Hasselt, 2025 – ACA Group, an IT company with a broad digital services portfolio spanning digital strategy, AI, cloud computing and custom software, is launching its new AWS Competence Center. Built on more than 10 years of AWS expertise, this center supports Belgian companies at every stage of their digital journey. It serves as a launchpad for innovation, boosting competitive strength and tackling societal challenges. Technological Edge In an increasingly digital world, cloud computing drives progress. The Competence Center provides organizations with access to the latest technologies and expert guidance, empowering them to enhance efficiency and strengthen their competitive position while contributing to regional economic growth. Collaboration for Innovation ACA Group is teaming up with AWS to help businesses effectively deploy modern technologies like Artificial Intelligence, cloud-native solutions, machine learning, and data analytics. This partnership enables companies to develop new products and services, compete on a global scale, and encourages collaboration among businesses, startups, and research institutions to push industry boundaries. Societal Impact Beyond economic benefits, cloud computing plays a key role in addressing societal challenges. The Competence Center helps organizations develop innovative solutions in areas such as cybersecurity, sustainability, and public sector digitalization. This approach contributes to building a more efficient and secure government, a greener industry, and a stronger digital footprint for Belgium. Peter Jans, Cloud Manager at ACA Group, sums it up: "This Competence Center is an investment in the future. Together with AWS, we’re not only helping companies innovate and grow, but also contributing to a better world." Our AWS partnership

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! 🚀

26 March 2024 - ACA Group is proud to announce its exclusive partnership with MongoDB , a leading modern database platform renowned for its flexibility and performance. This strategic collaboration signifies a milestone in our dedication to driving innovation within Belgium's tech industry. We are excited to welcome ACA Group as the newest member of our MongoDB partner ecosystem. We see increasing traction for our product in the Belgian market and a strong partner like ACA Group, who are known for supporting their customers with innovative and quality solutions, is an absolute asset to meet the growing demand for MongoDB experts. — Katrien Pagnaer, Regional Vice President at MongoDB Exclusive partnership This partnership allows us to create an even better connection between the MongoDB product and our customer. We gain access to MongoDB's resources, expertise and additional support, resulting in high-quality service for our customers. Moreover, this partnership offers us the opportunity to respond very quickly to new market trends. For example, we recently applied MongoDB Atlas Vector Search when working with LLMs (Large Language Models), creating better solutions for our customers. In our time working with MongoDB, we have seen its evolution from an on-premises database to a cloud provider-agnostic solution, with hosting capabilities on Azure, AWS and GCP, and a host of innovative services. MongoDB is a proven , a powerful product that has attracted an impressive group of experts within the Benelux. We are honored to work with them and this partnership represents an important step forward in our mission to guide companies to innovative solutions. — Sébastien Roels, Business Unit Manager at ACA Group I am convinced that the collaboration between MongoDB and ACA Group will have a significant impact on the Belgian data world. The dedication of the ACA experts and their technical know-how will enable us to work together to deliver high-quality solutions to our customers. — Sander De Vos, Principal Solutions Architect at MongoDB ACA Group is first Belgian MUG Leader In addition to announcing our partnership, we are proud to take on the role of the first Belgian MUG Leader of the MongoDB User Group ! This once again emphasizes ACA Group's commitment to actively building a MongoDB community in Belgium. By organizing meetups we aim to share knowledge and bring enthusiasts and experts together. It’s great to see ACA Group taking the leadership on building the MongoDB User Group, allowing MongoDB enthusiasts to meet and inspire each other. — Kevin Timman, Regional Director Benelux at MongoDB First Belgian MongoDB meetup: 7 May 2024 🚀 Want to join us? Register for our first MongoDB meetup in our office in Antwerp on May 7, 2024. Together with some experts and enthusiasts, we will delve deeper into the latest trends in data management and discover the many possibilities of MongoDB's database technology.

We're happy to announce that ACA Group has joined forces with SUSE and is now officially SUSE One Gold Partner ! Strengthened by this partnership, we want to offer SUSE Rancher to our customers and provide excellent integration, implementation, configuration and support for Kubernetes, backed by Rancher. With our expertise in Kubernetes, we can bring or improve the Kubernetes platforms of our clients and combine it with the only open Kubernetes Management Platform. This platform vastly simplifies the management, delivery and monitoring of containerized workloads. Kubernetes (k8s) has become the de-facto standard in modern organizations dealing with containers, as more and more companies are evolving from large monoliths to microservices. Kubernetes allows you to run and orchestrate multiple container workloads . Now the management and visibility of what's running and how it's running is a whole lot easier and more visible with SUSE Rancher . The partnership with ACA Group This partnership is the direct result of our belief in the Cloud-Native strategy and hands-on build of expertise on the stack. We are looking forward into reselling SUSE Rancher for those customer looking for Enterprise Support and assisting in providing a hosted SUSE Rancher on their own premise or in AWS. The expertise of our partnership broadens the ability to innovate fast, tackle real world challenges and develop sustainable, shared business opportunities with real added value to our customers. SUSE Rancher is already being used on Kubernetes clusters at a number of our customers such as Corilus, H.Essers, Vlaamse Overheid, Lineas, Clarebout and others. We are convinced that this is the start of a great partnership and continued growth for our customers! It is a pleasure to inform you that the ACA Group has entered the SUSE Gold Partner status. Their agile craftsmanship and passion for customers will help both organisations to boost the Belgium market with Enterprise Kubernetes and Edge solutions, which will be the base to empower people through innovation, technology and knowledge. I am really looking forward to building our relationship even further. — Jeroen Overmaet, Country Manager Benelux at SUSE The possibilities of SUSE Rancher Last year , SUSE acquired Rancher Labs to help customers accelerate their digital transformation journeys with true open source solutions. We also believe it is an enabler to facilitate legacy / application modernization from a tooling / platform perspective. In the coming years many customers are faced to provide a unified management pane over new and existing infrastructure and applications. SUSE Rancher is the only free and open K ubernetes Management with optional Enterprise Support for teams adopting containers to deliver Kubernetes-as-a-service. It addresses the operational and security challenges of managing multiple Kubernetes clusters across any infrastructure (eg. Public Clouds AWS, Azure or GCP) or OnPremise (eg. VMWare) landscape. * Kubernetes clusters can be added from multiple 'sources' SUSE Rancher also provides DevOps teams with a set of integrated tools . Basically, it's a tool that provides an easy way to set up one or more Kubernetes clusters and provides a lot of features out of the box. These are security, a centralized software catalog, unified cluster management, monitoring, logging, continuous deployment and integration and much more! We've been working with SUSE Rancher on production platforms for some time now, and are convinced that it is the ideal solution for our customers that want to manage the platform themselves, or build a Kubernetes cluster OnPremise, without needing to have a deep knowledge of Kubernetes, HELM or yaml. * The management interface of SUSE Rancher Our partnership with SUSE Rancher is a confirmation of our direction and believe in open standards and hybrid solution that can be tailored towards the needs of our customer. I believe Rancher is a spot-on solution for those customer looking to setup and maintain Kubernetes and Cloud-Native landscapes in the future. I'm looking forward to work with SUSE Rancher in the future to fortify their position in Belgium. — Peter Jans, Cloud and Innovation Architect Business Unit Manager at ACA Group