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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 Jul 14, 2025 Country Members Virtual german

Online: AI & DATA Knowledge Transfer - Briefing 18

Unsere Wissensaustausch-Briefings "AI & Data Knowledge Transfer" zielen darauf ab, CIDOs und Senior Digital Leaders mit praktischen Anwendungen und umsetzbaren Erkenntnissen von Fachexperten zu vermitteln, die den Weg für transformative digitale Reisen ebnen.

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Poland Jul 16, 2025 All Members Physical Polish

COMMUNITY EVENT #6 WROCŁAW: HOW TO MANAGE TECHNOLOGY 2025?

COMMUNITY EVENT WROCŁAW

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Germany Jul 17, 2025 Country Members Physical german

München: Von Content-Chaos zu Intelligenz. Wine-Tasting CIDO Roundtable

Ein Sommerabend über den Dächern Münchens. Ein Glas kalifornischer Wein in der Hand. Und ein ehrlicher Austausch unter Gleichgesinnten. In entspannter Atmosphäre sprechen wir mit CIOs, CDOs und CTOs der CIONET-Community über die Herausforderungen und Chancen, die Künstliche Intelligenz im Umgang mit sensiblen Unternehmensdaten mit sich bringt.

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Poland Jul 23, 2025 Invitation Only Physical Polish

Executive Roundtable: Developerzy pod lupą: jak mierzyć, porównywać i oceniać efektywność zespołów IT

Zarządzanie zespołami IT nie może opierać się na intuicji. Efektywność wymaga twardych danych i miar. Które zespoły są naprawdę skuteczne? Jak ocenić, ile pracy wymagało wdrożenie konkretnej funkcji? W jaki sposób mierzyć postęp i jakość pracy programistów bez polegania na subiektywnych wskaźnikach?   Podczas spotkania CIONET Executive Roundtable porozmawiamy o tym, jak nowoczesne narzędzia analityczne – takie jak BlueOptima – pozwalają na obiektywne i porównywalne mierzenie coding effort, czyli rzeczywistego wysiłku włożonego w rozwój oprogramowania. Takie podejście może wspierać nie tylko kontrolę efektywności, ale też jakość, planowanie zespołów i – w dalszej perspektywie – optymalizację kosztów.   W trakcie dyskusji: Wyjaśnimy, czym jest coding effort i jak można go mierzyć niezależnie od technologii czy stylu pracy zespołu. Omówimy, jakie wskaźniki (np. wysiłek dzienny, wskaźnik trudnego do utrzymania kodu, koszt jednostki wysiłku) mają realną wartość dla liderów IT. Pokażemy, jak dane mogą pomóc w identyfikowaniu ryzyk, ocenie jakości kodu i skuteczniejszym zarządzaniu zespołami developerskimi. Zajrzymy też "pod maskę" – jak działa architektura platform takich jak BlueOptima, skąd czerpie dane i jak zapewnia obiektywność metryk. Naszym partnerem w przygotowaniu spotkania jest firma BlueOptima. Gość specjalny Jarosław Wójciński, Head of IT, BENEFIT SYSTEMS podzieli się praktycznymi doświadczeniami z wdrożenia i wykorzystania tej platformy w codziennej pracy działu IT.

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Germany Aug 27, 2025 Country Members Virtual german

Online: Wine Tasting - Unified Operations & Security

Die neuen geo-politischen Veränderungen und unvorhergesehene wirtschaftliche Anforderungen stellen Digital Leader vor neue Herausforderungen. Immer öfter wird in den Vorstandsetagen die Frage gestellt, wie der (IT) Betrieb sicher und ungestört weiter funktionieren kann, wenn regionale Rechenzentren und Infrastrukturen plötzlich nicht mehr verfügbar oder nur teilweise noch einsatzbereit sind. Der CIO muss für diese neue Welt resiliente Strategien parat haben, die für Business Continuity in bisher nicht vorstellbaren politischen und wirtschaftlichen Szenarien ermöglichen.

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Belgium Aug 28, 2025 Country Members Physical english

Summer Festival - Advisory Board

With the theme “The Power of Connection,” we’re embracing the essence of meaningful connections within IT and beyond. To honour our tradition, expect an unforgettable evening featuring keynote presentations, open bars, a summer BBQ, and a special experience designed to bring our vibrant community together.

