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.

15:35 CEST

MariaDB Server and MariaDB MaxScale - Enterprise class database technology for IBM Power

Tuesday June 3, 2025 15:35 - 16:35 CEST

14 - R5/R6

MariaDB Server is very popular database for any type of workload, and MariaDB Enterprise Server is the Enterprise database system that builds on this to deliver an Enterprise class database system which together with MariaDB MaxScale provides High Availability, Scalability and world class support and services, all available on the IBM Power platform. In this talk I will cover some of the foundations of MariaDB Enterprise Server and MariaDB MaxScale and what features are provided. There are also many new features in MariaDB Enterprise Server, such as Vector search for AI applications, enhanced JSON support and more, which will be covered.
One particular feature of MariaDB will be coverered in more detail, the ease of migrating from other database systems to MariaDB, in particular Oracle.

Speakers

Anders Karlsson

Principal Sales Engineer, MariaDB

Database Sales Engineer with more than 40 years experience from relational databases. Develops tools and utilities and official MariaDB contributor, assistst in MariaDB implementations, specialized in database migrations. Has worked with many different relational database systems... Read More →

Tuesday June 3, 2025 15:35 - 16:35 CEST
14 - R5/R6

AIX/Linux

16:45 CEST

Latest game-changers in the MariaDB Server - Catalogs and Vectors"MariaDB Server continues to redefine database performance and efficiency with groundbreaking features in its latest Long-Term Support (LTS) releases.

Tuesday June 3, 2025 16:45 - 17:45 CEST

08 - R11/R12

With MariaDB Server 11.8 LTS, MariaDB Vector introduces advanced vector search capabilities, empowering applications with real-time analytics, superior semantic search, and efficient AI-driven functionalities directly within the database.Looking ahead, the upcoming MariaDB Server LTS release will feature MariaDB Catalogs, a robust multi-tenancy solution tailored specifically for cloud and SaaS providers. MariaDB Catalogs optimizes hardware utilization through true isolation between tenants, significantly enhancing resource efficiency and reducing overall infrastructure costs. By consolidating workloads securely within a single server instance, service providers can dramatically lower their total cost of ownership while ensuring exceptional performance and scalability.

By Monti Widenius

Speakers

Michael "Monty" Widenius

Creator of MySQL and MariaDB, CTO of MariaDB, MariaDB

Tuesday June 3, 2025 16:45 - 17:45 CEST
08 - R11/R12

AIX/Linux

12:10 CEST

Leverage Red Hat Ansible to automate your IBM Power Systems

LIMITED

Wednesday June 4, 2025 12:10 - 13:10 CEST

11 - R9

Limited Capacity seats available

Red Hat Ansible is a mighty Configuration Management System that can help you to automate all IT processes.
This capability is foundational for the success of Ansible, since automating all processes, end-to-end, with the same tools is the key to highly efficient and effective automation.
One of the less-known capabilities of Ansible is its ability to manage Power systems.
Now Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform can run on your IBM Power systems, so you can use it to automate without compromises!

By Fabio Alessandro Locati

Speakers

Fabio Alessandro Locati

Principal Specialist Solution Architect, Red Hat

Fabio Alessandro Locati - commonly known as Fale - is an EMEA Principal Solutions Architect at Red Hat, public speaker, published author, and Open Source contributor. His main areas of expertise are Linux, containers (ie: Kubernetes), automation (ie: Ansible), security, cloud (mainly... Read More →

Wednesday June 4, 2025 12:10 - 13:10 CEST
11 - R9

AIX/Linux

12:10 CEST

Securing AI – Challenges and Best Practices

LIMITED

Wednesday June 4, 2025 12:10 - 13:10 CEST

10 - R15

Limited Capacity seats available

AI becomes a critical component of enterprise IT, ensuring its security is paramount. AI systems introduce new risks, from data privacy concerns to adversarial attacks and model integrity threats. This session will explore the key security challenges associated with AI, particularly in environments running on IBM Power Systems and Linux.

We will discuss best practices for securing AI applications, including data protection strategies, governance frameworks, and risk mitigation techniques. Attendees will gain insights into how AI-driven security solutions can enhance threat detection and response while ensuring compliance with industry regulations.

