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Belgium 10-09-2026 Squad Only Physical english

Building the Infrastructure AI Needs: From computer and data access to scalability, cost control, and operational readiness.

AI is moving from pilots into operational use, and the infrastructure question is becoming more concrete. The challenge is deciding what needs to be built, expanded, controlled, or delayed as usage grows. Three pressure points usually appear first. - Compute capacity requires careful planning: teams need enough GPU, cloud, or specialised processing power, while keeping utilisation and cost under control. - Data movement becomes more demanding: AI needs access to data across systems, with latency, security, integration, and quality managed from the start. - Operational control becomes essential: monitoring, access rights, resilience, cost visibility, and ownership need to scale with usage. The working question is simple: how do we support AI at scale while keeping infrastructure efficient, governed, and financially sustainable? If you are working through these choices, let’s compare approaches with others facing similar constraints.

Belgium 15-09-2026 Squad Only Virtual english

Turning AI Pilots into Daily Workflows: How to move from experimentation to adoption by redesigning work, ownership, controls, and habits.

AI pilots are easier to launch than to embed into daily operations. The challenge is changing how work happens once AI becomes part of decisions, tasks, handovers, and controls. Three pressure points tend to decide whether adoption holds. - Workflow fit matters: AI has to enter the flow of work as part of the process. - Ownership needs to be clear: someone must own the process, the controls, the exceptions, and the outcome. - User trust has to be built: people need to know when to rely on AI, when to challenge it, and when to escalate. The working question is simple: how do we move AI from promising pilots into daily work while keeping clarity, accountability, and risk control? If this is part of your current reality, let’s compare choices, constraints, and lessons learned.

Belgium 17-09-2026 Country Members Physical french

Les Rencontres: CTO: Le Saint Graal?

Pendant longtemps, le TCO donnait une impression de contrôle. On investissait, on amortissait, on optimisait. Les coûts étaient visibles, relativement prévisibles, et structurés autour d’une logique claire entre CAPEX et OPEX. Ce modèle ne suffit plus à expliquer où va réellement l’argent. Aujourd’hui, une part croissante des dépenses IT ne repose plus sur ce que l’on possède, mais sur ce que l’on consomme: des tokens générés par l’IA des agents qui exécutent des actions en continu des outils SaaS qui se multiplient dans les équipes du cloud qui s’adapte en permanence à l’usage Le coût ne disparaît pas, mais il devient plus diffus, plus dynamique, et souvent plus difficile à attribuer, à expliquer, et à maîtriser. C’est là que des approches comme le Technology Business Management, ou TBM, redeviennent particulièrement utiles: non pas comme un exercice de reporting supplémentaire, mais comme un moyen de relier concrètement les dépenses aux services, aux usages, et aux décisions. Et c’est là aussi que la question du “Saint Graal” revient, mais sous une autre forme. Vous vous demandez peut-être: Comment garder de la maîtrise quand la dépense dépend du comportement, des usages, et parfois même de systèmes autonomes ? Comment piloter l’équilibre CAPEX/OPEX quand le cloud, le SaaS et l’IA déplacent progressivement les coûts vers des modèles variables ? Quels coûts restent encore trop souvent hors radar: ressources métier, formation, support, intégration, sécurité, gouvernance ? Et surtout, qu’est-ce qu’un “bon TCO” veut encore dire quand il faut le mettre en regard d’objectifs parfois plus stratégiques, plus longs à mesurer, ou plus difficiles à quantifier: qualité de service, résilience, agilité, expérience utilisateur, capacité d’innovation ? Ce sont précisément ces questions qui seront au cœur de notre rencontre: une discussion ouverte entre pairs, ancrée dans la réalité du terrain, pas pour débattre de modèles idéaux, mais pour comprendre comment chacun tente, concrètement, de mesurer, d’attribuer et de reprendre le contrôle, sans réduire la valeur d’un choix technologique à son seul coût.

