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Welcome to CIONET Belgium

Realise your ambition! Connect with your local community of digital leaders.

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Upcoming Events

 
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Belgium 3-7-25 Invitation Only Physical english

CIONET Round Table - Digital Sovereignty

Digital Sovereignty - Securing Corporate Autonomy in a Fragmented World In an era marked by geopolitical instability and escalating digital dependencies, corporate leaders face a critical imperative: reclaiming control over their digital ecosystems. This exclusive CIONET executive dinner offers a platform for CIOs, CTOs, and digital leaders to delve into strategies for achieving digital sovereignty. Key discussion points include: Redefining Digital Sovereignty for Enterprises: Exploring how digital sovereignty extends beyond national borders to encompass corporate control over digital assets, infrastructure, and data. Infrastructure Independence: On-Premises vs. Cloud: Evaluating the trade-offs between on-premises infrastructure and cloud services in the context of control, scalability, and sovereignty. Sovereign AI: Building Autonomous Intelligence: Discussing strategies for developing AI capabilities that align with corporate values and operate independently of external platforms. Vendor Lock-In and Technological Autonomy: Identifying risks of dependency on specific vendors and exploring approaches to achieve technological independence. Investing in Sovereign Digital Capabilities: Strategising investments in infrastructure, talent, and processes to build and sustain digital sovereignty. Join us for an evening of insightful discussions, shared experiences, and actionable strategies to navigate the complexities of digital sovereignty. Secure your organisation's future by understanding and implementing the pillars of digital autonomy.

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Belgium 28-8-25 Country Members Physical english

20 Years CIONET - CIONET Belgium: Summer Festival

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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Belgium 2-9-25 All TRIBERS Virtual english

What Does It Cost to Host an App? ; A practical guide to calculating hosting costs across infra, licenses, and operations

You’ve been asked a simple question: “What does it cost to host this application?” But the answer is anything but simple. The platform sits across multiple data centres. The app spans a few VMs, shares a backup system, uses licensed monitoring, and touches five different teams. Your CMDB should help, but it’s rigid, outdated, or incomplete. And yet, you still need to provide a number, clear, explainable, and grounded in reality.

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Upcoming TRIBE Events

 
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July 3, 2025 Squad Session Invitation Only Virtual polish

Własny SOC czy outsourcing? Analiza modeli operacyjnych w bezpieczeństwie IT

Zapraszamy na praktyczną dyskusję o wadach i zaletach różnych modeli utrzymania Security Operations Center. Dawid Wachowiak (TDJ) podzieli się doświadczeniami z wdrożenia i funkcjonowania modelu outsourcingowego. Porozmawiamy o tym, co wpływa na skuteczność SOC-a – od decyzji strategicznej po reakcję na incydent – i jak dopasować model operacyjny do potrzeb organizacji.

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July 14, 2025 Squad Session Invitation Only Virtual polish

Platforma KSEF – Krajowy System eFaktur

Ministerstwo Finansów zapowiedziało wdrożenie platformy KSeF na 2026 rok. Przygotowanie firm i ich systemów wymaga wiedzy o zakresie KSeF i elementach integracji na poziomie IT. Zapraszamy na kontynuację spotkania z udziałem przedstawicieli Centrum Informatyki Resortu Finansów (CIRF) i Ministerstwa Finansów.

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July 16, 2025 Squad Session Physical polish

TRIBES LEADERSHIP CIRCLE

Tribes Leadership Circle to cykliczne, wysokopoziomowe spotkania wyłącznie dla dyrektorów obszarowych, posiadających dostęp w ramach wykupionego członkostwa.

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CIONET Partner Updates

CIONET Partner Updates

Recent Cases

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Modernizing interactive experiences across LEGO House with Azure Kubernetes Service

Opened in 2017, the LEGO House in Denmark is the ultimate LEGO experience center for children and adults. In 2023, facing challenges with an array of custom-built digital experiences served from an aging on-prem data center, it began upgrading with Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).

 

 

Upgrading “the ultimate LEGO experience”

LEGO House is an architectural marvel designed to resemble a stack of LEGO bricks. Located in the company’s hometown of Billund, Denmark, this "Home of the Brick" serves as the ultimate LEGO experience for children and adults who want to explore endless possibilities in creativity and learning. 

Opened to the public in 2017, it features interactive zones for creative play, exhibits showcasing the LEGO Group’s history, educational workshops, and artistic LEGO sculptures. Designed to inspire creativity and learning, the LEGO House not only celebrates the legacy of the iconic toy brand but also serves as a community hub for LEGO enthusiasts from around the world.

“The house is built on ‘Learning through Play’—the core of LEGO play,” explains Søren Bering Andersen, Head of Digital & Technology at LEGO House. Beyond the physical play with over 25 million LEGO bricks, the house offers users a wide range of 2D and 3D digital interactive engagements. “We believe you can learn a lot through play, which is why we have interactive experiences all around LEGO House,” adds Andersen. 

