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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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Mindgate partners for scalability, reliability, and growth

As India's UPI transactions soar, Mindgate Solutions, a Mumbai-based leader in payment technology, needed to modernize its core UPI solution. Shifting from a monolithic system, they've chosen Red Hat OpenShift to build a robust and scalable microservices architecture. This, coupled with a CI/CD pipeline, promises agility and efficiency. Their Red Hat ISV partnership grants access to expert guidance and fuels future growth.

Benefits:

Managed growth thanks to a solid partnership and robust technology
Assured stability, performance, and scalability of the business-critical UPI platform
Established a CI/CD pipeline for rapid change

Leading digital payments in and beyond India

Established in 2008 by 2 entrepreneurs passionate about digital payments, Mindgate Solutions (Mindgate) has been at the forefront of the digital payments revolution in India from its inception. Today, it remains a key player in payments technology and transaction processing in India. “India is a pioneer in real-time payments,” said Guhan Muthusamy, Co-Founder and Head of Products at Mindgate. “The industry is poised to grow 4 to 5 times in the next 24 months as more countries adopt real-time payment ecosystems.” Beyond India, Mindgate also has a presence across the globe, most notably in the Middle East, Asia, and the United States.

Mindgate’s solutions include everything from new-generation corporate transaction banking to mobile-based collections. Its UPI solution integrates with payment platforms, such as the UPI instant real-time payment system developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). On a monthly average, UPI facilitates more than 8 billion inter-bank transactions. Today, Mindgate handles close to 70% of UPI transactions through its partner banks.

From day 1, Mindgate built its UPI solution on open source technology. “Our UPI solution started as a monolithic application with a Spring architecture,” said Muthusamy. “We were able to handle around 16 million transactions per day but expect UPI transactions to grow 5-fold in the next couple of years driven by in-app payments in social media apps; we needed a larger-scale solution.”

Partnering with a pioneer in the open source world

“Open source provides tremendous convenience and flexibility,” said Muthusamy. According to Muthusamy, today’s banks believe in open source and want a stable partner to support it.

“Red Hat is a pioneer in the open source world, particularly the enterprise space,” said Muthusamy. “Its enterprise experience with the large banks goes back a long way. Red Hat can help us and our customer bank implement open source in large enterprise settings.”

Red Hat was Mindgate’s first OEM partner. The partnership began a couple of years ago when Mindgate began looking for a highly scalable platform to support its UPI solution. For Mindgate, partnering with Red Hat offers a wide variety of benefits: platform scalability, a modern CI/CD pipeline, and innovation from OpenShift communities. “Mindgate’s partnership with Red Hat is a partnership for scalability, reliability, and growth,” said Muthusamy.

Online and classroom-led training from Red Hat has been a tremendous help for Mindgate, helping it address the immense challenge of meeting customer expectations and market requirements with the UPI solution. “Our team is now well-trained in best practices for high-scale solutions,” said Muthusamy. Team members completed the Red Hat OpenShift certification program early in the project, ensuring they had the right skills to build the proof-of-concept and carry out the load testing.

In addition to the training courses, access to Red Hat experts helped Mindgate’s team become more proficient while scaling the UPI solution. “Joining the Red Hat ISV Program gives us direct access to Red Hat engineers to learn about the platform and deployment and maintenance of applications running on Red Hat OpenShift,” said Nikhil Mahawar, VP of Product and Innovation at Mindgate.

Together, Red Hat and Mindgate can help the banking industry build a large-scale ecosystem for digital payments. Guhan Muthusamy - Co-Founder and Head of Products, Mindgate Solutions

We see a future with many more solutions and customers on Red Hat OpenShift. George Sam - Co-Founder and Head of Business, Mindgate Solutions

Building a robust and highly scalable foundation

Looking for a highly scalable platform for its UPI solution, Mindgate ran a proof-of-concept and load test across multiple market-leading platforms before choosing Red Hat OpenShift. “Red Hat OpenShift is a microservices-based container platform that allows us to scale with the real-time payments ecosystem,” said Muthusamy.

