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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 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 28-8-25 Country Members Physical english

Summer Festival - Advisory Board

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.

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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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August 5, 2025 Squad Session Invitation Only Virtual polish

AI Act – praktyka stosowania na rynku polskim

AI Act – dyrektywa unijna regulująca wiele zasad wykorzystania AI w modelach biznesowych- już obowiązuje na polskim rynki. Ciekawe są prawdziwe i realne przypadki jej stosowania. Spójrzmy na temat od strony regulacyjnej, czyli prawnej. Ale zobaczmy praktykę aktywnej w temacie kancelarii prawnej. Zaprosiliśmy mecenaskę Aleksandrę Maciejewicz z kancelarii Lawmore, która od dłuższego czasu jest niezwykle aktywna i praktykuje w tym temacie. Poznamy podstawę prawną, praktyczne case’y i opis sytuacji oczami prawdziwego praktyka.

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August 6, 2025 Squad Session Invitation Only Virtual polish

DORA: wszystko, co chcielibyście wiedzieć, a baliście się zapytać

Michał Kulesza, adwokat, partner w departamencie technologicznym kancelarii Rymarz Zdort Maruta i szef zespołu regulacji ICT, przeprowadzi nas przez kluczowe wątki rozporządzenia i zmierzy się z pytaniami zgłoszonymi przez uczestników. Omówimy zarówno krytyczne aspekty na początku wdrożeń, jak i dostrajanie zmian na poziomie organizacyjnym i strategicznym. Masz konkretny temat, który warto poruszyć? Zgłoś go w trakcie rejestracji. Zamiast czytać między wierszami DORA – porozmawiajmy o tym wprost.

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August 7, 2025 Squad Session Invitation Only Virtual polish

Automated Systems Testing

Duże tempo developmentu i dokonywanych zmian wymaga nowej klasy testowania. Jakość systemów obserwowana na produkcji będzie pochodną skuteczności tego procesu. Duże nadzieje wiążemy z platformami wspierającymi testowanie i opartymi na AI. Sesja ta pokaże, gdzie jesteśmy w poszukiwaniu takich rozwiązań i gdzie ewaluuje myślenie szefów testów i ich rozwiązania organizacyjne.

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CIONET Partner Updates

CIONET Partner Updates

Recent Cases

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Making Sasol a digital business in an analog industry

A journey from ultra-traditional to ultra-agile in a hands-on business.

Overview
International integrated chemicals and energy company, Sasol, has over 30,000 people in 33 countries. It develops technologies – and builds and operates world-scale facilities – to make liquid fuels, chemicals and low-carbon electricity. Founded in Sasolburg, South Africa, back in 1950, it’s the world's first oil-from-coal company. And its Secunda Collieries form the world’s largest underground coal operations. 

Sasol reorganised in 2014 to be a nimbler organisation, but it struggled with an inflexible global network. Communications between global centres were expensive and unreliable. Centralised applications were sluggish and kept dropping out, so Sasol people weren’t as productive as they could be. All that made it difficult for management to get a single view across worldwide operations. So they called on us to help.

The challenge
Having forty-four service providers at Sasol meant a lot of network hops and access points. And that meant a lot of points things could go wrong. Our Advise consultants managed a transition and transformation project that saw our Internet Connect solution installed at key data centre hubs – giving Sasol people everywhere access to the web. 

“We had a highly complex landscape. There were some areas where we weren’t sure of the number of users on a site, or we lacked an asset register. Under those circumstances BT did a tremendously effective job.” - Sudhish Mohan
VP, IM Services Southern Africa & Technology Architecture, Sasol.

Digital innovation transformed Sasol from its ultra-traditional roots. Their mix of service providers meant lots of their people had to wait for global applications to respond. With our help, Sasol unified everything on a single IP Connect platform. By switching their infrastructure onto a single service that linked 68 sites worldwide, Sasol is now more agile, responsive and competitive.

We’ve got our network to a brilliant baseline. So now we can deliver new services as and when BT evolves them. They innovate and we benefit.”