Speakers

Mirza Ćutuk

Head of AI, InnoBoost SA

Mirza Ćutuk, M.Sc., is a Solutions Architect specializing in Data and AI. With a strong background in developing innovative solutions that bridge the gap between technology and societal needs, Mirza has been at the forefront of creating sustainable and impactful technological frameworks... Read More →

Wednesday June 4, 2025 12:10 - 13:10 CEST
10 - R15

AIX/Linux, AI

10:30 CEST

What's new in AIX 7.3: New features, capabilities and best practices

Monday June 15, 2026 10:30 - 11:30 CEST

08 - ST CLAIR 3A

Are you responsible for managing and maintaining AIX systems? Are you looking to migrate to AIX 7.3 and are interested in learning more about what's new with AIX 7.3? Come listen and learn all about some of the new features and capabilities available with AIX 7.3. We’ll talk about many new features for 7.3, like DNF, pigz, bash, new tools for managing AIX images, Live Update enhancements, and more. Chris will also discuss some of the new features and improvements available in recent TL/SP levels, such as AIX Fast Failover for Fibre Channel Adapters and AIX JFS2 Log Shuffle. The session will also include several real-world AIX best practices and other interesting tips and tricks relating to AIX system administration.

Speakers

Upendra Rajan

Chris Gibson

Monday June 15, 2026 10:30 - 11:30 CEST
08 - ST CLAIR 3A

AIX/Linux

11:50 CEST

AIX Roadmap and Platform Innovations: Performance, Security, Availability and Operational Simplicity

Monday June 15, 2026 11:50 - 12:50 CEST

08 - ST CLAIR 3A

AIX continues to be the backbone of mission-critical workloads across industries, delivering unmatched performance, reliability, scalability, and security on IBM Power Systems.This session will provide an in-depth look at the AIX roadmap and recent feature enhancements, along with a preview of upcoming releases and strategic initiatives. We will explore how AIX continues to lead in performance, reliability, availability, and security while introducing modern automation and modernization tools that simplify operations and improve efficiency.Attendees will gain insights into how AIX aligns with Power11 innovations to help organizations modernize with confidence, protecting existing investments while enabling greater agility, scalability, and resilience for the years ahead.

Speakers

Sanket Rathi

Monday June 15, 2026 11:50 - 12:50 CEST
08 - ST CLAIR 3A

AIX/Linux

14:00 CEST

A Wishlist for the Future of IBM's Unix Beyond 2040

Monday June 15, 2026 14:00 - 15:00 CEST

08 - ST CLAIR 3A

What would AIX need to remain a compelling platform for the next two decades? This session is not an official roadmap—it's a technical wishlist from someone who has worked with AIX for over 20 years and wants to see it thrive. Consider it a letter to the Magi, or to IBM's AIX product management.We'll explore practical modernization paths: native package management that doesn't require sacrifices to ancient gods, first-class support for modern languages (good news: Rust and Go already work great—so why not make it official?), container tooling options, and open source integration that makes AIX attractive for new workloads—not just legacy migrations.Drawing from real experiments at the LibrePower lab (aix.librepower.org), we'll share what's possible today, what's frustratingly close, and what would transform AIX from "the system we maintain" into "the system we choose." Topics include: modern CLI tooling, security utilities, compilation wins and challenges, and the open source packages AIX desperately needs.This is a community discussion, not a vendor pitch. Bring your own wishes—and your honest frustrations. Let's draft that letter together.Opinions expressed are personal views of Hugo Blanco, not official IBM positions.

Speakers

Hugo Blanco

IBM Champion, SIXE

I work at SIXE, my own company. We are a small boutique formed by engineers specialized in IBM technologies, including advanced solutions for data centers and cybersecurity. We do it in the form of consulting, professional services, training and execution of turnkey projects. We... Read More →

Monday June 15, 2026 14:00 - 15:00 CEST
08 - ST CLAIR 3A

AIX/Linux

15:55 CEST

Zero Planned Downtime on AIX: Live Updates for Always-On Enterprises

Monday June 15, 2026 15:55 - 16:55 CEST

08 - ST CLAIR 3A

Enterprises running mission-critical workloads cannot afford planned outages for maintenance and updates. AIX Zero Planned Downtime (ZPD) capabilities are designed to eliminate this trade-off by enabling system updates while applications remain online.This session provides a deep dive into AIX ZPD technologies, with a focus on AIX Live Kernel Update and Live Library Update. Attendees will learn how these capabilities allow critical fixes and updates to be applied without rebooting systems or disrupting running workloads.Through architectural insights and a live demonstration, we will show how AIX enables continuous availability, reduces operational risk, and simplifies maintenance for always-on enterprise environments. Participants will leave with a clear understanding of where ZPD fits into their AIX strategy and how to adopt it effectively in production environments.

