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Belgium 10-09-2026 Squad Only Physical english

Building the Infrastructure AI Needs: From computer and data access to scalability, cost control, and operational readiness.

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.

Belgium 15-09-2026 Squad Only Virtual english

Turning AI Pilots into Daily Workflows: How to move from experimentation to adoption by redesigning work, ownership, controls, and habits.

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.

Belgium 17-09-2026 Country Members Physical french

Les Rencontres: CTO: Le Saint Graal?

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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University of Warwick bolsters cyber defences with Trend Micro Cloud App Security

Bolsters cyber defences with Trend Micro Cloud App Security

OVERVIEW

The UK education sector is an increasingly popular target for cybercriminals. Separate pieces of research have revealed that many universities have faced phishing and ransomware attacks. Given the highly sensitive research-based IP and personal data on students and staff stored by these institutions, it’s no surprise that they’ve become a favourite of hackers.

The University of Warwick has recognized the rise in attacks and proactively decided to further strengthen its defenses. Its Head of Cloud Services, Des Butcher, in conjunction with colleagues, sought out third-party expertise to help secure its Office 365 environment.

RISING THREAT LEVELS

The University’s existing anti-spam and malware capabilities were based on existing Unix relays; an unsustainable situation given the rapidly increasing volume, complexity and variety of threats. Des and his colleagues in ITS therefore set out to find a more effective solution to the problem; and one which addressed not only the primary threat vector of email but also provided protection across the entire Office 365 range. A priority was placed on third-party providers who could offer tight integration with Microsoft’s online productivity suite with an easy-to-implement product set.

ENTER CLOUD APP SECURITY

Des started a review of security solutions in January 2017, and asked a select group of vendors to present to the email team and IT security staff. Trend Micro™ Cloud App Security was chosen based on this presentation, and some outstanding commercials.

Trend Micro Cloud App Security is the perfect choice for businesses looking to extend the built-in security protections of Office 365 with advanced malware detection and data loss prevention. Here are just some of the benefits:

Document exploit detection helps find malware including ransomware in Office formats like Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.

Trend Micro™ Deep Discovery™ sandbox technology detects unknown malware and shares intelligence with other security layers.

Trend Micro™ Smart Protection Network™-derived intelligence finds malicious URLs in both the message body and email attachments.

Detects attacks in progress as hackers try to migrate via email from compromised accounts within the organization.

Data Loss Prevention for OneDrive, SharePoint Online, Dropbox®, Box®, and Google Drive™ uses over 200 pre-built and customizable compliance templates to control sharing of controlled data.

Scans files shared from remote workers and partners.

Tight API-based integration means automatic, hassle-free set-up.

Trend Micro has been a Microsoft Gold Partner for 20 years.

"Trend Micro sits within your tenancy. That proximity to the data being protected had a significant advantage versus other gateway products. Typical gateway products focused on just email, rather than email, SharePoint and OneDrive, which are the other significant aspects of Office 365."

Des Butcher - Head of Cloud Services, University of Warwick

MAXIMUM SECURITY, MINIMUM OUTLAY

Des and his team first conducted some pen testing exercises on Cloud App Security before running the product in monitoring mode for a couple of weeks to check for false positives. The results were very good and the product was switched on.

It’s been plain sailing ever since: although the attacks keep on increasing, the impact on the university is significantly lower than that prior to Cloud App Security installation, says Des.

“We haven’t been affected by the majority of the attacks on higher education institutions that get reported” he adds.

The product has also helped Des save valuable resources, at a time when budgets are tight.

“By moving our defense into Office 365, we’re in a position to reduce the amount of resource we devote to this area and focus it elsewhere,” he concludes.

“From a commercial point-of-view, I’m confident its cost is neutral and has delivered significant benefits.”

"We can see a measurable benefit: a reduction in the volume of malware arriving in our users’ inboxes. We can look at the dashboard and get a view of potentially thousands of pieces of malicious content getting blocked."

Des Butcher - Head of Cloud Services, University of Warwick

Technologies

Trend Micro Cloud App Security™

Partners

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