Sudhish MohanVP, IM Services Southern Africa & Technology Architecture, Sasol.
The solution
We installed a single network to bring everything under one roof for Sasol. Now, our incident management process tackles threats and incidents before most Sasol people ever hear about them. And to make sure nothing compromises the improved applications performance at a local level, all Sasol’s LANs are now under a single One Enterprise contract. 

Connect Acceleration (based on Riverbed) protects WAN bandwidth so that applications work properly and anything time-sensitive reaches its destination quicker. At all times. Having a single network means that Sasol can cope with sudden, extreme fluctuations in demand while staying robust. Since implementing Connect Acceleration, Sasol can manage and segregate the traffic flow better – and has more insight into what’s happening. 

John Watters is Sasol’s Global Well Delivery Manager. His work involves discussing locations, tests, analyses, maintenance plans and logistics – and collaborating with teammates constructing new wells in every corner of the globe. John’s team is spread over four countries – Canada, South Africa, Mozambique and the UK – and keeping them motivated, productive and informed used to mean two time-and-energy-sapping international trips every month. 

But John now only has to make one trip every six weeks thanks to 32 new high-end One Collaborate TelePresence suites in key sites around the world. They’re saving Sasol both time and money. And on top of that, our One Collaborate MeetMe and One Mobile secure access services mean Sasol people can work safer – not having to risk unnecessary travel through areas that can be dangerous or remote . 

For John, the outstanding quality of telepresence makes it “pretty much as good as face-to-face”. It picks up the nuances and intuitive aspects of collaborating that audio or standard video conferencing can’t deliver. “Before BT installed telepresence, I’d often be travelling to meetings on Sunday evenings, or back on Friday evenings” says John. “Now my team are more engaged, I’m doing my job more effectively, and I get my weekends back.”

SASOL occupies a fascinating niche in the worldwide energy industry.


The result
It used to be hard for Sasol designers and engineers in different countries to draw up blueprints for new plants. Now they share CAD files and collaborate on them simultaneously. They hold video conferences and find on-the-spot answers to problems. They dial desk-to-desk. Everything’s faster and more streamlined. 

“We have roughly 14,000 people in Secunda,” says Sudhish. “There’s been a network challenge in that area for four years; I’d describe past performance as horrendous. But since we cut over to BT, there’s been a tremendous amount of feedback that the network performs amazingly in terms of availability and performance.” 

There are deeper shifts ahead for Sasol to become truly digital. But the new network provides the foundation. It means Sasol can take advantage of new services and technologies fast. Sudhish says: “BT innovates and we benefit.” 

“It was a massive, complex job. BT performed very well, even in the face of a lot of challenges. When you work in partnership, you can foresee risks and take proactive steps around them together. Because BT had been there before, the process was simple and credible.”

Sudhish Mohan
VP, IM Services Southern Africa & Technology Architecture, Sasol.

Technologies

Cisco TelePresence

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
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Michał Paprocki
Group CIO
Euroclear
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Manfred Boudreaux-Dehmer
Chief Information Officer
NATO
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Annick Faes
Vice President IT and CIO Medical Devices EMEA
Johnson & Johnson
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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
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Geert Lejon
Vice President Head of Belux / Head of Comms Benelux
Cognizant
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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
Untitled design (4)-Dec-13-2023-10-53-15-5032-AM
Koen Segers
Managing Director Belgium and Luxembourg
Dell Technologies
benoit dewaele
Benoît Dewaele
Group IT Directo
Vandemoortele
Dirk Deridder-1
Dirk Deridder
CTO - Technology Services & Practices
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
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Cassandre Laurent
Directeur général
Agence du Numérique
an swalens
An Swalens
Head Of IT (CIO)
National Bank of Belgium
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Elke Laeremans
Chief Digital & Supply Chain Officer at Casa International
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Peter Sany
Peter Sany
Executive Advisor
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Steven De Haes
Dean
Antwerp Management School
Marleen Thorré
Marleen Thorré
Head of Digital EMEA
Mitsubishi Chemical Group
christel-plessers
Christel Plessers
Head of IT European Markets
Mercedes-Benz Europe

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!