Guests can build a LEGO character, then bring it to life on a digital dance stage or create a stop motion video with their character creations as the hero, among other experiences. 

Andersen notes LEGO House “only use tech where it makes sense, where it adds something. The LEGO brick is always the starting point, but we use digital on top.” He explains his team’s challenge is to connect the physical brick and the digital experiences around them. For example, guests can build a fish using LEGO bricks, then convert it digitally to join a virtual tank with other guests’ fish. 

Six years after launch, LEGO House had greater insight into its guests, the spaces, and how experiences meshed with them. In 2023, it launched an effort to refresh many of the experiences’ front- and back-ends around these insights. 

Originally custom designed and developed with an array of different partners and served from an on-prem data center, the infrastructure supporting these interactive experiences was difficult to maintain for a modestly sized organization and staff. With all the customized builds and platforms, “it was super hard to error correct and update,” Andersen says. 

LEGO House began looking for a new platform for the next generations of LEGO House experiences, one with modern technologies that could be responsive to the needs of guests and the house tech team. 

"We want to create those canvases around the house where people get inspired, because there are endless possibilities in the LEGO brick,” says Andersen. 

Taking the “next step,” rebooting LEGO House with Kubernetes 

LEGO House turned to Microsoft to develop an entirely new approach to the experiences, one based on a “containerized, component-based setup” that offered “scalability and flexibility in our digital tech stack,” says Andersen. 

Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) was perfect in practice and a complementary metaphor to the LEGO brand’s brick-based utility. “We build from different components to build new experiences, change flows, try new things, just like using LEGO bricks,” Andersen says. 

Reducing or eliminating on-premises hardware dependencies in favor of a standardized, modern, cloud-based Kubernetes (K8s) approach has been a revolution in development efficiency and maintenance.

In addition to the migration, the LEGO House team worked collaboratively with Microsoft to launch City Architect, an interactive building experience powered by Azure IoT Edge Device, where color and placement of a LEGO brick changes a digitally projected landscape. 

In September, the house launched Robo Lab, where guests can program a beekeeper robot to plant as many flowers as possible, creating a sustainable garden for bees. As they play, students learn principles of programming, along with choices and consequences around biodiversity.

“We wanted a tech stack enabling us to learn, and scale, and use it to inspire the rest of the LEGO ecosystem, perhaps passing along some of the great things we build to LEGOLAND, in brand retail stores, or wherever,” says Andersen. 

On AKS, experiences will share a common foundation, allowing the reuse of elements between experiences. 

For example, the brick scanning technology used in the virtual fish tank experience can also power the MINI CHEF eatery where guests can build their meal with LEGO bricks. Efficiencies thrive, as services don’t need to be rebuilt from scratch; they’re available for integration through AKS. Creativity is a welcome by product, enabling developers to think beyond the formerly siloed experiences. 

Maintenance is also much easier with AKS, with fewer services and the ability to connect services across the application pipelines. Andersen notes that house experiences are “more stable, with higher uptime,” to satisfy happy guests. 

The LEGO House team also utilized Microsoft technologies like Key Vault for secure data management, Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory) for identity services, Azure Files for cloud data storage, and Azure IoT Edge for real-time data processing.

Celebrating today’s modernization, ready for tomorrow’s opportunity 

With the two successful migrations and experiences complete, LEGO House has seen the benefits of Azure and AKS firsthand. Andersen says visitors have raved about the experiences. Internally, teams report greater freedom working in the tech stack. 

Azure empowers the LEGO Group’s developers, opening collaboration across the LEGO ecosystem. “The LEGO Group has 2000 engineers across the street, and partners with LEGOLAND that we can suddenly talk together and exploit different opportunities we couldn’t before,” Andersen says. The more standardized approach to technology allows them to capitalize on collective vision and applied creativity. 

This is where Andersen sees real value, enabling teams to iterate, learn, create new experiences and services for their guests in an ongoing cycle of innovation. 

The organization intends to complete migration of the remainder of LEGO House experiences by the end of 2023 and introduce nine new engagements over the next year. “We will actually rebuild the full house to run on Azure and AKS to create flexibility and scalability in our digital tech stack,” says Andersen.

While enjoying the immediate, near-term efficiency and performance metrics of its new K8s-based approach, Andersen is intrigued by Azure AI and its built-in capabilities for future ideation. 

“Maybe we’ll use its AI for bits and pieces, or maybe run things in a different way. Who knows?” he muses. “That’s the beauty of the Azure platform: whatever our guests need, we can take the services and apply them.” 

“In the long term [with Azure and AKS], we can iterate and learn, providing new services and experiences for our guests, making the house better and better,” says Andersen.

