efforts,” said Busio.
Expanding automation culture to new systems, including critical
railway operations
In support of a mandate that all new network initiatives adopt automation, the use of Ansible
Automation Platform is growing at ProRail. “Our Windows team now uses it to automate their tasks.
We’re also working on a self-service portal for developers to request simple network or Linux tasks,
as well as possibly integrating Ansible for our IT service management tool and writing playbooks for
our service desk,” said Busio. “Our goal is an end-to-end, integrated automation approach.”
The railway manager is also exploring expanding the platform to managing critical railways
systems, including those responsible for overhead lines and signage. “If we can connect to SCADA
[supervisory control and data acquisition] and PLC [programmable logic controller] systems
to monitor them and roll out updates automatically, that will save our mechanics a lot of time,”
said Busio.
The benefits of automation could also extend to ProRail’s application development partners by using
Ansible Automation Platform to build standardized Jenkins continuous integration and continuous
delivery (CI/CD) pipelines across the required technology stack, including a virtual machine (VM),
OS, and TIBCO connector.
“Our use of Ansible Automation Platform to build a higher-quality IT network makes us proud to be
at the forefront of automation,” said Busio.
About ProRail
ProRail is responsible for maintaining and extending the national railway network infrastructure.
It is also responsible for allocating rail capacity, informing operators, and controlling rail traffic.
The rail infrastructure includes more than 7,000 kilometers of track and 11,600 signals. prorail.nl
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CIOFEST 2025 - From Order Taker to Proactive Disruptor
The role of the CIO has evolved from managing systems to shaping outcomes: growth, resilience, and competitive edge are now won or lost in the technology arena. Today ’ s CIOs must balance stability with innovation, control costs while attracting scarce talent, and modernise legacy infrastructure while adopting emerging technologies.
As AI transitions from a specialised tool to an all-pervasive force, understanding its profound implications for our human lives is no longer merely academic but an urgent imperative for social well-being and strategic preparedness.
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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