AE

When AI agents start writing code, the role of engineers does not disappear. It changes. Jeremy Eder, Distinguished Engineer at Red Hat, joined AE's Digital Excellence Connect 2026 event to discuss what happens when coding is no longer the main bottleneck in software development. His point is clear: the constraint is shifting from output to judgement. Engineering teams need the right feedback loops, governance structures and leadership habits to handle the volume and complexity AI can create. #AI #SoftwareEngineering #EngineeringLeadership #DigitalExcellence #AE

AI initiatives are everywhere. But AI apps that truly make an impact? Those are still much harder to find. Lillie Harris, Azure Business Lead Western Europe at Microsoft, joined AE's Digital Excellence Connect 2026 event to discuss what it takes to move from AI experimentation to AI applications that actually deliver value. According to Lillie, the difference comes down to two things: technology maturity and organisational readiness. Many organisations focus on one, while underestimating the other. That is often where progress stalls. #AI #DigitalExcellence #Microsoft #AppsThatMatter #AE

𝗧𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗮𝗻𝗱𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝗮𝗻 𝗮𝗽𝗽 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗱𝗮𝘆. 𝗠𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲, 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗱𝗼 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗽 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲. And that's exactly the point. Great product design isn't about flashy interfaces. It's about removing friction before users even notice it's there. That's the philosophy behind 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝗕𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝘁 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗽𝗽: a complete mobile-first rebuild designed around quick actions and clear insights for entrepreneurs, SMEs and accountants. We are proud to share that this work has been nominated for the UX Design Awards, the global mark for outstanding experiences. Together with Billit, QuietLoud, formerly AE Studio, combined user research, product strategy, UX/UI design and engineering to rethink the mobile experience from the ground up. Congratulations to everyone who contributed to this achievement. Read the full article here and vote for the Billit companion app from 7 July: https://hubs.ly/Q04nJTN_0 #UXDesign #UXDesignAwards #ProductDesign #DigitalExperience #Billit #AE #QuietLoud

An ice cream always tastes better when it comes as a surprise. 🍦 Thank you, Acerta, for the delicious treat.   A lovely gesture following the inspiring experience day Acerta’s marketing team spent at AE earlier this year, including an inspiration session by one of our colleagues. But above all, it was a token of appreciation for the strong collaboration we continue to build together every day.   From the consultants who help make a difference at Acerta day after day, to the broader AE expertise they can count on for inspiration and innovation: strong partnerships grow through working together, sharing knowledge and strengthening one another.   Thank you, Acerta. Here’s to many more great moments together.   #Acerta #Partnership #Collaboration #DigitalExcellence #AE

AI is easy to talk about. Much harder to build, secure and scale in real business environments. That’s why this recognition matters.   AE has earned the Microsoft Advanced Specialisation: 𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝗔𝗜 𝗔𝗽𝗽𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝗠𝗶𝗰𝗿𝗼𝘀𝗼𝗳𝘁 𝗔𝘇𝘂𝗿𝗲. It’s Microsoft’s highest-level validation for partners who design, build and deploy intelligent AI-powered applications on Azure, meeting strict standards for security, performance and responsible AI.   To achieve it, AE passed an independent third-party audit and demonstrated proven expertise across the Azure AI stack, from AI platform services and application development to data integration and cloud-native deployment.   For our teams, this confirms the way we build AI applications: not as isolated experiments, but as reliable, secure and embedded solutions that help people work better.   A proud milestone for everyone involved.   Read the full article here: https://hubs.ly/Q04mYqjf0   #MicrosoftAzure #AI #AzureAI #ResponsibleAI #DigitalInnovation #SmartApps #AE