Speakers

Sanket Rathi

Monday June 15, 2026 15:55 - 16:55 CEST
08 - ST CLAIR 3A

AIX/Linux

17:05 CEST

KVM Virtualization on IBM Power

Monday June 15, 2026 17:05 - 18:05 CEST

08 - ST CLAIR 3A

KVM is an industry standard, OpenSource, Linux based virtualization technology available on many different hardware architectures. This session will provide an overview of the KVM capabilities of IBM Power10 and Power11 systems. We will review the hardware, firmware, and software requirements needed to enable KVM virtualization on the Power platform, right alongside existing existing LPARs. We will show how KVM can be deployed on Power, how how to manage it, and some common use cases for it.

Speakers

Brian King

Monday June 15, 2026 17:05 - 18:05 CEST
08 - ST CLAIR 3A

AIX/Linux

08:00 CEST

Icinga Stack on IBM Power

Tuesday June 16, 2026 08:00 - 09:00 CEST

08 - ST CLAIR 3A

This presentation show how to run the Icinga Monitoring and Observability on Linux, AIX and IBM i, how you can combine several options to build a complete monitoring and observability that can run on the IBM Power platform for the IBM Power platform.We will show how monitoring, logging and tracing can provide a complete overview of the resources of your infrastructure to cover all platforms including IBM Power systems and all other systems to provide a universal and common platform to monitor and observe your infrastructure.In addition we will present a new module that provides manual and auto remediation or escalation for problem handling using custom scripts, Ansible or other IaC tools.

Speakers

Toshaan Bharvani

CTO, VanTosh

Toshaan Bharvani is a IT consultant, currently self-employed at VanTosh, with a interest in Open Source Software and Open Source Hardware. He started his IT interest at a very early age, when his father gave him his first own PC components. Ever since he has been interested in IT... Read More →

Tuesday June 16, 2026 08:00 - 09:00 CEST
08 - ST CLAIR 3A

AIX/Linux

10:30 CEST

Deisn your own VS Code extension and extend Code for IBM i

Tuesday June 16, 2026 10:30 - 11:30 CEST

08 - ST CLAIR 3A

TBD

Speakers

Sébastien Julliand

Tech Lead R&D, I AND ME - IT TRAINING

Hi, I'm Seb! I am the R&D Tech Lead for i and me - IT Training and Solutions GmbH and an active contributors to IBM i open source projects.

Let's talk about anything related to software development, on IBM i or not, it doesn't mater to me. RPGLE, Java, TypeScript...I love them all... Read More →

Bena Benouar

Tuesday June 16, 2026 10:30 - 11:30 CEST
08 - ST CLAIR 3A

AIX/Linux

11:40 CEST

AI Accelration for Power with Spyre

Tuesday June 16, 2026 11:40 - 12:40 CEST

08 - ST CLAIR 3A

AI Accelration for Power with Spyre

Speakers

Brian King

Tuesday June 16, 2026 11:40 - 12:40 CEST
08 - ST CLAIR 3A

AIX/Linux

14:00 CEST

IaaS - Manage Power Systems with IBM PowerVC for Private Cloud

Tuesday June 16, 2026 14:00 - 15:00 CEST

08 - ST CLAIR 3A

This demonstration provides a great introduction to the capabilities of PowerVC and PowerVM. It shows the process of capturing, deploying and resizing virtual machines running Linux IBM i or AIX. It shows also how to configure compute templates, storage templates, deploy templates, and use the self-service portal to deploy VM as a cloud user.

Speakers

Thierry Huche

Tuesday June 16, 2026 14:00 - 15:00 CEST
08 - ST CLAIR 3A

AIX/Linux

15:55 CEST

Automate your AIX patch management

Tuesday June 16, 2026 15:55 - 16:55 CEST

08 - ST CLAIR 3A

What can be worse than speaking about IT security? Speaking about AIX patch management! Find updates, security patches, jungle them all way around, and get a system that an auditor accepts as compliant. Impossible! But at least it is possible to automate the task.

Speakers

Andrey Klyachkin

Managing director, eNFence

It is already there.

