Giuseppe Ficara - The Untold Story of Amplifon's Data & AI Transformation
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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Germany Nov 11, 2025 Country Members Physical english
On the eve of the ServiceNow World Forum, CIONET invites you to an exclusive dinner in the fabulous Restaurant Little London in the heart of Munich City. Join leading CIOs, CDOs, and ServiceNow product owners for a candid exchange on how to get the most from your ServiceNow investment.
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Switzerland Nov 12, 2025 Country Members Physical english
CIONET invites you to a private dinner with a select group of enterprise CIOs and senior infrastructure leaders in Zurich – part of a multi-country dialogue series with IT executives across Europe. This strategic dialogue is designed for digital leaders to share insights on one of the most pressing challenges facing today's leaders: How can organisations build true digital sovereignty in the face of geopolitical uncertainty, regulatory pressure, and growing technological dependencies?
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Germany Nov 13, 2025 Country Members Physical german
Bauen Sie mit uns ein starkes Netzwerk führender WOMEN CIDOs aus der IT- und Technologiebranche auf! Unser zweites Treffen findet im PwC Experience Center in Frankfurt statt.
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Belgium Nov 13, 2025 Country Members Physical english
The Role of the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) The role of the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) is no longer confined to securing the network perimeter. As organisations become more digitally connected and data-driven, the CISO’s responsibilities have expanded far beyond traditional security measures. Today’s CISO must not only defend against cyber threats but also enable the business to innovate securely, manage complex regulatory environments, and instill a culture of trust across the organisation. This event will explore the evolving role of the CISO as a strategic leader who balances security with business enablement. As digital transformation accelerates, how can CISOs align their security strategies with organisational goals, ensure compliance, and lead their teams in the fight against increasingly sophisticated threats? Key Discussion Points: From Gatekeeper to Strategic Partner: How CISOs can shift from being seen as barriers to innovation to becoming key enablers of business agility and transformation through security. Balancing Risk and Innovation: Learn how top CISOs navigate the delicate balance between mitigating risk and supporting the organisation’s need to innovate and scale in a secure environment. Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC): Explore how CISOs are managing an increasingly complex regulatory landscape, ensuring compliance while still driving business objectives forward. Building a Security-First Culture: Practical strategies for CISOs to foster a culture where security is embedded into every part of the business, from boardroom discussions to frontline operations. CISO as Crisis Manager: How to prepare for and lead your organisation through major cybersecurity incidents. From ransomware attacks to data breaches, we’ll discuss how today’s CISO is as much a crisis manager as they are a strategist. Why You Should Attend: As a CISO, your role is evolving faster than ever before. This event is designed to provide you with actionable insights into how to embrace your expanded responsibilities while keeping your organisation safe and secure. Whether you’re focused on aligning security with business goals, navigating regulatory challenges, or leading in times of crisis, this event will equip you with the strategies to lead the next era of cybersecurity.
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UK Nov 13, 2025 Invitation Only Physical english
Join us on November 13th for the exclusive roundtable powered by Cognizant.
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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.
users added each month
of new users added in just a few hours
monthly queries handled per customer
to onboard new customers
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.
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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.”
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.”
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.
Giuseppe Ficara - The Untold Story of Amplifon's Data & AI Transformation
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Radosław Maćkiewicz - CEO at COI - Empowering Citizens Through Digital Innovation
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Sharon Prior - CIO in transition - How Great Tech Leadership Begins with Business Thinking
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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