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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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Isracard creates foundation for faster, innovative development

In response to rapid industry change, Israeli credit card company Isracard sought to speed and
simplify its service development approach. By building a new container-based IT infrastructure
with Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus, Isracard has cut provisioning times from weeks to minutes
and improved resource use. Now, its developers can focus on exploring new, innovative solutions
to customer demands, and its infrastructure team can take advantage of the latest security and
management capabilities

Reinventing complex IT systems and processes
Israel’s financial market has experienced massive shifts in recent years, such as rapid fintech growth
and significant regulatory changes that required banks to divest their credit card businesses.
Formerly part of Israel’s largest bank, Isracard now serves close to half of the country’s credit card
market. It provides payment, loan, and other services to business and consumers, including through
partnerships with Visa, Mastercard, and American Express.
As a smaller organization than its larger parent institution, Isracard sought to take advantage of
opportunities to embrace new technology as a market leader.
“While we lost some of our power to acquire and retain new customers as an independent organization,
we also gained the freedom to reinvent our business strategy and processes. For example, we have
the chance to be part of the industry-changing open banking revolution,” said Dvir Ben-Aaron, Chief
Technology Officer, Isracard. “To take advantage of this opportunity, we chose to evolve our legacy
technology environment to more efficient, container-based development and delivery.”

Creating new credit services with a supported, container-based foundation
After researching and testing potential solutions, Isracard selected Red Hat OpenShift as its new
IT foundation. This enterprise container platform supports innovative application development,
deployment, and management across hybrid cloud environments.
“We were looking for a technology platform that would serve our business for years to come. We
found that Red Hat OpenShift is more mature and provides stronger security capabilities than other
solutions in the market,” said Ben-Aaron. “Red Hat has a proven record of success with securitysensitive organizations and the availability of skilled local support. They were able to demonstrate
the value of their technology and services for our developer, infrastructure, and security teams.”
Isracard’s teams—many of whom were new to using Kubernetes—worked closely with Red Hat
Consulting during and after implementation to learn best practices and define, design, and create
workloads for the company’s new on-premise OpenShift environment. After a successful initial
implementation, Isracard recently upgraded to Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus, a set of products
that add advanced management, security, and storage capabilities to Isracard’s existing OpenShift
foundation. For example, Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security for Kubernetes helps organizations
reduce operational risks and costs with built-in security across the entire application development
life cycle.
Isracard now uses on-premise Red Hat OpenShift to support a variety of projects, including
integration with Israel’s 20 major banks, accelerating time to market for new services, and
reconfiguring a critical back-end system.
“We want to keep our platform updated with comprehensive security and the latest container features,”
said Ben Aaron. “OpenShift Platform Plus gives us flexible, low-code features that will help us bring
even more speed and innovation to our infrastructure architecture and processes. For instance, new
hybrid cloud capabilities will help us distribute new services that we develop locally.”

Adopting more efficient back-end processes to focus on customer-facing innovation
- Reduced infrastructure setup time from weeks to minutes with automated provisioning processes
- Increased developer independence with self-service environment management, freeing time and
resources for innovative work

Improved resource use, reducing reliance on growing server footprint
- Established in-demand container technology foundation for partnerships with other banking and
fintech organizations

Continuing successful container adoption journey with new strategic projects

After its initial success with containers, Isracard can now focus on new, innovative projects for both
customers and its development teams. The company is adding several new Red Hat OpenShift
clusters to support several upcoming projects, including customer-facing credit approval and other
digital applications, unified management, and support for cloud-based workloads. Isracard plans
to continue working closely with Red Hat’s technology experts to take advantage of these new
opportunities and grow its reputation for innovative financial services. In the near future, the team
will expand its OpenShift environment with Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubenetes,
as well as Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation.
“We see our relationship with Red Hat as strategic to our ongoing success in our transformation
journey,” said Ben Aaron. ”In addition to bringing open banking benefits to our customers, we’re
using Red Hat OpenShift to work toward our goal of becoming a credit services provider to other
businesses as well, from tools to processes and more. Our team is excited to see their ideas become
reality, keep learning, overcome our challenges, and continue to grow.”

About Isracard

Isracard is the leading and largest credit card group in Israel with over 45 years of experience. It
operates mainly in the areas of financing, issuance of debit cards and clearing payment services.
Isracard holds significantly higher market shares of the market vis-à-vis its competitors. The group
operates about 4.4 million active credit cards of the following brands: Isracard, MasterCard, Visa
and American Express (exclusively in Israel). The group provides clearing services to most of the
clearing businesses in Israel. Our company provides consumer and commercial credit to the extent
of approximately NIS 6.2 billion and also manages the largest and leading consumer clubs in Israel
with significant value propositions for customers and partners.

Technologies

Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus

Partners

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