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Belgium 01-10-2026 Squad Only Virtual english

Letting Teams Build Safely with Low-Code, No-Code, and AI Tools. ; How to enable business-led development while keeping security, architecture, and support under control.

Low-code, no-code, and AI tools are giving business teams more ability to build solutions themselves. The challenge is setting the right boundaries before fast local solutions become important operational assets. Three pressure points need attention. - Boundaries must be clear: teams need to know what they can build alone and what requires IT, security, or architecture review. - Supportability matters when a quick solution becomes business-critical. - Risk control remains necessary around data access, compliance, security, process dependency, and maintenance. The working question is simple: how do we enable business-led development while keeping security, ownership, and support under control? If you are trying to enable this safely, let’s compare approaches with others facing the same balance.

Belgium 06-10-2026 All Members Physical english

The Token Trap: Reclaiming Control of Enterprise AI

As enterprise AI transitions from experimental Proofs of Concept (POCs) into real implementations, digital leaders are encountering a shared challenge: consumption-based public cloud token billing models do not fit neatly into traditional IT budgeting. Daily token consumption can rise unexpectedly, pushing expenses through the roof while arbitrary caps quickly kill momentum for innovation. For many CIOs, this raises an open strategic question: How do we keep costs under control while further stimulating innovation? During this interactive CIONET roundtable, we will explore among peers how to navigate AI tokenomics. Rather than treating public cloud LLMs as the default path, we will investigate how different execution environments, ranging from hybrid cloud setups and targeted on-premise models to specialised edge hardware, can help balance cost with performance. This session is intentionally designed as an open peer-to-peer exchange; a space to compare notes, challenge current ways of working and architectural setups, and discuss practical approaches to building predictable, scalable AI models.

Belgium 08-10-2026 All Members Physical english

The Permanent (R)evolution

Every large organisation has been through a major transformation, and most through several. The word transformation is misleading because it suggests a beginning and an end. But organisations that do well are the ones that have given up on the idea of arriving and realise that constant change has become the new norm, and missing a single cycle leaves you permanently behind. This evening, two leaders will share how they think about this, coming from opposite directions. John Porter led Telenet through a sustained period of reinvention spanning the pandemic, a full reorganisation into tribes, M&A, and a shift to a performance driven culture. Along the way, the IT department was dissolved and technology was embedded inside autonomous tribes that run as small businesses. There is no CIO at Telenet. It is Telenet Group’s purpose to become a digital-first, customer-centric organisation. To deliver on this ambition, it has embarked on a transformation journey built on three pillars: (i) the implementation of a scaled-agile operating model (organisation), (ii) the acceleration of digitisation and automation underpinned by optimised IT systems, platforms, and strategic technology partnerships (digitisation), and (iii) a performance leadership culture focused on accountability, ownership, and a change mindset (culture). Kris Vervaet, on the other hand, has just become CIO at KBC, the bank whose mobile app has been ranked best in the world three times and whose AI assistant Kate now handles 70% of customer queries on its own. But Kris is no ordinary CIO: he ran DPG Media Belgium as CEO, and KBC went looking for someone who has led transformation rather than someone who manages technology. So while one organisation got rid of the CIO role, the other reinvented it, and both are thriving. The conversation will range across organisational and IT redesign, the rise of digital-first customer experience, the impact of AI on how every business is run, and the harder questions of culture, talent and leadership. The question for every leader in the room is what that tells you about your own role, your own operating model, and the pace at which you are prepared to keep evolving.

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Deutsche Bank democratizes application development with centralized platform

Deutsche Bank has embraced digital transformation by standardizing and streamlining developer access to compute capacity and other application resources to reach markets more quickly. Its new Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), Fabric, uses microservices and container capabilities of Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, supported by Red Hat Enterprise Linux and managed using Red Hat Ansible Tower.

Benefits:

Cut end-to-end application development time from 6-9 months to 2-3 weeks
Simplified DevOps collaboration with flexible integration and agile approach
Optimized use and costs of datacenter and cloud capacity with microservices, containers, and cloudbursting

Platform complexity restricts efficient development

As a leading financial services provider for private, corporate, and fiduciary clients, Deutsche Bank has embraced the positive trends of digital transformation. By challenging traditional business approaches, the bank sought to enhance digital customer experiences — a goal directly tied to enhancing its developer experience.

“We’re focusing on shortening our development cycles so we can get products in front of our customers more quickly,” said Tom Gilbert, global head of cloud, application, and integration platforms at Deutsche Bank. “A need for greater agility is directing the industry to microservices, containers, and public cloud, and shifting the focus from infrastructure to ideas.”

But restrictive infrastructure specialization made integration difficult and application development slow. Managing thousands of servers and databases hindered growth and adoption of more agile technology. Many operating systems were being used across multiple datacenters.

The bank saw that a new, cloud-based approach was needed to support not only its current business, but also future data needs.

Deutsche Bank also wanted to support a more innovative, DevOps approach to replace its traditional waterfall processes and keep pace with rapid, iterative digital innovation. To gain the scale and flexibility needed, the bank sought to establish a PaaS that would streamline development and management, reduce risk, and support more agile work across all of its business units.

Open source technology supports global application development

To build its strategic as-a-Service platform, Deutsche Bank sought an open source solution. After years of success with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the bank added Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform and Red Hat Ansible Tower to build Fabric, a containerized, microservices-based application development platform at the bank.

