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Belgium 9-10-25 Country Members Physical english

Belgium's Got Talent '25 - CIONET Belgium: Community Event

Today’s IT world moves faster than ever. New tools, new ways of working, constant updates! The real challenge? Making sure your people stay in the loop, up to speed, and ready to move. That’s why this year’s edition of Belgium’s Got Digital Talent is all about mastering knowledge flow, how to share the right know-how with the right people, at the right time. No more teams working in silos. No more vital info getting lost.We’re diving into practical ways to keep your teams smart, agile, and aligned. Whether you're leading an IT team, shaping digital strategy, or hiring tech talent, this event will give you the ideas, tools, and energy to turn fast change into a competitive edge.

Belgium 14-10-25 Squad Only Virtual english

Agile Infrastructure ; How to build technical foundations that don’t slow you down

Agile delivery often collides with inflexible infrastructures. One team wants to release weekly. Another is waiting six months for a new test environment. Sounds familiar? If your infra team is tired of being the bottleneck, and your devs are tired of waiting, this session opens a path forward.

Belgium 14-10-25 Invitation Only Physical english

Towards Digital Sovereignty in the Financial Sector

For financial institutions, a strategic approach to cloud adoption is needed, but not simple to achieve. The challenge lies in leveraging the benefits of modern cloud infrastructure while simultaneously preparing to meet strict sovereignty requirements. This necessitates a careful consideration of cloud architecture, including hybrid and multi-cloud models, and a thorough understanding of data residency and governance.

October 14, 2025 Squad Session Squad Only Virtual english

Agile Infrastructure ; How to build technical foundations that don’t slow you down

October 17, 2025 Squad Session Squad Only Physical english

Leading Change When Your Organisation Pushes Back ; How to move forward when transformation feels like a threat

You’ve secured the budget. The tech is solid. Leadership has signed off. But the project’s going nowhere. People smile in meetings and ignore you afterwards. Middle managers hesitate. Teams follow the old way, even when a new one exists. Every step forward feels like a negotiation, because it is. You’re not alone. Many digital leaders find themselves in this position. The business knows it needs to change but isn’t ready to let go. This session is about those moments.

October 21, 2025 Squad Session Squad Only Physical english

AI in Practice ; What it really takes to move from pilot to production

Every organisation has a handful of AI pilots. But very few have scaled them. The models are accurate. The vision is clear. But something’s always in the way; lack of infrastructure, unclear ownership, security concerns, or just plain fatigue. This is a conversation for people in the messy middle of the AI journey, those navigating the leap from promising prototypes to operational value.

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BT Keeps Engineers Safe with a Mobile App Built on OutSystems

BT Group plc is the UK’s largest provider of fixed-line, broadband, and mobile services. In just two months, three developers and a tech lead delivered a mobile app and web app. By their estimates, delivering the app with OutSystems was three times faster than their previous mobile app development approach.

"With OutSystems, we're replacing an enormous number of legacy systems while reducing the cost of development across the board. We're also making business operations more efficient by providing mobile support for a wide range of applications." - Seiichi ShinagawaTechnical Leader IT Department, Mazda Motor Corporation

Challenge

Staring Over a "2025 Digital Cliff"

Mazda Motor Corporation recently celebrated its 100-years anniversary, selling nearly 1.5 million vehicles in the year ended March 2020. Mazda is justly proud of its engineering strength and design-focused products, but back in 2016, its IT department needed to escape from a burning platform.

"We called this as our "2025 Digital Cliff," says Seiichi Shinagawa, Technical Leader IT Department at Mazda Motor Corporation. "For the previous decade, we'd relied heavily on the Java Platform SE version 8, for most in-house application development. Support for that runs out in 2025. We had around 500 legacy systems to migrate to a new technology stack, and that looked impossible."

“We selected OutSystems because of its complete feature set, including visual design and assembly, high productivity for developers, high [integration] compatibility with existing systems, support for mobile apps, and the ability to deliver refined user experiences.” - Seiichi ShinagawaTechnical Leader IT Department, Mazda Motor Corporation

Mazda knew that it would take an army of developers and cost many (millions of dollars) to migrate all the applications in time unless they could dramatically improve their app dev efficiency.

Moreover, their software engineers found it difficult to keep up with the demand for new features with their current development tools. Plus, it was hard to provide users with modern, mobile-friendly experiences that would raise productivity.

