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Welcome to CIONET Belgium

Realise your ambition! Connect with your local community of digital leaders.

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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 28-8-25 Country Members Physical english

Summer Festival - Advisory Board

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.

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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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August 20, 2025 Squad Session Invitation Only Virtual polish

Motywowanie pracowników - programy, metody i dobre praktyki

To oczywiste, że o sukcesie organizacji decydują ludzie. Ci powinni być zmotywowani i uśmiechnięci. Wysoki poziom identyfikacji i zaangażowania buduje się długo i mozolne, ale najlepsi managerowie mają sprawdzone techniki, praktyki i metody cierpliwego podnoszenia motywacji zespołów.

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August 20, 2025 Squad Session Invitation Only Physical polish

SECURITY TRIBE: SESJA STRATEGICZNA

Podczas wystąpień, case studies i stolików dyskusyjnych omówimy następujące zagadnienia:    Wdrożenie Zero Trust Cybersecurity risk assesment / Risk management / Zarządzanie ryzykiem w organizacji kluczowej Zarządzanie tożsamością / PIM/IAM / IAM Bezpieczenstwo w łancuchu życia aplikacji i systemów (Bezpieczestwo SDLC)

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August 26, 2025 Squad Session Invitation Only Virtual polish

AI w chmurze czy on-prem? Praktyczne porównanie środowisk w budowie i rozwoju projektów

Marek Laskowski z Domański Zakrzewski Palinka, opierając się na doświadczeniach z wdrażania rozwiązań AI zarówno w chmurze, jak i w środowiskach on-premises, przedstawi praktyczne porównanie obu podejść. Omówi kluczowe aspekty: od kosztów i time-to-market, przez wymagane kompetencje i model organizacji zespołów IT, po utrzymanie i skalowanie rozwiązań. Marek przyjrzy się zaletom i wadom obu modeli i wskaże, jakie kryteria powinny decydować o wyborze środowiska dla konkretnego projektu AI.

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CIONET Partner Updates

CIONET Partner Updates

Recent Cases

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Carrefour - Data Center modernisation: What happens when disaster derails IT modernization?

Discover how Carrefour Belgium partnered with Kyndryl to revolutionize their IT infrastructure and enhance customer experiences. By migrating 100% of their on-premises systems to a state-of-the-art hybrid cloud data center and modernizing store operations with Google Cloud Platform, Carrefour Belgium achieved seamless business continuity, improved operational efficiency, and set the stage for future digital transformation. Dive into this compelling customer case to learn how Carrefour Belgium is leading the charge in retail innovation with Kyndryl's expertise.

"It was in that moment, I realized we could no longer trust this data center with our entire operations."

Stijn Stabel / CTO / Carrefour Belgium

An Ironman triathlete with a passion for integrating the data of emerging technologies like AI and IoT with essential legacy systems, Stijn has the air of someone accustomed to handling the unexpected with ease. And he's the first to admit that the team has navigated its fair share of challenges and uncertainty.

“The data center was failing on all levels."

Stijn Stabel / CTO / Carrefour Belgium

"We started this journey in 2019, with the rollout of the digital roadmap," says Stijn.  "The plan was to move out of our data centers in the basement of our headquarters in Brussels. The on-premises system was outdated and lacked the elasticity needed to respond to shifts in demand. The data center was failing on all levels," he continued. "

These are the war stories of a company in transformation.

Stijn Stabel / CTO / Carrefour Belgium

 

Every day, it seemed IT was managing issues and escalations. The risk to the business was real. A temporary outage would certainly impact customer experiences, potentially resulting in incorrect charges or delayed checkout. A complete failure would mean closing some stores altogether.

Plans were underway to migrate core systems to Google Cloud Platform, but the effort would take time. Even with the weekend crisis averted, time was something Stijn felt they no longer had.

"We needed a new plan. One where we could stay home on the weekend and not have to worry about the weather or the temperature in our data center," said Stijn.

"These are the war stories of a company in transformation," said Stijn.

"For us, the goal is to create a delightful experience for our customers," says Stijn. "To do that, we have to digitize and enable integration across channels and with our partners."

