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Welcome to CIONET Belgium

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Upcoming Events

 
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Belgium 28-8-25 Country Members Physical english

20 Years CIONET - CIONET Belgium: Summer Festival

A special celebration marking 20 years of CIONET—two decades of empowering digital leaders and driving innovation in the technology landscape. This exclusive event will bring together our members to reflect on the incredible journey we've shared and look ahead to the future of digital leadership.Featuring keynote presentations from visionary CIOs, industry pioneers, and founding members, we’ll explore how far we’ve come and what lies ahead in the ever-evolving world of technology. Together, we will honour the contributions of our members who have shaped CIONET’s legacy while offering insights into how the community will continue to lead in the years to come.This is more than a celebration—it’s an opportunity to reconnect, reflect, and recharge with your fellow digital leaders. Don't miss this exclusive experience packed with inspiring talks, networking opportunities, and special recognitions that highlight the best of CIONET’s history and future.Let’s celebrate the past, present, and future of the digital community you helped build.

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Belgium 2-9-25 All TRIBERS Virtual english

What Does It Cost to Host an App? ; A practical guide to calculating hosting costs across infra, licenses, and operations

You’ve been asked a simple question: “What does it cost to host this application?” But the answer is anything but simple. The platform sits across multiple data centres. The app spans a few VMs, shares a backup system, uses licensed monitoring, and touches five different teams. Your CMDB should help, but it’s rigid, outdated, or incomplete. And yet, you still need to provide a number, clear, explainable, and grounded in reality.

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Upcoming TRIBE Events

 
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July 14, 2025 Squad Session Invitation Only Virtual polish

Platforma KSEF – Krajowy System eFaktur

Ministerstwo Finansów zapowiedziało wdrożenie platformy KSeF na 2026 rok. Przygotowanie firm i ich systemów wymaga wiedzy o zakresie KSeF i elementach integracji na poziomie IT. Zapraszamy na kontynuację spotkania z udziałem przedstawicieli Centrum Informatyki Resortu Finansów (CIRF) i Ministerstwa Finansów.

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July 16, 2025 Squad Session Physical polish

TRIBES LEADERSHIP CIRCLE

Tribes Leadership Circle to cykliczne, wysokopoziomowe spotkania wyłącznie dla dyrektorów obszarowych, posiadających dostęp w ramach wykupionego członkostwa.

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July 22, 2025 Squad Session Invitation Only Virtual polish

Droga Rabena: od prostych procesów RPA, poprzez hiperautomatyzację, aż do systemów agenckich.

Grupa Raben od siedmiu lat rozwija własny ekosystem automatyzacji, przechodząc od pierwszych wdrożeń prostych procesów RPA, przez etap hiperautomatyzacji, aż po eksperymenty z systemami agenckimi. W trakcie sesji Zbigniew Kępiński przedstawi, jak wyglądała ta ewolucja – jakie podejścia i technologie były stosowane na kolejnych etapach oraz jakie wnioski płyną z dotychczasowych doświadczeń.

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CIONET Partner Updates

CIONET Partner Updates

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Amanote Optimizes Note-Taking App for Learners, Handling Millions of Queries on AWS

Amanote can onboard new large university customers for its note-taking app in less than 2 minutes, scale to accommodate thousands of new users in a few hours, and handle up to 3 million queries per customer per month. Its app is integrated into learning management systems (LMS) used in higher-education facilities and large enterprises. Amanote needed to ensure that its app could be easily integrated as an LMS plugin, with customization kept to a minimum to assist sales. It built a fully serverless cloud setup, using AWS Lambda to handle queries and deliver multiple app features. Amanote has optimized its costs and can easily deliver its products to customers worldwide with minimal disruption.

20K

users added each month

1,000s

of new users added in just a few hours

Up to 3 Million

monthly queries handled per customer

2 Minutes

to onboard new customers

 

Overview

Belgium-based educational technology (EdTech) business Amanote created a note-taking app that’s used by students to annotate course materials. With plans to grow its customer base in higher-education facilities, it wanted to make sure its infrastructure could grow with customer demand. From the start, Amanote decided to build on Amazon Web Services (AWS) to benefit from its comprehensive set of serverless services, helping it to scale rapidly and support growth.

Using AWS, Amanote can onboard a new university customer in 2 minutes and accommodate thousands of users in just a few hours. It has achieved this by building the app’s backend and multiple features on AWS Lambda so it can run code without thinking about servers or clusters. 

With pay-as-you-go services from AWS, the company can focus on optimizing service use to keep costs low and also minimize the number of API calls made. This has not only minimized costs, but also improved quality of service and app performance for end users.

 

 

amanote
 
 

Opportunity | Benefiting from AWS Startups to Support App Development and Product Versatility

Amanote is helping transform learning in both higher-education and staff training scenarios. Its app makes it easy to add notes and comments to coursework. This includes slide-, PDF- and video-based educational content that is created for learning management systems (LMS). Amanote helps educators and instructors to deliver more interactive lessons, add oral explanations, and gain feedback to help improve course content. For learners, the app boosts learning productivity by making note taking more effective. The app helps to generate color-coded note summaries, and supports note sharing with other learners—both of which help students to enhance their study and revision practice.