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Recent Cases

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Amanote Optimizes Note-Taking App for Learners, Handling Millions of Queries on AWS

Amanote can onboard new large university customers for its note-taking app in less than 2 minutes, scale to accommodate thousands of new users in a few hours, and handle up to 3 million queries per customer per month. Its app is integrated into learning management systems (LMS) used in higher-education facilities and large enterprises. Amanote needed to ensure that its app could be easily integrated as an LMS plugin, with customization kept to a minimum to assist sales. It built a fully serverless cloud setup, using AWS Lambda to handle queries and deliver multiple app features. Amanote has optimized its costs and can easily deliver its products to customers worldwide with minimal disruption.

20K

users added each month

1,000s

of new users added in just a few hours

Up to 3 Million

monthly queries handled per customer

2 Minutes

to onboard new customers

 

Overview

Belgium-based educational technology (EdTech) business Amanote created a note-taking app that’s used by students to annotate course materials. With plans to grow its customer base in higher-education facilities, it wanted to make sure its infrastructure could grow with customer demand. From the start, Amanote decided to build on Amazon Web Services (AWS) to benefit from its comprehensive set of serverless services, helping it to scale rapidly and support growth.

Using AWS, Amanote can onboard a new university customer in 2 minutes and accommodate thousands of users in just a few hours. It has achieved this by building the app’s backend and multiple features on AWS Lambda so it can run code without thinking about servers or clusters. 

With pay-as-you-go services from AWS, the company can focus on optimizing service use to keep costs low and also minimize the number of API calls made. This has not only minimized costs, but also improved quality of service and app performance for end users.

 

 

amanote
 
 

Opportunity | Benefiting from AWS Startups to Support App Development and Product Versatility

Amanote is helping transform learning in both higher-education and staff training scenarios. Its app makes it easy to add notes and comments to coursework. This includes slide-, PDF- and video-based educational content that is created for learning management systems (LMS). Amanote helps educators and instructors to deliver more interactive lessons, add oral explanations, and gain feedback to help improve course content. For learners, the app boosts learning productivity by making note taking more effective. The app helps to generate color-coded note summaries, and supports note sharing with other learners—both of which help students to enhance their study and revision practice.

The inspiration for Amanote came from the direct experience of founder and chief executive officer (CEO) Adrien Fery, while he was studying for a master’s degree in computer science. He saw a need to digitize note taking to make the learning process more efficient and started to develop a solution. Because of the complex technology requirements of many universities’ legacy IT systems, Fery decided to offer Amanote as a software plugin, so it could be installed easily to avoid the need for lengthy software implementations. The company was launched in 2016, with the new app built entirely on AWS. “We chose AWS because of its superior technology and its broad set of serverless services,” he says. “This gave us all the components we needed to develop a fully serverless environment—with zero compromise.”

When it first launched, Amanote offered a note-taking app that students could download and use independently. In 2020, the company began to work on developing its app so it could be integrated with LMS providers’ software, and the company could offer a comprehensive note-taking solution directly to universities and higher-education institutions—to further enhance the student learning experience and offer more advanced features. For example, by supporting continuous syncing of course content with a student’s notes, even if the course content is updated.

To support this move and aid app development, Amanote applied for AWS Activate funding, which provides AWS credits at no cost to help provide startups with the resources they need to build, launch, and scale on AWS. The program also provided access to education events to help the company find potential new customers and network with peers. Amanote also received support from AWS solution architects to assist with architecture design. “We had access to AWS support, which we didn’t expect as a startup,” says Fery. “With the help of AWS, we’ve developed an affordable solution that’s versatile and easy for students to use.”

 

 

kr_quotemark

With the help of AWS, we’ve developed an affordable solution that’s versatile and easy for students to use.”

Adrien Fery
Founder and CEO, Amanote

 

 

Solution | Using AWS Lambda to Handle Millions of Queries and Accommodate Thousands of New Users

Amanote can now scale automatically to accommodate the 20,000 new users it adds each month. It can also set the system to automatically power down during university and college vacations, when usage is low. AWS Lambda sits at the core of the app, handling the 1–3 million queries per customer, per month, that are generated. These queries support several app features. They include setting up user accounts, saving individual notes, and collaborating with fellow students by exchanging information about coursework. “We needed to focus on developing new product features, not managing infrastructure,” says Fery. “Using AWS serverless services means we can free up time to focus on what matters—developing and growing the business.”