Tuesday June 16, 2026 15:55 - 16:55 CEST
08 - ST CLAIR 3A

AIX/Linux

17:05 CEST

EDB Postgres on IBM Power: The Enterprise Ready PostgreSQL Platform

Tuesday June 16, 2026 17:05 - 18:05 CEST

08 - ST CLAIR 3A

As PostgreSQL becomes a strategic platform for enterprise data, infrastructure choice plays a critical role in performance, resilience, scalability and security. This session explains why EDB Postgres on IBM Power is a powerful foundation for mission-critical workloads.Discover how IBM Power’s high-performance architecture and built-in reliability, combined with EDB’s enterprise-grade PostgreSQL capabilities, deliver superior performance, enhanced scalability, high availability, and improved cost efficiency.The session also features a demonstration of EDB Postgres on IBM Power, covering key topics such as deployment, scalability, high availability, and security.In addition, attendees will gain insights from real-world use cases and customer success stories.

Speakers

Frederic Dubois

Tuesday June 16, 2026 17:05 - 18:05 CEST
08 - ST CLAIR 3A

AIX/Linux

08:00 CEST

Open Source AI: A comprehensive overview and challenge of "openwashing"

Wednesday June 17, 2026 08:00 - 09:00 CEST

08 - ST CLAIR 3A

As Artifi cial Intelligence solidifi es its place in core enterprise systems, the debate surrounding the defi nition of "Open Source AI" has only intensifi ed. This technical update is a direct follow-up to the session presented last year, refreshed to address the signifi cant changes in both the general AI landscape and its open source defi nitions that have emerged since our last discussion.
Designed for IT Leaders, Enterprise Architects, and Technical Professionals, this session revisits the essential context and governance frameworks introduced previously, but applies them to today's reality. We will start with a reviewed technical baseline of AI and Machine Learning concepts to ensure a common understanding before diving into the new developments of the past 12 months.
Attendees will be equipped to:
- Track the Evolution: Identify how the challenges in defi ning Open Source AI have shifted since last year compared to traditional Open Source Software.
- Apply Current Criteria: Utilize the latest frameworks, such as the Open Source AI Defi nition (OSAID) and the Foundation Model Transparency Index, to accurately assess the true openness of established solutions like IBM Granite.
- Spot Evolved Risks: Analyze the operational pitfalls of "open weights" models and identify the techniques used in "openwashing" that have appeared since last year's session.

Speakers

Alfonso Cancellara

Senior Technical Account Manager, OpenShift, Red Hat

Alfonso Cancellara is a Senior Technical Account Manager at Red Hat, specializing in Red Hat’s OpenShift Container Platform and cloud-native solutions.

In his role, he works closely with organizations to help them effectively utilize OpenShift, understanding their unique business needs, providing guidance on how OpenShift can address their challenges, and ensuring they achieve their desired outcomes. A key aspect of his work involves... Read More →

Wednesday June 17, 2026 08:00 - 09:00 CEST
08 - ST CLAIR 3A

AIX/Linux

09:10 CEST

Power your Pipeline

Wednesday June 17, 2026 09:10 - 10:10 CEST

08 - ST CLAIR 3A

This presentation show how we build a pipeline to run software building on all our platforms including the IBM Power platform, Linux, AIX and IBM i, allowing you to provide a true DevOps CI/CD Pipeline for your software building, integrations, testing and deployment.

Speakers

Toshaan Bharvani

CTO, VanTosh

Wednesday June 17, 2026 09:10 - 10:10 CEST
08 - ST CLAIR 3A

AIX/Linux

10:30 CEST

Modernizing AIX with Open Source: Toolbox, DNF, AI, and the Roadmap

Wednesday June 17, 2026 10:30 - 11:30 CEST

08 - ST CLAIR 3A

Open source software is becoming foundational to modern system administration, application development, DevOps practices, and AI innovation. The AIX Toolbox for Open Source Software has become a critical bridge between enterprise-grade stability and community-driven innovation.This session provides an overview of the AIX Toolbox ecosystem, including recent enhancements and the enablement of AI-focused packages. Attendees will learn how DNF simplifies package installation, dependency resolution, and ongoing maintenance, enabling modern and consistent workflows on AIX.We will also discuss the roadmap and future enhancements planned for the AIX open source ecosystem. Live demonstrations will illustrate how open source and AI packages can be easily adopted on AIX today, helping organizations modernize with confidence while preserving the performance, reliability, and security of the AIX platform.

Speakers