Red Hat technology also meets Mindgate’s expectations with its surrounding ecosystems and the tools it provides. “We saw that Red Hat OpenShift would be a very strategic product for us to align with,” said George Sam, Co-Founder and Head of Business at Mindgate. “We felt that Red Hat OpenShift was by far 1 of the best products available in the market, particularly with the support available.”

Mindgate moved its UPI platform from a traditional monolithic architecture to a more modern microservices-based architecture with the help of the Red Hat ISV Program. After all, creating the new digital payments world is critical to the future of Mindgate and the banks it supports. “Together, Red Hat and Mindgate can help the banking industry build a large-scale ecosystem for digital payments,” said Muthusamy. “Red Hat brings scalability, reliability, and sustainability.

The company has, to date, implemented Red Hat OpenShift on-premise on its clusters in India as well as in the UAE, Singapore, and the United States. Mindgate currently has 2 customers onboarded for its UPI solution, with many others in the pipeline. It also has new UPI use cases in the pipeline, including UPI on credit cards and offline UPI payments.

Partnering for growth, innovation, and a robust foundation

Managed growth thanks to solid partnership and foundation

Mindgate’s story evolved from retail payments to retail payments supported by social media applications with its UPI solution, offered first in India and now in multiple geographies and countries. “Mindgate’s partnership with Red Hat and adoption of Red Hat OpenShift were our 2 most important milestones, helping us bring our new UPI initiative to market and expand our global reach,” said Rohit Sarwate, Alliance Lead at Mindgate. Maintaining its leadership position Mindgate is growing faster than the wider real-time payments ecosystem.

To further growth, Mindgate is now building some other interesting new offerings with Red Hat, 1 being central bank digital currency (CBDC) and another corporate transaction banking. “Our partnership with Red Hat will help us grow,” said Muthusamy. “Red Hat OpenShift will provide a robust and scalable foundation as we expand our offerings.”

Assured stability, performance, and scalability of the business-critical UPI platform with tens of thousands of transactions per second

Three of the biggest strengths of Mindgate’s UPI solution are the stability, high scalability, and performance brought by Red Hat OpenShift. “Red Hat helped us provide a robust, highly performant and highly scalable UPI solution that meets our customers’ needs and demands,” said Sarwate.

One customer’s scalability test demonstrated that Mindgate’s UPI platform could support 10,000 transactions per second. “Feedback from customers has been very positive,” said Muthusamy. “The scalability is there, performance is there, user confidence is there, it supports a lot of open source ecosystems, and is made for the enterprise.”

Established CI/CD pipeline for meeting new market needs at pace

With Mindgate anticipating more and more mandates around scalability and availability from India’s central regulatory authority, the Red Hat technology provides a robust infrastructure while establishing a CI/CD pipeline to accelerate time to market for changes.

“As a company, Mindgate is dynamic and very responsive to the market’s needs. Our customers like it because they know we implement changes rapidly and apply accurate solutions that meet their needs,” said Muthusamy. “One of the biggest differences between leaders versus others in the UPI market today is platform scalability and the ability to respond very fast to new mandates.”

With Mindgate’s reach expanding across the globe, Red Hat OpenShift is helping to ensure it always meets compliance requirements. “Every bank has a security checklist and guidelines that we need to meet, and Red Hat OpenShift is helping us to meet those checklists and best practices,” said Mahawar.

Banking on a robust 2-way partnership

Mindgate’s focus for the future is on expanding its payments from retail and social media to corporate and government and strengthening its central infrastructure for real-time payment ecosystems across geographies. And with many large banks considering moving to the public cloud, the opportunity of hybrid cloud provided by Red Hat OpenShift is phenomenal. “Our relationship with Red Hat is based on technology innovation in addition to the scalability of Red Hat OpenShift,” said Muthusamy. “This partnership means a lot to both of us.”

The company sees Red Hat as a very strategic partner “Red Hat is collaborating with us, working with customers, and creating opportunities with Red Hat OpenShift,” said Sam. “We see a future with many more solutions and customers on Red Hat OpenShift.

Technologies

Red Hat OpenShift

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