All API requests are sent first to Amazon API Gateway, which the company can use to create, maintain, and secure APIs at any scale. This helps ensure that all communications are connected to the right AWS Lambda function. From the start, Amanote has used a cost-effective AWS database solution to store document metadata and manage licensing using Amazon DynamoDB, a serverless, NoSQL, fully managed database with single-digit millisecond performance at any scale.Amanote benefits from high levels of infrastructure security by building on AWS. Machine learning (ML) is employed to quickly expose any threats or unusual user activity, using Amazon GuardDuty, which protects AWS accounts with intelligent threat detection. This assures its customers that the app is secure. The company has achieved low latency connections globally by using AWS Global Infrastructure, which provides a secure, extensive, and reliable global cloud infrastructure for all applications. This means that it can deliver its product to customers worldwide quickly and securely, without making any system changes.

Many of the company’s customers report noticeable results in using the Amanote app, including a key university client in Modena, Italy. “Because of Amanote’s ease of implementation, we’ve been able to get almost immediate results,” says Valeria Folloni, Instructional Designer at the University of Modena. “The dedicated budget was minimal and we got tangible results in a very short time, and we’re continuing to see improvements.”
The next stage of development for Amanote is to harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities for its app. For internal development work, the company is currently beta testing Amazon Q, a generative AI–powered assistant designed for work that can be tailored to its business. To allow teachers to use their preferred AI large language model, it is also evaluating Amazon Bedrock, to help build and scale generative AI applications with foundation models. It is also starting to test ML enriched data streams, using Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose, to load near-real-time streams into analytics services. This will help to automatically detect when students are struggling with coursework—and provide academic and training staff with insights on where improvements can be made.

 

Outcome | Growing to Reach 500K Customers in 50 Countries Worldwide

Amanote now has over 500,000 users in 50 countries across four continents, including Asia, Europe, and the US. With a solid app platform, the company is now launching on AWS Marketplace. “We’ve discovered great benefits using AWS,” says Fery. “The documentation is excellent, AWS services are straightforward to use, and we can always find a solution. Everything we need to do, we can do on AWS.”

 

About Company

Belgium-based Amanote offers a note-taking app that integrates with learning management systems. Using annotation that can be classified and shared, the app helps students and business professionals to enhance study and aid revision practice.

Technologies

Amazon Lambda

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.

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CIOFEST 2025 - From Order Taker to Proactive Disruptor

CIONET Reports

 
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JNJ The Role of Digital and Robotics in the Future of Surgery

A dinner explored integrating digital and robotic tech in surgery, its NHS impact, and solutions for long waiting lists. Sponsored by Johnson & Johnson, it gathered NHS leaders, clinicians, and tech experts to share insights on current uses and future planning for digital healthcare delivery.

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Coping in chaos. How to survive (and thrive) in uncertain times

From economic uncertainty to governance, security and trade concerns, today’s IT leaders face unprecedented challenges that require them to navigate, and thrive, in chaos. That, at least, is the proposition of a new sequence of events from Cognizant and CIONET.

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The BIG Transformer – Reimagining the Enterprise for the AI Era

This high-energy panel event explored how artificial intelligence is transforming enterprise strategy, operations, and culture. Industry leaders from AstraZeneca, Orange Business, Strategy and Soho House shared how they are reimagining their organisations to stay competitive in the AI era.

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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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IT Director, IT Thinker

“The main things that I would like to get from our community of Digital Leaders are: networking, share experiences, share best practices and successful cases, and comments and recommendations about providers.”
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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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with digital leaders who share your interests, who face the same challenges, who care about the same topics.

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stories, experiences, and ideas around our shared mission.

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from our exclusive events, publications and research.

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inspiration, thought-provoking conversations, expert perspectives and exclusive first-hand content each and every day

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You can either send us a registered handwritten letter explaining why you'd like to become a member or you can simply talk to us right here!

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