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Belgium 23-6-26 All Members Physical english

The Sovereignty Play : Sourcing for Autonomy, Resilience and Competitive Advantage

Sourcing for Autonomy, Resilience and Competitive Advantage. Global platforms offer incredible speed and innovation, but they also create deep dependencies that can expose your business to vendor lock-in, supply chain disruptions, and regulatory shifts. For today's CIO, the central challenge is no longer just about technology adoption; it's about building a digital foundation that is both agile and resilient. Strategic sourcing is the key. It has evolved from a procurement function into the primary tool for CIOs to navigate uncertainty, mitigate risk, and achieve digital autonomy. This session provides a practical playbook for using strategic sourcing to build a future-proof enterprise.

Belgium 30-6-26 Public Physical french

L'IT Public au point de rupture

L'IT Public au point de rupture : Vers un modèle à l'usage ? Transformer l'inertie en agilité : le défi du service public. Le constat : L’ère de la possession touche à sa fin Le citoyen n'attend pas que vous gériez des serveurs ; il attend des services. Pourtant, le modèle IT public reste prisonnier du « faire » plutôt que du « résultat ». Entre des budgets CAPEX verrouillés sur 5 ans et des cycles de procurement qui naissent périmés, l'écart se creuse. Le dilemme est stratégique : Comment passer d'une infrastructure que l'on subit à une informatique pilotée par le résultat (Outcome-based IT) ? Est-il possible d'adopter la souplesse du Cloud sans abandonner les clés de notre souveraineté ? L'objet du débat : Le "As-a-Service" au-delà du concept Nous vous invitons à remettre en question les promesses des modèles orientés vers la consommation. L'objectif est de débattre, sans tabou, du potentiel réel de ces approches pour le secteur public : Inverser la responsabilité : Passer de l'achat de matériel à l'achat de niveaux de service (SLA). Est-ce le secret pour libérer vos équipes de la maintenance ? Aligner le coût sur l'usage : En finir avec le surprovisionnement pour ne payer que ce qui est réellement consommé. Agilité "Procurement-proof" : Comment le modèle à l'usage permet-il de scaler en quelques jours ce qui prenait des mois d'appels d'offres ? La souveraineté par le contrat : Le "As-a-Service" sur site est-il le compromis idéal entre contrôle privé et flexibilité publique ? Le Format : "Zero Slides, Full Insight" Pas de présentation ni de marketing, uniquement une confrontation de visions entre pairs : Cercle restreint : Décideurs du secteur public francophone. Règle de Chatham House : Ce qui se dit à table reste à table. Débat pur : Une discussion structurée autour de vos doutes et de vos ambitions numériques.

Belgium 30-6-26 All Members Physical english

AI at Home

As AI becomes critical to business success, organisations in highly regulated sectors such as Financial Services, Critical Infrastructures and Defence, face strict data privacy, security, and compliance mandates that make public cloud AI a non-starter. This interactive session will explore the practical realities, both the benefits and limitations, of bringing enterprise-grade AI capabilities directly onto your own premises. Join CIONET, Kyndryl, and Dell Technologies for an exclusive, hands-on roundtable and live workshop on navigating the crucial intersection of artificial intelligence, data sovereignty, and autonomous operations. We will move beyond the theory by bringing the physical machine into the room for a live, air-gapped demonstration of cutting-edge workloads running entirely on-site. This interactive workshop will bring together Digital Leaders to: Demystify Sovereign AI at the C-Level: Review the strategic trade-offs, architecture, and compliance advantages of running localised AI models. See Zero-Leak Secure Code Review in Action: Watch a live demo of an on-premise LLM scanning software for vulnerabilities, ensuring your codebase never leaves your secure infrastructure. Experience On-Premise Agentic AI: Witness a local, autonomous monitoring agent, utilising advanced, Claude-level reasoning capabilities, managing critical IT Operations tasks completely offline. Collaborate on Best Practices: Engage with peers to discuss deployment timelines, security frameworks, and infrastructure requirements for true data control. Don't miss this opportunity to interact with live hardware, engage with industry peers, and gain actionable insights into unleashing the power of sovereign and agentic AI.

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Total Produce Delivers Daily Fruit to UK Schools With OutSystems

Having won the UK government Fruit4Schools contract, Total Produce encountered a problem. In order to ensure payment for deliveries under the contract. Working with OutSystems gave Total Produce the speed and agility to provide not only this solution, but many more since.

