Customer Success Stories
De Watergroep is fully committed to innovation, sustainability, and digital transformation in the production and distribution of pure drinking water. To this end, De Watergroep made the strategic choice to use Microsoft Azure, supported and managed via Inetum's Azure Platform Solution (APS). "We are going for cloud-first," says IT Operations Manager Philip De Ruyck, "but not cloud-only."
Published: 06/02/2026
De Watergroep is the largest drinking water company in Flanders. With over 1,400,000 connections and more than 3.2 million customers spread across 177 municipalities, the organization supplies clean drinking water every day via a network of more than 34,000 kilometers of pipes. "Our core business is and will remain water production and distribution," says Philip De Ruyck. "But at the same time, we want to be a customer-focused and sustainable company. That's why we are investing heavily in our digital transformation."
This ambition is reflected, among other things, in a cloud-first strategy, in which Microsoft Azure plays a central role and for which De Watergroep entrusts platform management to Inetum's Azure Platform Solution. "As a utility company, we made the move to the public cloud fairly quickly," Philip De Ruyck continues. "We have a cloud-first strategy in principle, but we don't swear by cloud-only. We also manage part of our IT environment on-premises and we work partly in rCloud, Inetum's private cloud. Regardless, we firmly believe that the public cloud offers us major advantages."
The choice of Azure is therefore no coincidence. "We are a fairly Microsoft-oriented company," says Philip De Ruyck. "And, of course, the Microsoft stack fits nicely with Azure. So when you develop or introduce new things, it makes sense to see if you can do that in Azure. It makes it easier to manage, it's cheaper, and it's better integrated."
However, choosing Azure also presented challenges, particularly in terms of governance. "In a private or on-premises environment, there is a clear separation between the infrastructure partner and the application partner," explains Philip De Ruyck. "In Azure, that line becomes blurred. Application partners want to make rapid progress and set up parts of the infrastructure themselves, after which the infrastructure partner has to keep the environment stable and secure. Finding the right balance was a challenge."
This lack of clarity also increased the risk of uncontrolled growth in resources. "It sometimes happened that a department set something up and, after a while, no one knew exactly what it was for or who was responsible for managing it. But resources in Azure cost money, even when no one is using them." For De Watergroep, it was clear: there was a need for clear agreements, better visibility, and more control. "Thanks to APS, we have refocused that dividing line," says Philip De Ruyck. "There is now clarity about which part belongs to the infrastructure partner and which part to the application partners. This ensures greater homogeneity, a more efficiently manageable environment, and better cost control."
De Watergroep uses APS as a managed service, with Inetum responsible for the day-to-day management of Azure resources. "We don't do any deployments ourselves; that's done entirely by Inetum," explains Philip De Ruyck. "We monitor via dashboards and can see what is happening and what it costs , but the operational management is handled by Inetum." This collaboration is very structured. "We have monthly service meetings where all aspects are discussed. We identify areas for improvement, which Inetum then responds to. In this way, APS has grown out of our specific needs in the field."
In addition to governance, APS also offers visibility and control options. "We now have a much better overview via dashboards and reporting. You can quickly see which resources are running, what they cost, and where a problem lies. This is also possible in Azure itself, but it is often too detailed. Thanks to APS, we have faster access to the right information."
“Application partners mainly want a fast rollout, but if all the rules are not sufficiently known, this does not always go smoothly. Thanks to clear governance, they can now work faster, but also more correctly. This leads to fewer delays and increases satisfaction on their side.”
For De Watergroep, the use of APS provides a way to focus internally on the domains where their own employees truly make a difference. “We prefer to deploy our people on core tasks. The specialized knowledge required to keep Azure up to date is not easy to build internally, especially in today’s labor market, where attracting IT profiles remains a challenge.” This is also why collaboration with Inetum is so important, says Philip De Ruyck: “Inetum has the necessary experts in-house and can guarantee continuity.”
De Watergroep will continue in the coming period to focus on a mix of public cloud, private cloud via rCloud, and on-premise infrastructure. For each case, De Watergroep makes a deliberate assessment. “What we are doing now, we want to further expand,” says Philip De Ruyck. “We are looking at further optimization in terms of security, costs, and architecture. With APS, we now have a solid foundation for that.”