The inspiration for Amanote came from the direct experience of founder and chief executive officer (CEO) Adrien Fery, while he was studying for a master’s degree in computer science. He saw a need to digitize note taking to make the learning process more efficient and started to develop a solution. Because of the complex technology requirements of many universities’ legacy IT systems, Fery decided to offer Amanote as a software plugin, so it could be installed easily to avoid the need for lengthy software implementations. The company was launched in 2016, with the new app built entirely on AWS. “We chose AWS because of its superior technology and its broad set of serverless services,” he says. “This gave us all the components we needed to develop a fully serverless environment—with zero compromise.”

When it first launched, Amanote offered a note-taking app that students could download and use independently. In 2020, the company began to work on developing its app so it could be integrated with LMS providers’ software, and the company could offer a comprehensive note-taking solution directly to universities and higher-education institutions—to further enhance the student learning experience and offer more advanced features. For example, by supporting continuous syncing of course content with a student’s notes, even if the course content is updated.

To support this move and aid app development, Amanote applied for AWS Activate funding, which provides AWS credits at no cost to help provide startups with the resources they need to build, launch, and scale on AWS. The program also provided access to education events to help the company find potential new customers and network with peers. Amanote also received support from AWS solution architects to assist with architecture design. “We had access to AWS support, which we didn’t expect as a startup,” says Fery. “With the help of AWS, we’ve developed an affordable solution that’s versatile and easy for students to use.”

 

 

kr_quotemark

With the help of AWS, we’ve developed an affordable solution that’s versatile and easy for students to use.”

Adrien Fery
Founder and CEO, Amanote

 

 

Solution | Using AWS Lambda to Handle Millions of Queries and Accommodate Thousands of New Users

Amanote can now scale automatically to accommodate the 20,000 new users it adds each month. It can also set the system to automatically power down during university and college vacations, when usage is low. AWS Lambda sits at the core of the app, handling the 1–3 million queries per customer, per month, that are generated. These queries support several app features. They include setting up user accounts, saving individual notes, and collaborating with fellow students by exchanging information about coursework. “We needed to focus on developing new product features, not managing infrastructure,” says Fery. “Using AWS serverless services means we can free up time to focus on what matters—developing and growing the business.”

All API requests are sent first to Amazon API Gateway, which the company can use to create, maintain, and secure APIs at any scale. This helps ensure that all communications are connected to the right AWS Lambda function. From the start, Amanote has used a cost-effective AWS database solution to store document metadata and manage licensing using Amazon DynamoDB, a serverless, NoSQL, fully managed database with single-digit millisecond performance at any scale.Amanote benefits from high levels of infrastructure security by building on AWS. Machine learning (ML) is employed to quickly expose any threats or unusual user activity, using Amazon GuardDuty, which protects AWS accounts with intelligent threat detection. This assures its customers that the app is secure. The company has achieved low latency connections globally by using AWS Global Infrastructure, which provides a secure, extensive, and reliable global cloud infrastructure for all applications. This means that it can deliver its product to customers worldwide quickly and securely, without making any system changes.

Many of the company’s customers report noticeable results in using the Amanote app, including a key university client in Modena, Italy. “Because of Amanote’s ease of implementation, we’ve been able to get almost immediate results,” says Valeria Folloni, Instructional Designer at the University of Modena. “The dedicated budget was minimal and we got tangible results in a very short time, and we’re continuing to see improvements.”
The next stage of development for Amanote is to harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities for its app. For internal development work, the company is currently beta testing Amazon Q, a generative AI–powered assistant designed for work that can be tailored to its business. To allow teachers to use their preferred AI large language model, it is also evaluating Amazon Bedrock, to help build and scale generative AI applications with foundation models. It is also starting to test ML enriched data streams, using Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose, to load near-real-time streams into analytics services. This will help to automatically detect when students are struggling with coursework—and provide academic and training staff with insights on where improvements can be made.

 

Outcome | Growing to Reach 500K Customers in 50 Countries Worldwide

Amanote now has over 500,000 users in 50 countries across four continents, including Asia, Europe, and the US. With a solid app platform, the company is now launching on AWS Marketplace. “We’ve discovered great benefits using AWS,” says Fery. “The documentation is excellent, AWS services are straightforward to use, and we can always find a solution. Everything we need to do, we can do on AWS.”

 

About Company

Belgium-based Amanote offers a note-taking app that integrates with learning management systems. Using annotation that can be classified and shared, the app helps students and business professionals to enhance study and aid revision practice.

Technologies

Amazon Lambda

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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Contact us

Would you like to know more about CIONET Belgium, membership or partnership opportunities? Do you have feedback or any other question? Send us a message!