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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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Germany Aug 27, 2025 Country Members Virtual german
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
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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Belgium Aug 28, 2025 Country Members Physical english
A special celebration marking 20 years of CIONET—two decades of empowering digital leaders and driving innovation in the technology landscape. This exclusive event will bring together our members to reflect on the incredible journey we've shared and look ahead to the future of digital leadership.Featuring keynote presentations from visionary CIOs, industry pioneers, and founding members, we’ll explore how far we’ve come and what lies ahead in the ever-evolving world of technology. Together, we will honour the contributions of our members who have shaped CIONET’s legacy while offering insights into how the community will continue to lead in the years to come.This is more than a celebration—it’s an opportunity to reconnect, reflect, and recharge with your fellow digital leaders. Don't miss this exclusive experience packed with inspiring talks, networking opportunities, and special recognitions that highlight the best of CIONET’s history and future.Let’s celebrate the past, present, and future of the digital community you helped build.
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Germany Sep 9, 2025 Country Members Physical german
Vom ersten Use Case zur strategischen Neuausrichtung CIONET lädt bereits zum vierten Mal zu einem exklusiven Roundtable für CIOs und Digitalverantwortliche aus Logistik und Handel ein. Im Mittelpunkt des Abends steht die Frage, wie Unternehmen ihre KI-Initiativen erfolgreich skalieren und aus ersten Use Cases echten strategischen Mehrwert schaffen. Microsoft 365 für Frontline Worker: Moderne Tools, die Mitarbeitende im Tagesgeschäft entlasten ServiceNow für Prozessintegration: Automatisierte End-to-End-Workflows – vom Schadensfall bis zur Retourenabwicklung KI-gestützte Disposition und Planung: Mit smarten Algorithmen zur optimierten Supply Chain Digitale Lieferketten und letzte Meile: Transparenz, Effizienz und Kundenzentrierung durchgängig gedacht
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Belgium Sep 13, 2025 All Members Physical english
Join us for a wonderful ride. The ride is accessible to all levels of riders and doesn't require extensive technical skills. More information will follow soon. Looking forward to ride together!
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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.
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Sharon Prior - CIO in transition - How Great Tech Leadership Begins with Business Thinking
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CIOFEST 2025 - From Order Taker to Proactive Disruptor
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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