Brussels, Belgium — On November 14, 2024, Peter Jans, Cloud Manager at ACA Group, and Sven Houtmeyers, CTO at Publiq, will join industry leaders at the AWS for Industries Symposium in Brussels to present insights on a pioneering data-driven platform. Developed in collaboration with ACA Group, Publiq, and the Flemish Department of Culture, Youth and Media (CJM), this Data Mesh-enabled platform has been created to revolutionize the Flemish cultural sector by fostering cross-institutional data sharing and enhancing public engagement with cultural offerings. A platform for resilience and growth in the cultural sector Amid the challenges posed by the recent pandemic, the Flemish cultural sector has undergone significant strain, prompting a renewed focus on digital transformation as a recovery strategy. This initiative, part of CJM's Targeted Digital Transformation program, aims to connect audiences with cultural events through personalized recommendations and foster informed decision-making among cultural organizers. By creating a unified cloud-native platform called the UiTwisselingsplatform , CJM promotes data-sharing across a broad cultural network using an ecosystem powered by Linked Open Data and OSLO-standardization. This platform allows cultural data providers and users—ranging from event organizers to policymakers—to benefit from enriched audience insights, optimized ticketing, and streamlined administration, all within a secure, GDPR-compliant environment. Flanders Digital Awards: A double nomination for impact and sustainability This collaborative effort has earned CJM two nominations at the 2023 Flanders Digital Awards , recognizing the UiTwisselingsplatform’s transformative and sustainable approach. Competing in the Best Digital Transformation and Most Sustainable Project categories, the project highlights the sector's potential to collectively manage shared infrastructure and reduce redundancy in data entry and analysis, lowering costs and facilitating growth. Enabling innovation through Data Mesh and Cloud Native principles Underpinning this platform is the Data Mesh approach, which empowers organizations of varying technological maturity to collaborate effectively within their domains while sharing valuable data as "products." This setup encourages seamless data exchanges between "producers" and "consumers," enabling the cultural sector to scale sustainably and efficiently as more stakeholders join the platform to either access open data or share it with others to build new services and products. This platform using AWS at it’s core has been extended with Cloud Native toolings mainly Kubernetes, Tekton, etcd, containerD, Harbor, Istio, EFK, KNative, SonarCube, Flux, and Terraform to create a Platform Engineering toolset. This empowers the cloud engineers and the software engineers to focus on what they to best, self-service its needs and have the platform operate by itself with minimal manual interventions, resilience and auto-scaling.

Antwerp, September 12, 2024 – Following the success of the first edition, we held the second MongoDB Belgium Meetup at our Antwerp office. Once again, this meetup brought together a group of passionate MongoDB users and tech professionals for an engaging and interactive session. This time, the focus was on creating powerful search experiences with MongoDB Atlas and the latest Vector Search technologies. Creating Search Experiences with Atlas Vector Search Kenneth Westelinck, Senior Solution Architect at ACA Group, led a hands-on workshop titled "Creating Search Experiences with Atlas Vector Search." In this session, Kenneth demonstrated how MongoDB can be used to develop robust search functionalities, crucial for modern, customer-centric websites. During the workshop, the importance of a well-functioning search feature was highlighted. "If a customer can't find what they're looking for, they're likely to shop elsewhere," Kenneth explained. He showcased how MongoDB's Full Text Search helps retrieve data, even when search terms contain spelling mistakes. Participants also learned how Vector Search can handle more advanced queries, such as finding "fluffy animals," with results ranging from pets to children's books about Sesame Street. An interactive and insightful workshop The meetup offered plenty of opportunities for interaction and questions, resulting in lively discussions among attendees. Thanks to the live demos and hands-on exercises, participants were able to experience firsthand how easy it is to work with MongoDB Atlas and its advanced search capabilities. Kenneth’s closing words? "Those who weren't here missed out – it was a fun and insightful workshop!" The MongoDB Community continues to grow Like the first meetup, this session once again showcased the innovative potential of MongoDB and the growing popularity of NoSQL technology in Belgium. The success of these meetups shows that the MongoDB Belgium Community is expanding, and we look forward to continuing this momentum in future meetups.

We are pleased to announce that ACA Group has achieved the prestigious AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner Status . This recognition is a testament to our commitment to excellence, innovation, and customer satisfaction in the realm of cloud services. The AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner Status is awarded to organizations that demonstrate a high level of technical expertise, successful client engagements, and a proven track record of delivering innovative AWS solutions. This achievement highlights our dedication to providing top-notch services and solutions to our clients, helping them to leverage the full potential of Amazon Web Services (AWS). Achieving this status required an evaluation process, including an assessment of our technical capabilities, AWS certifications, customer success stories, and overall performance in delivering AWS services. Our team has worked hard to meet and exceed these criteria, showcasing our skills in cloud architecture, implementation, and management. This milestone is a significant achievement for us. It reflects our deep expertise in AWS technologies and our commitment to delivering exceptional value to our clients. — Peter Jans, Cloud and Innovation Architect Business Unit Manager at ACA Group More expertise, better customer service With this new status, we gain access to a range of benefits that will enhance our ability to serve our clients even better. These benefits include advanced technical training, exclusive resources, closer collaboration with Account Managers of AWS and ACA and priority access to AWS support, enabling us to stay at the forefront of cloud technology and continue to deliver innovative solutions, such as: Cloud native platforms with Kubernetes , Service Mesh, Kafka, DevOps, GitOps and SecOps with Terraform at it’s core Building Developer Platforms with Platform Engineering on AWS Machine Learning (LLM’s, Chatbots, GenAI) and Digital Twins Data Data Mesh on AWS FinOps Cost Monitoring for AWS Security, Observability and SIEM We want to thank our customers, partners and dedicated team who have been instrumental in achieving this status. This achievement not only validates our efforts but also inspires us to strive for even greater heights in our journey to drive digital transformation and business success through AWS! 🚀