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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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The Institut Pasteur and AWS are analysing the world's DNA, using a public database
Institut Pasteur, a leading French virology research center, processed 20 petabytes of DNA data in record 30 hours, leveraging AWS Batch over a cluster of 2.18M AWS Graviton cores.
Reduce the computing time required of 30 million vCPU hours to 30 hours, with 2.18 million vCPUs mobilised at peak
First exhaustive use of a 20-petabyte DNA database
Provision of AWS technical resources and support expertise
To date, less than 0.01% of existing viruses have been identified. And among these countless as yet unknown species may lie the culprit of a future pandemic. Following the Covid-19 crisis, and to more easily identify future threats, a research project called "IndexThePlanet" at the Institut Pasteur set about analysing and mapping the DNA of the entire living world, using a public database. However, to process such a large volume of data, the project had to set up an appropriate infrastructure to meet the challenge of processing some 20 petabytes of data. This is the purpose of the partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS), which has provided the researchers with a cluster of more than 2 million vCPUs to carry out this massive task.
Opportunity
To date, only 0.01% of existing viruses have been identified, and their exact number is still unknown. Among these countless as yet unknown species may lie the culprit behind a future pandemic. Following the Covid-19 crisis, a research team at the Institut Pasteur set about analysing and mapping the DNA of all living organisms to help identify future threats.
To process such a large volume of data, the team set up an appropriate infrastructure to meet the challenge of processing 20 petabytes of DNA data. To put this in perspective, this is roughly equivalent to all the data YouTube hosted during its first decade. This is the purpose of the partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS), which has provided the researchers with a cluster of 2.18 million vCPUs to carry out this massive task.
"The IndexThePlanet project is actually the sequel to an initial research project carried out jointly with an international team, the Serratus project, which led to the identification of new species of coronavirus and other RNA viruses," points out Rayan Chikhi, a bio-computing researcher at the Institut Pasteur. It has enabled us to map ten times as many species as before, with a total of around 3 petabytes of data analysed. "Encouraged by this initial success, we decided to take things a step further by broadening the spectrum to include all viruses present on earth, i.e., by analysing the DNA of all known living organisms. This naturally represents a considerable challenge in terms of computing power, since this time we had to process a volume of data more than six times greater than that of the Serratus project."
AWS has mobilised considerable resources, which have reached 2.18 million vCPUs at peak for Graviton instances."
"We reckon it would have taken a desktop computer nearly 30 million hours, or 3,400 years, to carry out such a calculation."
Solution
Developing a DNA Search Engine
For this research, the teams at the Institut Pasteur had access to a global database, stored and accessible to the scientific community by AWS and its Registry of Open Data Programme. This database contains sequencing data for all living species on Earth. However interesting this data may be scientifically, it is still unstructured, making it extremely tedious to explore. The IndexThePlanet project is therefore based on two specific stages: first of all, the "global analysis" of this database in order to make it readable and usable, and secondly, the provision of a search engine that can quickly and efficiently navigate the index that has been created. This search engine should be operational by 2026.
"To really understand what is at stake in our work, we need to think of this database as a sort of gigantic library, but one in which all the pages of all the books have been scattered. The challenge for IndexThePlanet is to restore coherence to this data by methodically classifying all the DNA fragments in order to reconstruct them on the scale of a living being, but also taking account of its environment. This is a major undertaking, which should ultimately benefit the entire biological research community," adds the researcher.
2.18 Million vCPUs Mobilised
The Institut Pasteur consequently turned to AWS to set up an appropriate infrastructure to meet the challenge of this massive processing. "Preparing the operations took almost a year, ultimately resulting in a calculation batch lasting just 30 hours," smiles Rayan Chikhi. But what a batch! During processing, AWS mobilised considerable resources, which reached 2.18 million vCPUs at peak for the AWS Graviton instances. As a comparison, we reckon that it would have taken a desktop computer nearly 30 million hours, or 3,400 years, to carry out such a calculation.”
AWS Technical Support
"To provide the best support for the Institut Pasteur's teams, we called on all the resources available to us," explains Dorian Schaal from Amazon Web Services, who supported the researcher throughout the project. This included scheduling the calculations over the weekend to access resources that were less in demand, as the massive size of the resources took up a significant proportion of the available resources. He continued: "The success of this project is something our teams are very proud of, and will help enhance the Open Data database that AWS is making available free of charge to the global scientific community."
Facilitating Tomorrow's Processing
The IndexThePlanet project has resulted in the creation of two datasets: a complete one of 2.2 petabytes and a more compact one of around 400 terabytes, which will serve as the basis for the future genomic search engine. It will provide accurate information on all the viruses and bacteria in the global database. A success that Rayan Chikhi nevertheless tempers: "this database is still highly incomplete in terms of terrestrial variety and, despite its success, this research project will only make it possible to increase the number of known viruses from 0.01 to 0.1%. But the progress remains considerable in terms of current knowledge". Ultimately, IndexThePlanet could serve as the basis for a system dedicated to global monitoring of the emergence of pandemics. From the moment a strain is discovered in a hospital, it could be compared with all the genetic material on the planet, saving precious time in the search for treatments and vaccines and potentially saving tens of thousands of lives.
Founded by Louis Pasteur in 1887, the Institut Pasteur is a world-renowned French biomedical research centre conducting cutting-edge scientific research on infectious diseases and public health.
Kalman Tiboldi - CTO & Founder at GemOne-TVH - Simplify or Die: Why Complexity Is the Real IT Challenge
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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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