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Belgium 13-11-2026 Squad Only Physical English

Building the Business Case for New IT Capabilities; How to justify investment when value is strategic, shared, or only visible over time.

Many IT capabilities are essential and difficult to fund through a simple project ROI. The challenge is showing why architecture, governance, resilience, cybersecurity maturity, data foundations, and AI readiness deserve investment before the gap becomes expensive. Three pressure points make the case harder. - Shared value means the benefit often sits across several teams, while the budget sits in one place. - Timing creates friction because the cost is immediate while the value appears over time. - Risk translation is needed so business and finance leaders understand the consequence of delaying the investment. The working question is simple: how do we turn foundational IT capabilities into credible investment cases that link cost, risk, business value, and future flexibility? If you are building these cases internally, let’s compare how others are positioning value, risk, and timing.

Belgium 19-11-2026 All Members Physical English

Europe’s Digital Foundations

Public organisations are re-evaluating the digital foundations on which critical services depend. Cloud strategy is increasingly shaped by questions of operational control, legal exposure, supplier dependency, interoperability and long-term resilience. For public-sector leaders, the issue is not only where workloads are hosted, but how much strategic control remains over the technologies that support essential public services. This is where European cloud initiatives, sovereign infrastructure and open-source technologies become strategically important. Together, they can increase transparency, preserve portability and reduce dependency on individual providers. But they also raise practical questions around maturity, procurement, integration, support models and long-term sustainability. Open source brings a specific dimension to this discussion. It claims to better support transparency, interoperability and strategic autonomy, but it is also requiring clear governance, security controls and operational support. The opportunity is to understand where open technologies can strengthen the public-sector technology stack, where commercial platforms remain essential and how both can coexist within a coherent European digital strategy. Three questions shape the discussion: Which parts of the public-sector technology stack require stronger European control? What role should open-source technologies play in reducing dependency and strengthening transparency? Which governance and procurement decisions will determine whether a sovereign cloud strategy succeeds? Bringing these perspectives together can define where sovereign cloud and open technologies create strategic value, identify the decisions that deserve executive attention, and establish practical principles for strengthening Europe’s digital foundations while preserving flexibility and innovation. See you at the table?

Belgium 24-11-2026 Country Members Physical French

Les Rencontres: Innovation de l'Ombre

Créativité vs. Chaos : Quelle est la gouvernance minimale ? Le défi principal est d'équilibrer le risque et le rythme du changement. Les équipes métier adoptent de nouveaux outils d'IA et low-code de leur propre chef, créant une véritable créativité mais aussi un risque massif et non géré. Cette discussion se concentre sur l'établissement de voies simples et sûres pour l'innovation, en débattant de la gouvernance minimale qui protège la réputation de l'entreprise tout en évitant l'erreur d'écraser les initiatives utiles dans l'ombre. Questions clés d'Échange entre pairs : Où l'innovation de l'ombre aide-t-elle plutôt que de nuire, et comment éviter de l'écraser ? Quelle est la gouvernance minimale qui protège la réputation tout en maintenant la vitesse, et à qui appartient-elle réellement ? Comment les pairs ont-ils réussi à transformer les efforts initiaux de l'ombre en services officiels soutenus sans perdre la confiance de l'entreprise ? Comment pouvons-nous rendre plus facile d'innover de manière responsable que de simplement agir en franc-tireur ?

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Delivering a secure and agile digital transformation for Orica

Helping the Australia-based multi-national as an end-to-end trusted partner.

Overview
Like many organisations, Orica was embarking on a digital transformation. As the world’s leading producer of explosives, with over 13,000 employees and operations in over 120 countries, it was vital security sat at the centre of their strategy.

We began working with Orica back in 2015 as part of a global network and security partnership. The trusted partnership has really evolved since then as Orica have shifted their focus to become a digital and data-driven company.

The challenge
For Orica, they needed to transform to allow employees to operate from anywhere, anytime and on any device. They wanted to increase productivity and drive costs down, whilst also giving employees the ability to work flexibly at home without any issues. This proved difficult with their static and inflexible network.

Due to their global reach, Orica needed their security to keep up with the ever-increasing number of sophisticated cyber threats. They needed us to deliver a transformational SD-WAN network with associated network security services to ensure it was secure. There were a number of controls included, such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) solution, firewalls and secure web gateways.

Security is a key enabler sitting at the heart of our digital transformation.”

Chris CrozierCIO at Orica

The solution
We transformed their static network into a secure, agile infrastructure, shifting from MPLS to full SD-WAN.

We helped them to adopt a Zero Trust approach to their network access. This allowed for significantly more granular security policies to be applied to users, no matter where they were connecting from, whilst also enhancing user experience. We also applied user segmentation to secure certified workloads across Orica’s server estate. In addition to deploying a security policy and posture management platform, Orica transformed their traditional signature-based endpoint security by deploying new global detection and response capabilities.

The result
Users can now work anywhere, anytime. This allows Orica to be more productive, while keeping costs down. And their on-premises data centres are now cloud-enabled. Our trusted partnership with Orica means they now have the best in class security, which is central to their transformation. Chris Crozier, CIO at Orica says ‘they’ve been able to provide a tremendously valuable partnership with teams working on our MPLS to SD-WAN engagement but also the ongoing day-to-day requirements of that network. We have individual projects at scale to be able to roll out the new network requirements and support and finally we get very detailed insight depth and capability from BT to enable to business and drive the transformation that’s required’.

We’re now there as an end-to-end trusted partner. There to protect Orica’s organisation and their customers, whilst also equipping Orica with the knowledge they need in the moments that matter.

The way in which BT and Orica work together is one of true partnership… we’ve worked together to transform the initial contract to now delivering one which is a lot more digitally orientated as part of Orica’s wider transformation.”

Tris MorganManaging Director, BT Security

Technologies

Cisco SD-WAN

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