For Stijn and Carrefour Belgium Chief Information Officer (CIO) Olivier Luxon, the most realistic solution was an interim environment that could help them take the next steps towards IT modernization. They needed a mature and secure cloud data center where they could quickly lift-and-shift core workloads for immediate scalability. Then, they could strategically re-platform machines to Google Cloud Platform.

In Olivier's mind, they only had two options: build the interim environment themselves or find a trusted partner to take on the challenge.

"We could redo everything ourselves, but that's not our business," said Oliver. "We aren't data center guys. We have other things to do for our customers."

Turning to Kyndryl was an easy choice, according to Stijn.

"Kyndryl had been serving us for several years. They had all the experience with our systems... We were happy. And why change a winning team, right?"

Together, Stijn, Olivier and the Kyndryl team mapped out a plan to migrate core systems to the Kyndryl Tier 3+ Hybrid Cloud Data Center in southern Belgium. They completed the work in record time, migrating 100% of on-premises systems without downtime or disruptions to business operations.

In parallel, the team identified an opportunity to help modernize store operations by efficiently moving store systems and their legacy applications to Google Cloud Platform. The existing environment was distributed, with many stores running applications on outdated PCs kept in storage or wet rooms.

"We basically had one small data center per store," said Olivier. "We wanted more flexibility and ease of building a new infrastructure for the store. The only way to do that was to define a clear, standard catalog with different services, feeds and platforms."

Kyndryl used Red Hat Ansible to build and operate an IT service catalog on Google Cloud Platform that enabled store franchise owners to remotely provision virtual machines (VMs). With the same VMs running across the stores, Carrefour Belgium enabled their front-end and back-end systems to more consistently and efficiently integrate in executing current business operations and set up a reliable framework to modernize the applications that most directly affect Carrefour customers. By uniformly managing inventory and accounts, for example, Carrefour can deliver the same experience at any store a customer visits.

"The whole orchestration around it — creating that infrastructure based on code scripts — pressing the button and having the store online is essential to our operations," Stijn said.

"By moving the store compute environment to a central environment, we're able to react on the spot. To tackle issues quickly," he continues. "We also have the elasticity and flexibility that a cloud environment brings, allowing us to onboard new services for our customers - creating more delightful experiences."

What progress looks like

400 servers in the basement Carrefour Belgium headquarters migrated to 1 modern, centralized operating environment in a Kyndryl cloud data center.

100% of on-premises core systems migrated to Kyndryl data center — on time, on budget, and with no downtime.

700+ store servers now in Google Cloud Platform and ready for digital application transformation now — with 1,000 to come.

Today, under Kyndryl management, the interim data center infrastructure is keeping legacy systems working smoothly and securely as the company prepares for transitioning key legacy applications, such as SAP, to cloud.

There are close to 700 Kyndryl-managed store servers in Google Cloud Platform, with more than 1,000 projected to come online. Stores that have made the transition to Google Cloud Platform are now ready for rolling-out application modernization work.

"I think one of the key success factors in the partnership with Kyndryl is that they were able to translate our standard services into a catalog where we could launch a request at any point in time and within minutes or hours the whole catalog request is launched," said Stijn.

We'll know we've succeeded in our digital transformation when our customers are happy with every experience — in store or online.

Stijn Stabel / CTO / Carrefour Belgium

 

But Carrefour Belgium's journey is far from complete.

"Digital transformation will never be finished," said Olivier. "We've taken the first step, but expectations will continue to evolve and change."

Stijn agrees, "We'll know we've succeeded in our digital transformation when our customers are happy with every experience - in store or online."

 

About the Carrefour Group

A pioneer in the large food retail business, Carrefour Group is known for modern yet homey grocery stores that offer fresh, organic, local food at affordable prices.

 

Technologies

Google Cloud Platform

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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Check out our latest news

Testimonials

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Bahadir Samli
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Directeur général
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Team

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CEO
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Tribe Master
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Program Manager
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Program Manager
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Junior Event Manager
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Junior Community Manager
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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!