We're still feeling the energy from Digital Excellence Connect 2026. What a day. Together with 700+ business and technology leaders, we explored what it takes to turn digital ambition into real impact. We talked about AI agents, AI-ready data, agentic software development, software security, architecture, customer experience and the organisational choices behind successful transformation. A huge thank you to everyone who made it happen: 👉 𝗢𝘂𝗿 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗿𝘀 — Peter van Hees, Valerie Taerwe, 🛡Jo Van Eyck, Anna Mamaliga, Kenny Follet, Reginald Warlop, Christoph Neut, Lillie Harris & Guust Franssens (Microsoft), Jeroen Ruytings, Emma Houben, Rein Daelman (Aikido), Jeroen Haegebaert, Jonathan Lessard (Axify), Maxim Verbiest, Jeremy Eder (Red Hat), Eberhard Wolff (SWAGLab GmbH), Vincent Verstraete, Sophie de Kok (Hg), Tom Weyers (BOMA België), Franky Schouwer & Roshni Bhogaita (Q8 & Storyblok), Ivan Verbesselt (Mediagenix) and Jan Blondeel (Vinçotte): thank you for your honesty, depth and energy. You made this day genuinely worth attending. 👉 𝗢𝘂𝗿 𝗴𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁𝘀 — 700+ curious, driven people who joined us for a full day of keynotes, customer stories, expert sessions and conversations. 👉 𝗢𝘂𝗿 𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀 — Microsoft, Red Hat, Storyblok, Axify, Aikido Security, LDS Advisory and Umbau: thank you for being part of the programme and helping us bring Digital Excellence Connect to life. 👉 𝗢𝘂𝗿 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝘄 — the people who worked behind the scenes for months to make everything feel effortless. It never is, and we know it. Digital excellence is not built in isolation. It is built through collaboration, curiosity and the ambition to keep moving forward. See you at the next edition. #DigitalExcellenceConnect #AE #DigitalExcellence #ArtificialIntelligence #AI

From digital excellence to festival energy. After a day full of insights, customer stories and sharp conversations, it’s time to close Digital Excellence Connect the AE way: with food, music and Scrumrock. To everyone still here: enjoy the evening, share your best moments and tag us. #Scrumrock #DigitalExcellenceConnect #AE

And just like that, we've reached the end of the programme. But we're closing in style. First, Reginald Warlop, CIO of imec — one of Europe's most respected research and innovation organisations, operating at the absolute frontier of technology — takes the stage for the closing keynote. When the CIO of imec reflects on digital leadership, on what it takes to build and run technology at that level of complexity and ambition, it is worth every bit of attention. Then Christoph Neut, CEO of AE, wraps up Digital Excellence Connect. Thank you to everyone who joined us today: our speakers, clients, partners, guests and crew. For now, we’re closing the content programme and heading into Scrumrock. #DigitalExcellenceConnect #DigitalLeadership #AE #DigitalExcellence #ArtificialIntelligence #AI

This is the part of Digital Excellence Connect we are most proud of: our clients speaking for themselves. Real stories from organisations working on concrete digital challenges. Hg — Sophie de Kok, Senior Executive Data & AI, shares how Hg Capital turns AI into scalable business impact across their own organisation and a portfolio of 50 companies. BOMA België — Tom Weyers, Product Manager Digital Solutions, explains how BOMA transformed fragmented product knowledge into a smart AI assistant that handles 200+ queries a day, saving every employee up to an hour of searching. Q8 & Storyblok — Franky Schouwer and Roshni Bhogaita show how Q8 is building a fast, scalable and AI-ready digital platform by leveraging Storyblok's modern headless CMS — accelerating marketing velocity, increasing business flexibility and future-proofing customer experiences across channels. Mediagenix — Ivan Verbesselt, Chief Strategy & Marketing Officer, shares how Mediagenix moved from scattered AI experimentation to a structured programme with a validated use case backlog, role-based coaching and a scalable operating model. Vinçotte — Jan Blondeel, CIO, explains how Vinçotte transformed their data platform into an AI-powered decision accelerator, giving customers self-service access to inspection insights in plain language and eliminating days of lead time for data analysis. Different organisations, different challenges, one common thread: digital excellence becomes real when it creates measurable impact. #DigitalExcellenceConnect #CustomerSuccess #AE #DigitalExcellence #ArtificialIntelligence #AI

Business impact on the main stage. Technical depth on the second. Three of the sharpest tech minds in the room took the floor this afternoon and pulled no punches. Lillie Harris (Microsoft) — Azure Business Lead for Western Europe, with 33 years of enterprise experience — explored how frontier AI applications combine data, intelligence and agentic automation to solve high-value problems, and how next-generation multi-agent architectures enable organisations to move from insights to autonomous action. Jeremy Eder (Red Hat) — Distinguished Engineer and one of the driving forces behind llm-d, the distributed inference project co-created with Google — argued that AI is collapsing the feedback loops that software organisations were built around. The constraint is no longer how fast you can produce code. It's how quickly your teams can ideate and navigate your own internal processes. Eberhard Wolff (SWAGLab GmbH) — architect, author of 200+ articles and books, and 20+ years at the intersection of business and technology — took a pragmatic look at AI in software architecture: where AI can support architects today, where its limitations become clear, and why architectural trade-offs, context and long-term responsibility cannot be delegated to AI. Three different angles. One consistent message: understanding where AI creates value, and where human judgement remains essential. #DigitalExcellenceConnect #SoftwareArchitecture #AE #DigitalExcellence #ArtificialIntelligence #AI