CIONET Circles

CIONET Business Circles

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Healthcare Circle

Digital Transformation is redefining the future of health care and health delivery. All stakeholders are convinced that these innovations will create value for patients, healthcare practitioners, hospitals, and governments along the patient pathway. The benefits are starting from prevention and awareness to diagnosis, treatment, short- and long-term follow-up, and ultimately survival. But how do you make sure that your working towards an architecturally sound, secure and interoperable health IT ecosystem for your hospital and avoid implementing a hodgepodge of spot solutions? How does your IT department work together with the other stakeholders, such as the doctors and other healthcare practitioners, Life Sciences companies, Tech companies, regulators and your internal governance and administrative bodies?

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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.

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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 !

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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.

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Check out our latest news

Testimonials

Geert Goethals
Geert Goethals
CIO
Sibelga
Bahadir Samli
Bahadir Samli
CIO
ING Belgique
2-Feb-29-2024-11-35-00-9309-AM
Bart Kerkhofs
Vice President & Head of IT
Bridgestone EMIA
Untitled design (1)-Apr-01-2022-10-58-34-57-AM
Michał Paprocki
Group CIO
Euroclear
1-Feb-29-2024-11-34-59-8990-AM
Manfred Boudreaux-Dehmer
Chief Information Officer
NATO
Untitled design-Nov-22-2023-08-42-05-3178-AM
Annick Faes
Vice President IT and CIO Medical Devices EMEA
Johnson & Johnson
Piet_De_Ceuleners
Piet De Ceuleners
Global IT Director
Melexis
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Dirk De Bevere
Large Enterprise Sales Leader
Telenet Business
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Stef Schampaert
Country Managing Director BeLux
Red Hat
CIONET Belgium - Advisory Board Member - Geert Lejon
Geert Lejon
Vice President Head of Belux / Head of Comms Benelux
Cognizant
Kevin_Ledegen
Kevin Ledegen
Group IT director
SDWorx
Gunter-Van-Craen_Small
Gunter Van Craen
Chief Digital & Information Officer
Bekaert
Thomas Kessler
Thomas Kessler
Partner | CIO Programme Leader
Deloitte
Emmanuel Gob
Emmanuel Gob
CIO
DPD
pascal pauwels
Pascal Pauwels
CIO
Colruyt
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Koen Segers
Managing Director Belgium and Luxembourg
Dell Technologies
benoit dewaele
Benoît Dewaele
Group IT Directo
Vandemoortele
Dirk Deridder-1
Dirk Deridder
Director IT Infrastructure, Systems, Services & Support (CIO / CTO role)
SMALS
Thierry Driesens
Thierry Driesens
CIO
TVH
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Koen Vandaele
CIO
Delen Private Bank
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Liesbet D'hoker
Managing Director
Kyndryl BeLux
steven-vermeulen
Steven Vermeulen
CIO
Digitaal Vlaanderen
Jack Hamande
Jack Hamande
Director General Digital Transformation
Federale Overheidsdienst Beleid en Ondersteuning
Tom Tomczak
Tom Tomczak
Chief Commercial Officer (CCO)
NRB
1726588748718
Cassandre Laurent
Directeur général
Agence du Numérique
an swalens
An Swalens
Head Of IT (CIO)
National Bank of Belgium
Untitled design (2)-Apr-01-2022-10-58-34-68-AM
Elke Laeremans
Chief Digital & Supply Chain Officer at Casa International
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Koen Van Loo
CIO
Group S.
Peter Sany
Peter Sany
Executive Advisor
Zoom
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Steven De Haes
Dean
Antwerp Management School
Marleen Thorré
Marleen Thorré
Head of Digital EMEA
Mitsubishi Chemical Group

Team

Luc Hendrikx
Luc Hendrikx
CEO
Inès De Bien
Inès De Bien
Partner - CCO
1-Feb-08-2022-10-22-08-68-AM
Daniel Eycken
Partner - COO
Hendrik Deckers
Hendrik Deckers
Founder - MD
Untitled design (1)-2
Jelte Scheys
Tribes Sales Director Belgium
foto Herman
Herman Roelandts
Tribe Master
Joseph Antoun
Joseph Antoun
Senior Program Director
1-Dec-16-2021-02-15-57-02-PM
Eman De Sutter
Program Manager
4-Feb-08-2022-10-22-09-03-AM
Shelly Deracourt
Program Manager
Untitled design (5)-Sep-01-2022-02-47-55-60-PM
Charlotte Coen
Partner Success Manager
Untitled design (1)-Nov-22-2023-08-56-42-6802-AM
Ivana Bradvica
Junior Event Manager
ML B-W-1
Martine Lefevre
Financial Controller
Vlera Berishaa (1)
Vlera Berisha
Junior Community Manager
Phaedra Vanhaeren
Phaedra Vanhaeren
Programme & Event Manager

Contact us

Would you like to know more about CIONET Belgium, membership or partnership opportunities? Do you have feedback or any other question? Send us a message!