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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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PhotoRoom Partners with Google Cloud to Make Generative AI Helpful to Small Businesses

PhotoRoom will increase content delivery speeds for customers with Google Cloud infrastructure.

The leading AI photo-editing app will use Google Cloud's ability to scale large AI models to help more businesses take advantage of the opportunities generative AI offers, by enabling them to create high-quality images faster than ever before

SUNNYVALE, Calif, and PARIS, June 7, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- PhotoRoom, an artificial intelligence (AI)-based photo editing app designed for e-commerce businesses, announced a new partnership with Google Cloud today. PhotoRoom will use the power of Google Cloud A3 instances based on NVIDIA graphics processing units (GPUs), and its expertise in scaling large AI models, to offer studio-quality images to more businesses than ever before.

As a result, PhotoRoom will be able to increase the speed of content delivered to its customers and maintain its position as the fastest generative AI provider in the commerce space, reducing the time needed to create product content from days to less than an hour–without compromising accuracy or quality. Small businesses and entrepreneurs will benefit from PhotoRoom's speed and scale by significantly reducing the time and costs requested to produce and edit commercial photography.

"We're already processing 2 billion images per year, and we expect that to double in 2024, as more businesses adopt PhotoRoom's generative AI technology. We clearly need a partner who can help us scale and meet the needs of our customers over the next few years," said Matthieu Rouif, CEO of PhotoRoom. "Google Cloud fits perfectly with PhotoRoom's growth philosophy and provides the ideal foundation for our continued success with its capacity to scale, its flexibility, and its sustainable infrastructure. We are thrilled to work with this generative AI pioneer as we realize our vision of making amazing product photography available to everyone."

Generative AI presents incredible opportunities for small businesses. Partnering with Google Cloud is one of the steps PhotoRoom is taking to provide its customers with quality images at an affordable price. This partnership builds on the recent launch of PhotoRoom's Instant Backgrounds and Instant Shadows features, which use AI to enhance product shots. With these product developments, PhotoRoom aims to expand the use of generative AI and make it more accessible to smaller businesses and entrepreneurs: allowing them to imagine new business opportunities with breakthrough technology.

Since the beginning of the year, numerous companies using PhotoRoom have shared their feedback on improved performance and efficiencies. For example, Campsider, a marketplace for second-hand equipment and clothing, saw a 15% decrease in their Google Ads CPC (cost-per-click) since they started using PhotoRoom to edit their product images.

"Google's long-term focus on AI and investments in infrastructure are unlocking the full potential of generative AI for businesses and individuals alike," said Mark Lohmeyer, vice president and general manager, Google Cloud. "We're thrilled to offer Google Cloud's industry leading infrastructure, foundation models and AI tooling to PhotoRoom so the company can build, train, and deploy AI creatively, reliably and at scale."

Downloaded more than 10 million times globally from mobile app stores and with a review score of 4.7 out of 5 on the Google Play Store, PhotoRoom will increase its servers' processing power thanks to Google Cloud and will further support small businesses around the world.

About PhotoRoom

PhotoRoom was founded in 2019, and over the past 3 years has carved out a niche in the commerce photography space. PhotoRoom first found success with its best-in-class background remover. It has now expanded its offering to include a batch photo editor, magic retouch tool, and its latest offering, an AI tool that instantly generates backgrounds and shadows. The company is headquartered in Paris and now employs more than 40 employees and growing. The company's mission is to break down the barriers to doing business by making commerce photography easy. PhotoRoom's customers already include Warner Brothers, List Perfectly, and Wolt.

For more information on PhotoRoom, visit www.photoroom.com

About Google Cloud

Google Cloud accelerates every organization's ability to digitally transform its business. We deliver enterprise-grade solutions that leverage Google's cutting-edge technology – all on the cleanest cloud in the industry. Customers in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted partner to enable growth and solve their most critical business problems.

SOURCE Google Cloud

Technologies

Google Cloud A3 instances Google Cloud's Generative AI

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