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Duvel Moortgat Delivers 7 Portals and 2 Mobile Apps 4x Faster

Belgian brewer Duvel Moortgat brews and distributes numerous beer brands globally from its 11 breweries. The company needs slick digital systems to support its distribution channels. Since 2018, the brewer has used OutSystems to lessen the load on its small IT department.

“OutSystems eliminates lots of development toil so developers can focus on delivering business value instead of repetitive coding. We now deliver enhancements in one to two weeks instead of one to two months. So, our business can respond much more dynamically to market requirements.” - Wesly Van CleempoelIT Manager, Duvel Moortgat

Challenge

How to Reduce the Maintenance Overhead for Web and Mobile Applications?

Family-controlled Belgian brewer Duvel Moortgat has produced its flagship beer, Duvel, since 1871 and now brews and distributes eleven beer brands globally. Although renowned for its traditional craftsmanship, sales and distribution increasingly depend on modern digital experiences.

The company’s back-office systems include Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and Salesforce CRM. In 2017, the company developed a sales order portal to support distributors and customers. That experience led the company to look for a modern application development approach, as Wesly Van Cleempoel, IT Manager at Duvel Moortgat, explains.

“In the past, we used traditional development and front-end frameworks like Angular. Development was slow, too costly, and we had a huge maintenance overhead to keep these web apps updated and secure. We looked at low-code to lessen this burden.” -Wesly Van CleempoelIT Manager, Duvel Moortgat

At the same time, the company started its first mobile application development projects. “We encountered the same problem,” said Wesly. “It was a constantly moving target, with new devices, new operating system versions. We spent far too much of our development budget on maintenance and testing rather than enhancements.”

With more apps and portals in the backlog, Duvel Moortgat had to find a more efficient approach to custom application development. Wesly’s team investigated three low-code platforms. They quickly eliminated one as too lightweight. The brewer selected OutSystems as its favored low-code platform following a detailed evaluation.

“We felt OutSystems gave us the most flexibility and open standards,” says Wesly. “The alternative that we considered would have locked us into proprietary technology. Ultimately, we chose OutSystems not just based on our technical evaluation but the quality of its local delivery partner, Providit.”

Why Duvel Moortgat chose OutSystems:

Speed-up development and improve agility
Deliver customer-facing apps
No lock-in, open standards-based platform

Solution

Seven Portals and Two Mobile Apps Delivered

Working side-by-side with a single developer from Providit, Duvel Moortgat’s small development team quickly mastered rapid visual development with OutSystems.

“Our developers like OutSystems as it takes away a lot of the repetitive toil,” says Wesly. “Instead of needing to code yet another log-in screen or permissions framework, they can quickly drag and drop reusable components and modules. And the built-in DevOps capabilities mean you can publish in an instant to demonstrate and test much more easily.”

Although its first portal wasn’t much faster for Duvel Moortgat to develop, Wesly says, “We learned a huge amount in the process, so every subsequent development was faster. But the important thing is the time saved beyond go-live. Enhancements are much faster to deliver, testing is less onerous, and security patching is automatic with updates via the OutSystems Cloud.”

A central aspect of the portal is a customized content management system. This makes it quick and easy for Duvel Moortgat to add new product and branding collateral to the portal. Crucially, the content management features also localize what is shown to customers in different markets, such as different product and packaging labels and contact details.

Since 2019, the brewer has delivered five sales portals, a safety portal, and a complaints portal. The safety portal and one of its sales order portals have accompanying mobile apps. As its OutSystems application portfolio has grown, the cost-effectiveness and speed of delivery have continually risen.

“OutSystems has made app development much more sustainable. Without OutSystems, our small development team would have no time to deliver new features. We’d just be chasing our tail with maintenance chores and need a bigger team just to do that." Wesly Van CleempoelIT Manager, Duvel Moortgat

An example of the team’s improved responsiveness was the delivery of predictive order suggestions into its distributor’s portal. “We delivered this new capability in just a few days,” says Wesly. “This involved integrating CRM and ERP data to build a unique solution. The distributor’s portal now offers predictive order suggestions for thousands of bars across Belgium, improving customer experience and driving more sales for Duvel Moortgat.”

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