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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 9-5-25 All Members Physical english

CIONET Cycling Event

Join us for a wonderful ride. The ride is accessible to all levels of riders and doesn't require extensive technical skills. More information will follow soon. Looking forward to ride together!

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Belgium 13-5-25 Squad Only Virtual english

Redefining the Creative Process : How generative AI is transforming innovation, design, and strategy.

Generative AI is revolutionizing industries, impacting everything from content creation to product design. In Belgium, businesses are beginning to explore the potential of this technology to enhance creativity and drive innovation. However, as companies leverage generative AI to optimize their strategies, they face critical considerations around data control and intellectual property. How can organizations harness the power of generative AI while ensuring that their data and creative assets remain secure and protected? 

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Belgium 13-5-25 Invitation Only Physical english

Code Red for a proactive, predictive cyber defence ; How to Turn Threat Intelligence into Cyber Advantage

As a CIO and CISO, you are facing an unprecedented challenge: transitioning from reactive incident response to proactive, predictive defence. While Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) promises to anticipate attacks, integrating it effectively into security and war room operations presents significant hurdles.

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Upcoming TRIBE Events

 
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May 8, 2025 Squad Session Invitation Only Physical polish

Security Excellence TRIBE: Warsztaty Technologiczne

Przestępcy coraz częściej wykorzystują bardziej zaawansowane i skomplikowane techniki próbujące wykorzystać luki w cyberzabezpieczeniach. Ale w jaki sposób kopiowanie elementów strony może być niebezpieczne? Co może się wydarzyć, jeżeli przestępcy zakładają serwisy wyglądające bardzo podobnie do oryginału pod podobnym adresem? A co jeśli przestępcy posiadają już bazę danych haseł i użytkowników? O tym wszystkim opowiemy na podstawie konkretnych przykładów oraz strategii ochrony aplikacji i użytkowników końcowych.

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May 13, 2025 Squad Session Squad Only Virtual english

Redefining the Creative Process : How generative AI is transforming innovation, design, and strategy.

Generative AI is revolutionizing industries, impacting everything from content creation to product design. In Belgium, businesses are beginning to explore the potential of this technology to enhance creativity and drive innovation. However, as companies leverage generative AI to optimize their strategies, they face critical considerations around data control and intellectual property. How can organizations harness the power of generative AI while ensuring that their data and creative assets remain secure and protected? 

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May 14, 2025 Squad Session Invitation Only Virtual polish

Applications Excellence TRIBE: Warsztaty Technologiczne

Serdecznie zapraszamy na warsztaty technologiczne, podczas których porozmawiamy o tym, jak agenci AI, wyposażeni w specjalistyczne narzędzia, wspierają zespoły w realizacji wymagających zadań, przyspieszając transformację systemów Legacy.

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CIONET Partner Updates

CIONET Partner Updates

Recent Cases

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Putting the power behind Hotelbeds’ soaring business

A scalable, cloud-based server platform makes staying ahead in the travel industry more affordable.

Overview
Staying at the forefront of today’s travel industry means Hotelbeds Group has to manage hundreds of millions of online transactions every day. And that number’s always growing. Keeping on top of that growth meant investing in more and more computing hardware. As a result, the group had around 700 servers, hosted in a third party data centre. But it needed a smarter solution. 

With our Cloud Compute platform, the group could scale up fast. And more affordably. Our professional services team made sure migration went smoothly. Now the group has near-limitless capacity and the assurance that our security products and experts are keeping cyber-threats at bay.

The challenge
The Hotelbeds Group’s platform connects travel services providers with travel sellers across the globe. With upwards of 430 million data requests a day from users worldwide to manage, the group was buying hundreds of new servers to keep up. As a result, the company’s physical estate had grown to around 700 servers, hosted in a third party data centre. It simply wasn’t sustainable.

We need to be able to quickly and flexibly increase our compute capacity. The only way to do that economically is in the cloud.” Álvaro de NicolásCIO, Hotelbeds Group


The group needed a better way to manage its growing number of transactions. One that meant they could scale their services more affordably, make the most of their existing investments, and keep their whole operation secure at the same time. They knew that meant looking to the cloud.

The solution
With our Cloud Compute platform, the Hotelbeds Group can do things like deploy and monitor its own cloud services. Or create hybrid environments to address both private and public requirements. Everything’s easily managed via a set of tools in a self-service portal. 

The Hotelbeds Group solution runs across one of our BT data centres and a Hotelbeds Group data centre, both in Madrid. They’re linked over our IP Connect Global network for high availability and easy connection to the company’s operations in Europe, Asia and the US. 

To kick things off, our professional services team hosted a number of workshops with the Hotelbeds Group IT team to develop a transition plan. We also prepared briefings to help the company communicate the plan to staff and senior management. 

Once everything was agreed, the professional services team looked after the group’s migration to the cloud and made sure things ran smoothly and didn’t affect day-to-day business. 

Our Cloud Compute solution features Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) hardware “For us it’s important that BT runs Cisco appliances,” says Álvaro de Nicolás. “UCS provides a combined computing, networking and storage solution that means a faster and more reliable network.” 

The great thing about Cisco UCS is that it decouples scale from complexity. So, whether you’ve got one server, or a thousand, it’s all easy to manage. It also makes it quick to deliver new services, with end-to-end provisioning and migration support for both virtualised and non-virtualised systems.

BT Cloud Compute running on Cisco hardware increases scalability at lower cost for global travel services provider Hotelbeds.


The result
As well as being far more sustainable, our Cloud Compute means the Hotelbeds Group can better align IT investment with growth thanks to flexible commercial terms. New virtual servers offer near-limitless capacity and sure up business continuity. And they mean new servers can be deployed in minutes, rather than weeks, making the whole business more effective. 

Better still, Hotelbeds Group is redeploying 200 of its existing servers to our private cloud. The remainder removed or re-used for non-core applications in its HQ in Palma, Mallorca, so nothing goes to waste. The Hotelbeds Group Oracle database will be hosted on physical servers within the BT private cloud and the rest of the infrastructure will be fully virtualised in our public Cloud Compute zone in Madrid. 

And everything’s kept secure. Our contract with Hotelbeds Group also sees us provide security services like firewalls and DDoS attack prevention. 

“In fact, security is one of the key items on my agenda and the CEO’s agenda,” confirms Álvaro de Nicolás. “BT helps us with firewalls that protect our websites, as well as allowing us to move and redirect traffic in case of cyber-attack.” 

All in all, the new solution means the whole business can react to a growing and changing market faster. Sam Turner, Sales Director at Hotelbeds Group, sums up: We’ll also reduce cost per transaction, which in a scale-and-growth business is very important.”

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

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Koen Segers
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Group IT Directo
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Dirk Deridder-1
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Thierry Driesens
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Koen Vandaele
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Liesbet D'hoker
Managing Director
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Director General Digital Transformation
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Cassandre Laurent
Directeur général
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Elke Laeremans
Chief Digital & Supply Chain Officer at Casa International
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Team

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Luc Hendrikx
CEO
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1-Feb-08-2022-10-22-08-68-AM
Daniel Eycken
Partner - COO
Hendrik Deckers
Hendrik Deckers
Founder - MD
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Jelte Scheys
Tribes Sales Director Belgium
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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
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Charlotte Coen
Partner Success Manager
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Ivana Bradvica
Junior Event Manager
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Martine Lefevre
Financial Controller
Vlera Berishaa (1)
Vlera Berisha
Junior Community Manager

Contact us

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