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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 Oct 20, 2025 Country Members Virtual german

Online: AI & DATA Knowledge Transfer - Briefing 20

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

CIONET Round Table - From Disconnected Data to Unified Insight ; Building a 360° customer view to unlock commercial growth

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

Barcelona TECH Quest 2025

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

The End of the Firewall

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

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

AI: The Great Illusionist

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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Recent Cases

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Georgia Ministry improves experience for users and IT staff alike

This case study examines how the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia partnered with Orient Logic to support remote learning. By redesigning its IT landscape using Red Hat® OpenShift® and Red Hat Application Foundations, the Ministry improved the user's experience, reduced outages, and accelerated software releases.

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia
(the Ministry) realized that it needed to adapt its software so it could offer students remote
learning. Its Education Management Information System (EMIS) was the core system that
needed to change. IT partner Orient Logic worked with the Ministry’s EMIS IT department to
redesign the Ministry’s IT landscape based on Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Application
Foundations (formerly Red Hat Integration). As a result, the Ministry not only supported remote
learning but also improved the student and teacher experience, reducing outages by 99% and
accelerating software releases from once every few months to daily. The new IT environment
also improved the work life of its IT staff

 

Adapting to the new reality of remote learning
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, schools and universities around the world faced an unexpected
and unplanned crisis that demanded rapid change. Many educational institutes struggled to adapt
their lessons and teaching resources to constantly changing circumstances and implement distance
learning at very short notice.
The Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia was no exception. It became apparent that its
software was not designed for remote learning. The Ministry has a highly centralized education
system, with all public schools falling under the Ministry of Education. The software used for
assignments, grades, schedules, and so on—the Education Management Information System (EMIS)—
had 600,000 users, with around 15,000 to 20,000 logged in simultaneously on any given day.
EMIS had struggled to cope with peak loads even before the pandemic demanded distance learning.
First-grade registration caused a major surge each year. “There is 1 day a year when the whole
country tries to register their first graders,” said David Tatishvili, Deputy Head of EMIS at the Ministry
of Education and Science of Georgia. “Capacity had to be planned for the maximum number of
simultaneous users, up to 100,000. It meant we had a huge infrastructure just to accommodate that
one day.”
With systems monolithic and tightly coupled, data integration between systems took place
via database synchronization procedures every night, and all systems had to be stopped until
synchronization was complete. “At least once or twice a month, there was a sync error, which meant
the IT team had to work overnight to fix it to prevent system outage or data corruption,” said Merab
Gogolauri, Software Development and Cloud Infrastructure Director at the Ministry’s preferred IT
partner, Orient Logic.
Parents would give negative feedback if the system went down. “It was impossible to introduce rapid
changes without breaking something,” said Tatishvili. “That would lead to angry users storming EMIS
communication and social media channels throughout Georgia.”


Adopting a microservices approach
Needing a way to rapidly adapt its existing systems to the new reality, the Ministry turned to Orient
Logic. “We had to rapidly change and adapt the EMIS as the Ministry switched to distance learning
through Microsoft Teams,” said Gogolauri. “Agile software development and agile infrastructure
would help the Ministry reduce problems and resolve integration concerns.”
Orient Logic worked with the EMIS IT team to redesign the Ministry of Education’s IT landscape
based on Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Application Foundations (formerly Red Hat Integration).
The aim was to move toward a new system based on microservices, which would be more modern
and more agile, and could be rapidly developed and expanded.
Red Hat OpenShift operates as a central data integration hub for all applications. This cloud-native
application platform runs on the Ministry’s own cloud environment. Red Hat Application Foundations
provides data exchange, API management, and security for integration with external entities.
“EMIS used to have a lot of manual deployment, but now it’s all automatic,” said Gogolauri.
“Some systems are integrated directly through APIs.”

 

Improving user experience by reducing outages

Reduced system outages by 99%
Major upgrades in EMIS have significantly improved stability and, with that, user experience for teachers,
parents, and students in Georgia. Bugs no longer break the system and synchronization,
which was problematic before, now works flawlessly.
“We have not had major problems—even once—since deploying Red Hat Application Foundations to
replace our legacy data synchronization,” said Tatishvili.
Although Georgia has returned to offline learning in a classroom setting, distance learning could
easily be accommodated again if needed without causing the issues and, therefore, the downtime
seen during COVID. “The system is more robust now,” said Gogolauri.

 

Improved experience for IT staff
The modernizations and improvements are much appreciated by IT staff who no longer need to work
nights on quick fixes. The container separation found in Red Hat OpenShift has been particularly
welcome, as have the new rollback capabilities.
“We provided EMIS with a future-ready, technically superior solution based on Red Hat OpenShift,
where even if one system fails, it does not impact other systems at all,” said Gogolauri. “Any change
to any system is quick and easy. And if there is a problem, it is very local and EMIS can be rolled back
to the previous stable version with 1 click.”


Accelerated software releases daily
Implementing new development approaches and tools enabled by Red Hat OpenShift, including CI/CD
and GitOps, means software releases are significantly more efficient and frequent now. It used to take
several hours to manually deploy them and, as a result, it was only practical to deliver large numbers of
them once every few months.
“Implementing CI/CD and GitOps has streamlined the software development process,” said Gogolauri.
“We write it, Red Hat OpenShift deploys it, and no engineering assistance is needed. We can deploy
new software in small increments several times a day, accelerating software development projects.”


Building on pandemic success by revising legacy core systems
From the perspective of the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia, the new environment is a vast
improvement. The EMIS team has not been shy about recommending the rollout of Red Hat technologies
to other parts of the government. “The EMIS team has been telling people how happy they are with the
results,” said Tatishvili. “Informal user feedback from teachers and parents has also been very positive.”
Orient Logic is proud and happy to have helped the Ministry: “Synchronization was our headache, too;
we also helped them to be a lot more successful. All these changes led to a significant increase in
user satisfaction as there are no application outages anymore. They can also add new functionality to
applications on a daily basis,” said Gogolauri.
The next step is for EMIS to revise its old core systems, rewriting everything as microservices, and
implementing new features and software. “We have achieved ongoing development,” said Gogolauri.
“Our Red Hat technologies are based on leading open-source projects and provide unmatchedcapabilities to integrate any systems EMIS might require in future.” 

 

About the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia
The Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia aims to establish a modern and innovative
educational environment in close cooperation with civil society, providing lifelong learning and equal
access to quality education, in order to prepare each individual for future life and promote employment,
personal and professional development. In 2012, the Education Management Information System
(EMIS) was founded. By developing advanced information and communication technologies and an
electronic education management system, EMIS aims to further support the education sector

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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How CIOs drive game changing results at scale?

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.

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A research proposal_AI and the Human Experience

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.

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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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Head of IT Germany and Regional Office Lead Munich, Microsoft

“The CIONET App allows us to learn from eachother and and find the courage to be authentic by hearing stories from others! Thanks to Tobias and the whole team for bringing us together:-) ”
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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.

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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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