Belgium 25-9-25 Invitation Only Physical english
As AI shapes our future, the time is now to address and correct its inherent biases. Join leading female voices in tech as we explore how to undo past mistakes, champion neutrality, and feed AI systems with inclusive, unbiased data. This conference is a call to action for female leaders in AI and tech to ensure the next generation of intelligent systems reflects fairness, diversity, and equity. Together, let’s set things right and redefine the future of AI.
Read MoreBelgium 25-9-25 Invitation Only Physical english
On 25th September, during the Red Hat Summit: Connect 2025 in Brussels, CIONET is hosting an exclusive, invitation-only round table for leading CIOs, CTOs, and digital leaders. While the Summit offers a broad programme, this CIONET session is a separate, distinct event, conducted in its own dedicated room with private catering, ensuring a focused and confidential peer-to-peer discussion. This round table will delve into why certain cloud-native techniques offer undeniable benefits, irrespective of where your applications are deployed, be it on-premise, in a hyperscale cloud, or a hybrid environment. Even outside public clouds, these modern, modular architectures consistently deliver increased agility, enhanced scalability, and quicker time-to-market. The real power behind these advantages lies in automation. When done properly, automation significantly boosts team efficiency, improves system quality, and drastically cuts risks from slow systems or downtime. However, achieving truly effective automation comes with its own set of challenges, which we'll address head-on. Key Discussion Points Include: "No-Regret" Cloud-Native Pillars: We'll try to pinpoint essential techniques every organisation should adopt, such as microservices architecture, containerisation (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes), API-first design, stateless application design, and immutable infrastructure. Why are these crucial for modern applications, no matter the deployment location? Strategic Vendor Lock-in: How to judiciously manage vendor lock-in. For new innovations and applications with a relatively short life expectancy, leveraging the latest unique features of a hyperscale cloud might be beneficial. For long-lived applications (expected to be live for decades), the focus might shift to limiting exposure by utilising generally available technologies. Automation Anywhere: How can organisations effectively implement automation strategies to unlock the full potential of cloud-native initiatives across diverse infrastructures? What are the biggest hurdles, and how are leaders overcoming them? This CIONET round table offers a unique and intimate setting for digital leaders to gain critical insights, exchange perspectives, and shape the strategic path towards application modernisation that truly offers no regrets.
Read MoreBelgium 30-9-25 Squad Only Virtual english
Everyone has technical debt. The question is what to do with it. Refactor now? Wait for the next feature? Build on it and hope it holds? If you’re tired of debating whether to clean up or move on, this session helps you frame the debt conversation in a way that supports both speed and stability.
Read MoreSeptember 30, 2025 Squad Session Squad Only Virtual english
Everyone has technical debt. The question is what to do with it. Refactor now? Wait for the next feature? Build on it and hope it holds? If you’re tired of debating whether to clean up or move on, this session helps you frame the debt conversation in a way that supports both speed and stability.
Read MoreOctober 2, 2025 Squad Session Squad Only Virtual english
Architecture doesn’t happen in diagrams. It happens in minds, seasoned, curious, sharp minds that understand how the pieces fit. But who’s shaping these minds? Who’s growing the next generation of digital architects? If you’re responsible for complex systems, and for the people designing them, this session is for you.
Read MoreOctober 14, 2025 Squad Session Squad Only Virtual english
Agile delivery often collides with inflexible infrastructures. One team wants to release weekly. Another is waiting six months for a new test environment. Sounds familiar? If your infra team is tired of being the bottleneck, and your devs are tired of waiting, this session opens a path forward.
Read MoreA modernization journey with zero downtime
Carey International's aging on-premise systems struggled to meet growing demands for security, high availability, and cost efficiency. Carey migrated its applications to a cloud-based architecture using Red Hat OpenShift® in AWS (ROSA) and IBM WebSphere Liberty container platform. They also adopted IBM Instana for real-time monitoring and proactive maintenance.
Carey International, Inc.—a storied name in the premium ground transportation industry—has been redefining luxury travel since the 1920s. Its sprawling operation comprise a robust network of subsidiary, franchise and affiliate partners across 400 cities worldwide. With a staggering record of 550 thousand trips in 69 countries in 2022, its centralized reservation, billing, customer service and event management systems represent a complex backbone of operations that demands relentless uptime and security. However, dated legacy systems faced modern pressures, prompting Carey to embark on a transformative journey of application modernization.
Navigating a veritable minefield of operational challenges, Carey's legacy systems—sprawling across a mix of traditional platforms including IBM® WebSphere® Application Server Network Deployment, Red Hat® JBoss® Enterprise Application Platform and Oracle databases—began to strain under customer demands for enhanced security, the need for high-availability services, and rising costs—all exacerbated by the specialized skills required to maintain these aging technologies. The tipping point came with the realization that its systems could not keep up with a swiftly changing digital landscape without significant operational risk and unforeseen expenses.
Carey's strategic move to cloud architecture, specifically Red Hat OpenShift® in AWS (ROSA), marked a paradigm shift towards agility and scalability. By transitioning its Java® applications to the IBM WebSphere Liberty container platform, Carey embraced a seamless, efficient system capable of meeting the needs of an operation that never sleeps. Alongside, Oracle databases moved to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and APIs were elegantly managed, demonstrating how modern containerization and cloud-native services could refurbish even the most deeply rooted systems.
The introduction of IBM Instana® to Carey's tech stack was pivotal. Legacy applications became transparent under the IBM technology’s fully-automated real-time observability platform. Instana provided Carey with the X-ray vision to pinpoint performance bottlenecks, resource anomalies and operational issues in real-time, ushering in a new era of reliability and proactive maintenance.
The final leap into modernized operations was a meticulously planned cutover—a testament to Carey's all-in commitment to modernization. With thorough documentation and practice runs, the team executed a smooth transition. Carey has experienced nearly zero unplanned or planned downtime since the migration. Performance and reliability numbers have met and often exceeded those for the on-premise system.
In the wake of these sweeping changes, Carey now boasts an architecture that not only competes with but surpasses the on-premise performance metrics of yore. Zero downtime has become the new standard, and the nimble, rolling release process signifies a newfound operational agility. As Carey continues to fine-tune its system and explore further cost optimizations with Red Hat and AWS, the narrative is clear: application modernization elevates service capabilities, bolsters security and ensures a company's relevance in today's dynamic tech environment.
Carey's journey to application modernization with WebSphere Liberty and Instana is more than a case study of technological upgrade—it is a celebration of timely transformation, matching the pace of an ever-evolving industry while laying a sturdy, future-proof foundation for the legacy of luxury travel.
IBM, Red Hat and AWS were a great team and provided hands on assistance to ensure project success. IBM Instana was key to quickly identifying problems and their root causes as well as critical to monitoring Red Hat OpenShift during load testing, go-live and in production. All applications were migrated in May 2023 during a six-hour outage window. To date, performance and reliability exceed the on-premise system. Releases into the cloud platform are simple, fast and non-disruptive. Development pipeline processes are also greatly streamlined.
Carey (link resides outside of ibm.com) is a trusted leader in innovative ground transportation solutions—delivering unparalleled safety, reliability and general peace of mind to the world's most discerning travelers since 1921.
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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?
Read MoreThe 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.
Read MoreDécouvrez 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 !
Read MoreCIONET 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.
Read MoreWould you like to know more about CIONET Belgium, membership or partnership opportunities? Do you have feedback or any other question? Send us a message!
You can either send us a registered handwritten letter explaining why you'd like to become a member or you can simply talk to us right here!