“Red Hat offered the combination of open source with vendor support, patching, and management — all of the things that we need in a regulated business,” said Gilbert. “The shift from virtual machines to containers, and traditional applications to microservices, is a big one. We needed a partner that could help us build our deployment capabilities and train our global developer base so we could get maximum value from our investment.”

Fabric runs on Red Hat Enterprise Linux in several datacenters and in the bank’s Microsoft Azure public cloud environment. Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform provides support for container- and microservices-based development, scaling compute and performance capacity from dedicated servers to cloud resources as needed. Both solutions are deployed and maintained using Red Hat Ansible Tower, a framework that automates and standardizes IT at enterprise scale.

Deutsche Bank’s developers and infrastructure teams worked with Red Hat Consulting to deploy and learn about OpenShift. “We enjoyed working with them. They helped us educate thousands of developers worldwide on how to develop cloud-native applications, and they’ve helped our infrastructure teams get used to this new technology and integrate it into the bank’s platforms,” said Gilbert.

Fabric hosts systems and tools for every application development team at the bank, from the retail group’s application programming interfaces (APIs) to internal HR and employee survey systems. In addition, Fabric offers elastic, on-demand compute to support tasks like daily risk calculations, which require large volumes of resources across data processing, disaster recovery, and acceptance and performance testing.

After two years, the platform is now running more than 3,100 projects in more than 15 environments, with 6,000 active monthly users. Releases every two weeks incorporate customer and user feedback to adjust features and performance.

Its successful creation of a DevOps-ready, container-based, global development platform earned Deutsche Bank a 2019 Red Hat Innovation Award.

Faster resource access speeds service time to market

Fabric offers global, standardized compute and other development resources across infrastructure providers through APIs to help Deutsche Bank’s developers work more efficiently. Developers can create their own container images and make them available in the platform. Instead of 6-9 months, applications now go from proof of concept (POC) to production in 2-3 weeks. Red Hat Ansible Tower automates provisioning, testing, and other routine tasks, saving the company months of engineering work and mitigating risk of errors during upgrades and maintenance.

Agile and DevOps practices simplify collaboration

To support its digital transformation, Deutsche Bank has embraced DevOps and Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) approaches to developing at scale — supported by the flexibility of Ansible Tower and OpenShift Container Platform.

Integration and scalability are key to expanding these collaborative processes and taking advantage of the best ideas and code. “Instead of a hosted platform, microservices let us use elastic cloud resources to scale on demand,” said Boyle. “With Ansible and OpenShift, whether it’s a management report or a piece of data, once a service exists, we just need to expose it to other functions and applications for it to be reused.”

To keep these collaborative systems secure, Red Hat helps Deutsche Bank deploy the latest patches and updates to protect its Red Hat infrastructure from threats and vulnerabilities.

Containers and cloud help teams do more with less

Streamlining resource access has helped Deutsche Bank optimize its use of datacenter and cloud capacity, saving time, money, and resources.

Dense, container- and microservices-based infrastructure not only requires fewer staff to manage but also less hardware to run than VM-based infrastructure. By adopting cloud compute and running more workloads per physical server, Deutsche Bank anticipates saving millions of euros year over year.

Technologies

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Red Hat Enterprise Linux Red Hat OpenShift

CIONET Business Circles

Cyber Circle

CIONET’s Cyber Circle: a new three-event programme exclusively focusing on the most urgent, complex, and high-impact challenges in cybersecurity today. Launched in 2026, this initiative brings together CISOs, CIOs, and senior IT executives with a strong interest in cybersecurity for three curated gatherings each year. As part of CIONET’s trusted executive community, the Cyber Circle provides a confidential, peer-driven environment to exchange insights, share real-world experiences, and address evolving cyber threats. Each session is designed to foster strategic dialogue, strengthen resilience, and elevate cybersecurity as a core driver of business value.

Telenet Business Leadership Circle

The Telenet Business Leadership Circle powered by CIONET, offers a platform where IT executives and thought leaders can meet to inspire each other and share best practices. We want to be a facilitator who helps you optimise the performance of your IT function and your business by embracing the endless opportunities that digital change brings.

Les Rencontres

Découvrez la dynamique du leadership numérique aux Rencontres de CIONET, le programme francophone exclusif de CIONET pour les leaders numériques en Belgique, rendu possible grâce au soutien et à l'engagement de nos partenaires de programme : Deloitte, Denodo et Red Hat. Rejoignez trois événements inspirants par an à Liège, Namur et en Brabant Wallon, où des CIOs et des experts numériques francophones de premier plan partagent leurs perspectives et expériences sur des thèmes d'affaires et de IT actuels. Laissez-vous inspirer et apprenez des meilleurs du secteur lors de sessions captivantes conçues spécialement pour soutenir et enrichir votre rôle en tant que CIO pair. Ne manquez pas cette opportunité de faire partie d'un réseau exceptionnel d'innovateurs numériques !

Female Leadership Circle

CIONET is committed to highlighting and celebrating female role models in IT, Tech & Digital, creating a leadership programme that empowers and elevates women within the tech industry. This initiative is dedicated to showcasing the achievements and successes of leading women, fostering an environment where female role models are recognised, and their contributions can ignite progress and inspire the next generation of women in IT. Our mission is to shine the spotlight a little brighter on female role models in IT, Tech & Digital, and to empower each other through this inner network community.