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Belgium 10-09-2026 Squad Only Physical english
AI is moving from pilots into operational use, and the infrastructure question is becoming more concrete. The challenge is deciding what needs to be built, expanded, controlled, or delayed as usage grows. Three pressure points usually appear first. - Compute capacity requires careful planning: teams need enough GPU, cloud, or specialised processing power, while keeping utilisation and cost under control. - Data movement becomes more demanding: AI needs access to data across systems, with latency, security, integration, and quality managed from the start. - Operational control becomes essential: monitoring, access rights, resilience, cost visibility, and ownership need to scale with usage. The working question is simple: how do we support AI at scale while keeping infrastructure efficient, governed, and financially sustainable? If you are working through these choices, let’s compare approaches with others facing similar constraints.
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Belgium 15-09-2026 Squad Only Virtual english
AI pilots are easier to launch than to embed into daily operations. The challenge is changing how work happens once AI becomes part of decisions, tasks, handovers, and controls. Three pressure points tend to decide whether adoption holds. - Workflow fit matters: AI has to enter the flow of work as part of the process. - Ownership needs to be clear: someone must own the process, the controls, the exceptions, and the outcome. - User trust has to be built: people need to know when to rely on AI, when to challenge it, and when to escalate. The working question is simple: how do we move AI from promising pilots into daily work while keeping clarity, accountability, and risk control? If this is part of your current reality, let’s compare choices, constraints, and lessons learned.
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Belgium 17-09-2026 Country Members Physical french
Pendant longtemps, le TCO donnait une impression de contrôle. On investissait, on amortissait, on optimisait. Les coûts étaient visibles, relativement prévisibles, et structurés autour d’une logique claire entre CAPEX et OPEX. Ce modèle ne suffit plus à expliquer où va réellement l’argent. Aujourd’hui, une part croissante des dépenses IT ne repose plus sur ce que l’on possède, mais sur ce que l’on consomme: des tokens générés par l’IA des agents qui exécutent des actions en continu des outils SaaS qui se multiplient dans les équipes du cloud qui s’adapte en permanence à l’usage Le coût ne disparaît pas, mais il devient plus diffus, plus dynamique, et souvent plus difficile à attribuer, à expliquer, et à maîtriser. C’est là que des approches comme le Technology Business Management, ou TBM, redeviennent particulièrement utiles: non pas comme un exercice de reporting supplémentaire, mais comme un moyen de relier concrètement les dépenses aux services, aux usages, et aux décisions. Et c’est là aussi que la question du “Saint Graal” revient, mais sous une autre forme. Vous vous demandez peut-être: Comment garder de la maîtrise quand la dépense dépend du comportement, des usages, et parfois même de systèmes autonomes ? Comment piloter l’équilibre CAPEX/OPEX quand le cloud, le SaaS et l’IA déplacent progressivement les coûts vers des modèles variables ? Quels coûts restent encore trop souvent hors radar: ressources métier, formation, support, intégration, sécurité, gouvernance ? Et surtout, qu’est-ce qu’un “bon TCO” veut encore dire quand il faut le mettre en regard d’objectifs parfois plus stratégiques, plus longs à mesurer, ou plus difficiles à quantifier: qualité de service, résilience, agilité, expérience utilisateur, capacité d’innovation ? Ce sont précisément ces questions qui seront au cœur de notre rencontre: une discussion ouverte entre pairs, ancrée dans la réalité du terrain, pas pour débattre de modèles idéaux, mais pour comprendre comment chacun tente, concrètement, de mesurer, d’attribuer et de reprendre le contrôle, sans réduire la valeur d’un choix technologique à son seul coût.
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CIONET Trailblazer: CISO: The Shift from Prevention to Resilience: Turning Visibility into Execution
Published on: January 28, 2026 @ 9:48 AM
CIONET Trailblazer: AI Transformation: Bridging the Cultural Divide to Achieve Competitive Advantage
Published on: December 17, 2025 @ 9:16 AM
Delivering visibility, control, and simplified security to Bathgate Group
Delivering visibility, control, and simplified security to Bathgate Group
OVERVIEW
The Bathgate Group has been delivering excellence to customers across a range of products and services for over 50 years. The Cheshire-headquartered firm is now comprised of four companies—producing high quality silica sand, delivering B2B finance, as well as road haulage services. It’s also one of the largest raised access floor manufacturers in Europe.
Managing IT for such a diverse organization comes with its own distinct set of challenges, as Group IT Manager, Chris Snape, knows well. He was brought in to consolidate and streamline the environment around 18 months ago and made cybersecurity a priority. Trend Micro Worry-Free Services Advanced, delivered from the Vodafone Business Marketplace, already had a huge impact—saving significant IT time and money while minimizing the company’s risk exposure.
"Trend Micro does what it says on the tin. It’s worry-free security which lets me get on with day-to-day tasks and other projects. [Trend Micro Worry-Free] massively reduced the number of man hours we spend on security management, and if anything needs doing hands on, it can be done from the dashboard."
Chris Snape - Group IT Manager, Bathgate Group
CHALLENGES
Bathgate’s 200 endpoints include 50 mobile devices used by the company’s delivery drivers. Combined with employees’ corporate email accounts and Microsoft 365 productivity applications, they represented a sizeable attack surface for IT to protect. The brief was to simplify endpoint and email security for Bathgate without sacrificing quality.
“When I came in, all our endpoints were individually configured and running different versions [of security software]. Plus, there was no centralized reporting, so if something happened there was no way of easily finding out,” says Chris. “What I wanted for the group was something that could be managed centrally and rely on to work by itself in the background. But also, a product that we could configure with exceptions and business rules.”
WHY TREND
Chris was introduced to Vodafone Business, who recommended Trend Micro Worry-Free Services Advanced delivered from their Business Marketplace portal. The product offers powerful protection for endpoints, cloud apps, and email from a single solution:
SOLUTION
Accessing the solution from the Vodafone Marketplace portal multiplied the value for Chris by simplifying the supply chain and consolidating support with a single provider. “Trend Micro was introduced to us as an all-in-one solution well managed through the Vodafone Marketplace portal and at the right price point,” explains Chris.
RESULTS
The combined offering delivers powerful protection across email and endpoints, while streamlining security and offering enhanced control, according to Chris. A recent incident in which an external email was hijacked and tried to send malicious emails to employees, was detected and mitigated by Trend Micro.
“I could see via the dashboard what happened and called them to make sure they changed their password. After the first few [spam] emails came in the product learned and started to quarantine them. Inboxes get pretty much no spam at all now,” Chris explains.
WHAT'S NEXT
Bathgate have been so pleased with the way Trend Micro and Vodafone Business have performed over the past year; they’ve decided to sign up for another year without shortlisting any competitors.
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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.
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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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