COMMON EUROPE CONGRESS 2025: Full Schedule

WELCOME TO COMMON EUROPE CONGRESS 2025

Common Europe, in collaboration with Common Sweden, is delighted to be holding its annual flagship event, Common Europe Congress, in the friendly city of Gothenburg offering extensive education, networking and relaxation opportunities.

You will be able to validate your attendance (Check-In to sessions) using your personal schedule.

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09:00 CEST

Break

Thursday June 5, 2025 09:00 - 09:10 CEST

01 - Expo

Thursday June 5, 2025 09:00 - 09:10 CEST
01 - Expo

Break

09:10 CEST

CrossKey Power Briefing

Thursday June 5, 2025 09:10 - 10:10 CEST

12 - R7

Speakers

Wennie Allen

Executive Director of Product Management, IBM Power, IBM

Wennie Allen is the Executive Director of Product Management for IBM Power. Wennie oversees teams responsible for developing and delivering impactful Power products and offerings, including the Power platform, IBM i, and AIX. She plays a pivotal role in shaping the future of IBM Power, driving... Read More →

Thursday June 5, 2025 09:10 - 10:10 CEST
12 - R7

09:10 CEST

The IBM i benefits of “instant disk copy” and the differences between ‘FlashCopy’ and ‘Snapshots’ External storage features explained.

Thursday June 5, 2025 09:10 - 10:10 CEST

09 - R14

All IBM external storage units can perform “instant copy” of all the disks of your IBM i LPAR.
Historically made using the ‘FlashCopy’ technology, these “instant copies” are now possible with a new method called ‘Snapshot’ or ‘Policy based FlashCopy’.
Discover the differences and how to use those two technologies to simplify and secure operations on your IBM i partitions:
-   To create easily manually a copy of your prod to test a change on it (or create a backup copy before a version change)
-   To perform daily several planned “instant copy” to create regular protection against ransomware or data corruption
-   To reduce, using IBM i commands, the backup window to less than 2 minutes
- To refresh nearly instantly your test/acceptance/preprod environment

By Pascal Ruckebusch

Speakers

Pascal Ruckebusch

Président, Technical Director, M81

Pascal Ruckebusch adopted IBM i at the exact beginning of AS/400, three decades ago, and never left it … Pascal's experience on IBM i covers system and application development, training and operations. Twice CTO of 2 major IBM business partners in France, his technical skills and... Read More →

Thursday June 5, 2025 09:10 - 10:10 CEST
09 - R14

IBM i, Systems management

09:10 CEST

Db2 for i times 2 = Awesome

Thursday June 5, 2025 09:10 - 10:10 CEST

05 - F3

In this brand new session, two Db2 for i experts from IBM join forces and examine topics, technologies, and techniques that they use to help IBM i clients achieve success on Db2 for i. Attend this session and you'll get a confluence of Db2 for i knowledge, technique, and wisdom.

Scott Forstie has 36 years of experience developing Db2 for i and IBM i operating system features. His passion for SQL includes many innovations that are intended to help all personas that involve the IBM i.

Morten Buur Rasmussen has over 35 years of experience optimizing IBM i performance, specializing in Db2 for i, application efficiency, and system tuning. His passion for performance engineering drives him to find practical solutions that help DB engineers fine-tune databases and applications for peak efficiency.

Speakers

Scott Forstie

Senior Technical Staff Member, IBM

Scott Forstie is a Senior Technical Staff Member within IBM i development and spends most of his time working as the Db2 for i Architect. He has worked on IBM operating system development since joining IBM in 1989.
Scott is a frequently published author, speaker at industry events... Read More →

Thursday June 5, 2025 09:10 - 10:10 CEST
05 - F3

IBM i Div.

09:10 CEST

Compliance and security management on IBM i with IBM PowerSC

Thursday June 5, 2025 09:10 - 10:10 CEST

06 - R17

Managing the security and compliance on different IBM i systems and partitions can be a challenging task. Changing a setting is quite simple, but automatically checking if a security setting remains the same over time and getting notified about a change is a challenge. IBM offers a product called IBM PowerSC. This product uses compliance profiles to perform the necessary security configuration and monitors that the systems remain compliant. It offers a single user interface that lets you monitor the compliance and security of all your IBM i, Linux on Power, AIX, and VIOS partitions on your Power System. It provides more security functions for malware detection, PTF level currency checking, and more. This session shows you what PowerSC is, how it works, and based on the Center for Internet Security (CIS) IBM i benchmark how to apply a compliance profile. You also see the reporting capabilities of the product, which offers administrators and auditors a comprehensive overview of the security state of your IBM i landscape.