"It’s not just faster development. The DevOps capabilities of OutSystems, like one-click deployment and performance monitoring, mean the apps we deliver this way are less costly to update and maintain. That means we can invest more in innovation that will keep the company competitive into the future."Tony O’Halloran, Director of IT, Total Produce

An Upset to the Apple Cart

Challenge – Total Produce is one of the world’s largest providers of fresh produce, with operations in 26 countries and 140 facilities across Europe, India, and North America. The company is involved in growing, sourcing, importing, packaging, and distributing over 300 lines of fresh produce, from apples to zucchini and everything in between. However, as this story shows, sometimes it’s the last-mile delivery that can be most difficult.

When the UK government awarded the Fruit4Schools contract to Total Produce, it came with a stipulation:

Provide every primary school child a piece of fruit every day, but if you can’t prove delivery with a signature, we won’t pay you.

From bitter experience, Total Produce knew that paper-based signatures were a recipe for disaster. Missing delivery slips, manual processing, and the impossibility of real-time reporting could quickly turn this prestigious contract into a loss-making venture.

Total Produce needed a mobile app that could route drivers to each school and collect signatures for each delivery. That was the challenge thrown at the Total Produce busy IT department, together with what seemed like an impossible deadline.

Tony O’Halloran, Director of IT at Total Produce, takes up the story. “I’d been looking for an opportunity to try OutSystems for some time. This project seemed to tick all the boxes for a first project; it wasn’t overly complex, and the need for mobile offline functionality was both a capability of OutSystems and a missing piece in our armory. The fly in the ointment was the pressing deadline; I didn’t think we’d have time to learn OutSystems and deliver this project in the three months available.”

Teamwork Prevents Sour Grapes

Solution - When Tony called OutSystems, he quickly learned that a problem shared could be a problem halved. One of the best ways to get started with OutSystems is through a pilot project, staffed by the customer and the OutSystems professional services team.

A combination of structured training, moment-of-need coaching, and day-to-day collaboration on the project is the surest way to learn OutSystems and immediately put it into practice.

“What we liked about this teamed-up approach was that it disrupted our normal ways of working. OutSystems brought significant agile expertise to the table, not just technical skills. There was a much greater focus on user experience throughout the project, all the way from requirements capture to the weekly demonstrations at the end of each sprint. As we completed development, there were absolutely no surprises, and the training effort seemed minimal because the app worked the way all users needed,” explained O’Halloran.

The shared development approach compressed development to just nine weeks, with another three weeks for final user acceptance testing and training. By the end, Total Produce had its own OutSystems expertise it could apply to future projects.

“It was a win-win from our point of view. OutSystems was the right tool for the job, but without the team approach, we would not have met our deadline, because we were too busy to assign more in-house developers to this project,” explained O’Halloran.

A Low-Code Labor Bears Fruit

Results – The resulting app has been a real hit with drivers, schedulers, and delivery managers because it’s easy to use and more efficient. Here are a few of its capabilities:

Back-office Administration

Integration with ERP system to load daily orders
Route scheduling
Driver route assignment
Internal reporting
Proof of delivery reports for schools/education authorities

Mobile Access for Drivers

Route guidance
Delivery confirmation
On-screen signature capture with photo fallback
Delivery adjustments
Offline availability
Data and signature synchronization when online

Thanks to the success of this first project, Total Produce has expanded their use of low-code with four more projects, covering diverse requirements such as help desk ticketing, time tracking, credit control, and a customer complaint case management system.

“Now that we’ve proven this low-code approach, we’re bringing more developers into the OutSystems team and starting to tackle more strategic projects,” explained O’Halloran.

However, the benefit is not just much faster development, but also significant savings on IT operations time and resources.

The benefits of OutSystems from IT’s perspective:

Faster, visual development
Better support for an agile, user-centric development approach
DevOps “in a box” including code integrity checking, one-click deployment, and performance monitoring
Ease of integration with a wide variety of business systems including bespoke ERP
Ability to design brilliant user experiences with no dependency on designers/CSS experts
Build mobile apps, both hybrid and native, with full offline capabilities, and use of device features like GPS, touchscreen signature, and camera
Future proof enterprise-grade security and performance

Technologies

Outsystems

Partners

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.