Mazda started looking for a new IT framework. After considering various options, including general development frameworks, code generators, and low-code tools, Mazda settled on OutSystems as its modern application platform.

Why Mazda chose OutSystems:

Full-stack visual development with no limits
Speed-up development and improve agility
Deliver web and mobile applications

Solution

Establishing Mazda's Software Development Factory and OutSystems Center of Excellence

Given the mammoth development backlog and Mazda's engineering excellence culture, the IT team decided to plan carefully, rather than rushing headlong into development. They wanted to ensure they had strong foundations to ensure consistent, efficient, and high-quality software engineering in the future.

"We aimed to use OutSystems for core systems across Mazda, so before starting a wide-scale roll-out, we needed to prepare an environment for repeatable success," says Shinagawa. "This included making interfaces with existing systems, a framework for authorization and security, and modular software architecture standards."

Most of 2018 was spent setting up this environment, but the investment has paid back ever since. "Our standards enable a consistent level of productivity and quality across projects," says Shinagawa.

Simultaneously, Mazda set up an in-house OutSystems Center of Excellence (CoE), a central team of OutSystems experts that provides governed standards and best practices to developers.

"The CoE regularly provides one-week lean startup workshops, building UI screens, and processes directly with business representatives. The goal is to clearly understand requirements by prototyping on OutSystems. The users greatly appreciate this approach." - Seiichi ShinagawaTechnical Leader IT Department, Mazda Motor Corporation

Results

Happier Users and up to 75% Saving on Legacy Migration

While Mazda established its development standards and COE, they intentionally kept development projects to a minimum. But during 2019, adoption started to accelerate. Functions were now being implemented on the same level as they had been on the Java framework, and the development team started using OutSystems to replace its legacy Java applications.

Users liked the speed and agility of development and the much-improved user experiences of these new apps. In the second half of 2019, the number of OutSystems projects grew rapidly. The team delivered various applications, including core systems used for car manufacturing and distribution, back-office systems used by employees for internal processes, and systems for managers' daily work logs.

“We've seen a significant increase in development efficiency. We deliver simple applications up to five times faster and more complex apps around two-times faster. The quality of software delivery has improved as well. We've had no bugs attributable to problems with the platform itself.” - Seiichi ShinagawaTechnical Leader IT Department, Mazda Motor Corporation

"We are increasingly using OutSystems to replace legacy systems, including those built with the old .NET Framework and others built using COBOL," says Shinagawa. "The new apps have increased operational efficiency, thanks to the improved user experience and mobile device support, and we're getting high-praise from users on the front line."

OutSystems Development ramped up rapidly in late 2019. By 2020, Mazda had taken the strategic decision to drive broad adoption of OutSystems as the standard modern application platform for future development.

Increasing Mazda's Developer Pool

As part of its strategy to avoid the "2025 digital cliff," Mazda is increasing the proportion of software developed in-house by widening its developer pool. "The goal is to regain skills that we lost due to widespread IT outsourcing, and the OutSystems visual approach to development makes this easier as well," explains Shinagawa.

"OutSystems is now our standard application development approach," says Shinagawa. "And ultimately, we want every member of the IT department to learn at least some development techniques with OutSystems."

The team has been pleasantly surprised at the rapid learning curve for new OutSystems Developers. "We use the free two-week self-study learning paths provided by OutSystems, followed by several days of Mazda specific training to embed our in-house rules and methods. We've found that even IT staff that have never programmed before can easily learn to develop a basic application in a week. So, the cost of training is low," says Shinagawa.

Development with No Limits

Mazda has been impressed by the versatility of the OutSystems platform. "Compared to conventional programming, we've found we can build almost everything we need using OutSystems," says Shinagawa.

Mazda is now rapidly working to end its reliance on legacy systems, retiring those that are no longer needed and extending the lives of others with the help of OutSystems. The company is using OutSystems both to replace legacy systems and create new, innovative applications. The company expects to reduce its legacy migration cost by two-thirds to three-quarters—a multi-million dollar saving.

Looking Ahead

Shinagawa says that the company wants "to continue rolling-out OutSystems, using it to replace the enormous number of legacy systems and reduce development costs across the board. We also want to use it to improve the efficiency of business operations, especially by providing mobile support for a wide range of applications."

He continues, "At Mazda, we see visual development as an important pillar of system development, alongside conventional programming. We look forward to seeing OutSystems continue to evolve as a platform that dramatically improves the productivity and speed of software development."

Technologies

Outsystems

CIONET Business Circles

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?

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.