Speakers

Thomas Barlen

Senior Managing Consultant, IBM

IT consultant architecting and implementing security solutions mainly in the IBM i and AIX area. I am also a frequent speaker at technical conferences. Specialties: Cryptography, Single Signon, Security assessments, Access Control concepts and implementation, IBM i cryptographic programming... Read More →

Thursday June 5, 2025 09:10 - 10:10 CEST
06 - R17

Power Hardware / Storage

09:10 CEST

The Network Matters for Storage

LIMITED

Thursday June 5, 2025 09:10 - 10:10 CEST

14 - R5/R6

Limited Capacity seats available

Lars Hoonk - Field Application Engineer at Brocade (Broadcom) talks about Storage Area Network (SAN) and describes the strengths of Fibre Channel vs. IP based SAN solutions.

Speakers

Lars Hoonk

Field Application Engineer, Broadcom BSN

Thursday June 5, 2025 09:10 - 10:10 CEST
14 - R5/R6

Storage

10:30 CEST

IBM Power NDA Briefing for Business Partners, VAD & ISV

Thursday June 5, 2025 10:30 - 11:30 CEST

12 - R7

Speakers

Wennie Allen

Executive Director of Product Management, IBM Power, IBM

Thursday June 5, 2025 10:30 - 11:30 CEST
12 - R7

10:30 CEST

DS8K SafeGuarded Copy and Cyber Resiliency

Thursday June 5, 2025 10:30 - 11:30 CEST

14 - R5/R6

Speakers

Henrik Grönberg

IBM

Thursday June 5, 2025 10:30 - 11:30 CEST
14 - R5/R6

Storage

11:40 CEST

Ask the Experts - IBM i

Thursday June 5, 2025 11:40 - 12:30 CEST

02 - F4/F5

Moderators

Pete Massiello

IBM i Advisor, Massiello Holding Corp.

Pete Massiello has been working with the AS/400, iSeries, IBM i since 1989, focusing on systems management and technical support. He has held numerous technical positions through out his career. He is the President of iTech Solutions Group, an IBM Premier Business Partner delivering... Read More →

Speakers

Steve Cast

Practice Director/Treasurer Common Europe, Fresche Solutions

I lead the European team at Fresche Solutions, one of the world's largest IBM i dedicated teams outside of IBM.

In my role as Practice Director of Fresche Europe, I continue to build on the success of my 40+ years of working in this sector, by combining the comprehensive IBM i too

... Read More →

Niels Liisberg

Chief Software Architect, Partner & IBM Champion, System & Method

Steve Will

IBM i CTO & Chief Architect, IBM

Birgitta HAUSER

Database and Software Architect, BIRGITTA HAUSER - MODERNIZATION

Birgitta Hauser worked on the IBM i and its predecessors since 1992. She graduated with a business economics diploma, and started programming on the AS/400 in 1992. She worked and works as traditional RPG Programmer but also as Database and Software Architect, focusing on IBM i... Read More →

Tim Rowe

STSM - IBM i Business Architect, IBM USA

Tim Rowe is a Senior Technical Staff Member within IBM i development and spends most of his time working as the Architect for Application Development and Systems Management. He has been working on the IBM i operating system since 1989. Tim is a frequent author, industry speaker and... Read More →

Charles Guarino

CEO & IBM Champion, Central Park Data Systems

Charles Guarino believes in the “power” of IBM Power Systems. His career reflects his dedication and interest in bringing the platform and its solutions to others and as a result has been recognized as an IBM Champion.

He is a member of COMMON’s Speaker Excellence Hall of Fame and a proud recipient of the Al Barsa Memorial Scholarship Award. Additionally, he participates on COMMON’s Strategic Education Team. Other professional endeavors have included the roles of President and monthly Q&A host... Read More →

Rudi van Helvoirt

Technical Director, van Helvoirt Beheer

After having started as a System/38 programmer in 1986. In 1989 the switch was made to system programming and systems management.Being passionate about systems management he founded van Helvoirt Automatisering in 1993.Rudi enjoys helping IBM i customers ever since for running their... Read More →