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.

10:30 CEST

LibrePower: A Community-Driven Renaissance for IBM Power

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

09 - ST CLAIR 3B

Beyond traditional workloads—IBM Power has capabilities the market hasn't fully discovered. LibrePower is changing that. Our community initiative runs a live lab where we validate and document new use cases: container density, modern development with Go and Rust, open source databases, AI inference, and more—across AIX, IBM i, and your favorite Linux distro.We publish technical content in different languages, building the independent validation that helps organizations confidently deploy new workloads on Power. In this session, we'll share practical results from our experiments, demonstrate the LibrePower Certified program for open source projects, and explain why "invest once, run for fifteen years" is the TCO message Power deserves.Whether you manage existing Power8/9 systems or evaluate new Power10/11 investments, discover how open source extends the value—and the possibilities—of exceptional hardware.

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 10:30 - 11:30 CEST
09 - ST CLAIR 3B

AIX/Linux 2

11:50 CEST

Document Intelligence on Power

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

09 - ST CLAIR 3B

Many organizations still rely on manual processes to handle large volumes of business documents. In this session, we will demonstrate how to bring AI-powered document understanding directly to IBM Power environments using Docling, an open-source tool now available on power thanks to the LibrePower initiative (https://gitlab.com/librepower/docling).You’ll see how to build an end-to-end workflow that:Ingests and parses complex unstructured documents with Docling.Extracts structured content and enriches it.Integrates the results with existing enterprise systems running on IBM Power.This session is ideal for IT leaders, architects, and developers who want to bring practical, secure, and cost-effective AI capabilities into their Power workloads without rewriting their core applications.

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 →

Monday June 15, 2026 11:50 - 12:50 CEST
09 - ST CLAIR 3B

AIX/Linux 2

14:00 CEST

Event Driven Power Infrastructure

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

09 - ST CLAIR 3B

This presentation is about event driven infrastructure and how you can facilitate autoremediation in case of problems, using Ansible, Icinga2, Request Tracker and webhooks, you can create an elastic auto-scaling infrastructure to optimize the capacity for your workload and dynamically scale your batches, and capacity usage.

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 →

Monday June 15, 2026 14:00 - 15:00 CEST
09 - ST CLAIR 3B

AIX/Linux 2

15:55 CEST

Ansible for AIX and Linux on Power: tips and tricks

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

09 - ST CLAIR 3B

It is easy to start with Ansible on IBM Power - just run dnf install ansible. But what next? And what happens after you created your first automation? The author of the Redbook "Using Ansible for automation in IBM Power environments" talks about problems that you can have on the 2nd day, and how to solve them. Or avoid them completely.

Speakers

Andrey Klyachkin

Managing director, eNFence

It is already there.

Monday June 15, 2026 15:55 - 16:55 CEST
09 - ST CLAIR 3B

AIX/Linux 2

17:05 CEST

Powering the Hybrid Cloud: A Year in Review for OpenShift on IBM Power

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

09 - ST CLAIR 3B

Over the last 12 months, Red Hat OpenShift has dramatically expanded its capabilities for the IBM Power architecture, evolving far beyond basic infrastructure parity.
This session will provide a comprehensive, technical review of the latest features introduced on OpenShift for IBM Power systems over the past year. We will explore how organizations can now drastically reduce infrastructure overhead by mixing x86 control planes with IBM Power worker nodes using Hosted Control Planes. Furthermore, we will explore new capabilities that enable the AI era on IBM Power, including native AI accelerator support (such as the IBM Spyre AI Accelerator) and distributed AI workload orchestration using the Red Hat build of Kueue. Finally, we will cover the latest storage and infrastructure enhancements—including newly added SMB CSI driver support for ppc64le to streamline day-to-day operations.
Whether you are maintaining traditional bare-metal IBM Power servers or deploying modern virtualized environments, this talk will equip you with the knowledge to maximize your IBM Power investments using the latest OpenShift releases.

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 →

Monday June 15, 2026 17:05 - 18:05 CEST
09 - ST CLAIR 3B

AIX/Linux 2

08:00 CEST

Watsonx.Data on IBM Power - Modern Analytics for Enterprise Data

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

09 - ST CLAIR 3B

Watsonx.data on IBM Power combines the performance and reliability of IBM Power Systems with the flexibility of an open, hybrid data lakehouse architecture. This solution enables organizations to unlock the full potential of their data by integrating structured and unstructured sources across on-premises and cloud environments.This session includes a demonstration that shows how credit card transaction data from an Oracle Database and customer and card data from EDB Postgres, both running on IBM Power, are ingested and transformed in watsonx.data to create a unified analytical view.

Speakers

Frederic Dubois

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

AIX/Linux 2

09:10 CEST

Key Note AIX/Linux

Tuesday June 16, 2026 09:10 - 10:10 CEST

08 - ST CLAIR 3A

TBD

Tuesday June 16, 2026 09:10 - 10:10 CEST
08 - ST CLAIR 3A

AIX/Linux 2

10:30 CEST

Understanding RISE with SAP on IBM Power Virtual Server and Surround Workloads

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

09 - ST CLAIR 3B

With the end of SAP ECC support, SAP is accelerating the transition to the cloud through its S/4HANA Private Cloud (RISE) and Public Cloud (GROW) offerings. This strategic shift involves a redesign of business processes and a migration to modern cloud environments. IBM Cloud PowerVS is positioned as a high-performance, secure, reliable, and sustainable alternative, while offering competitive pricing that is often lower than that of other hyperscalers.

Speakers

Cesar Bertran

Tuesday June 16, 2026 10:30 - 11:30 CEST
09 - ST CLAIR 3B

AIX/Linux 2

11:40 CEST

AI Agents: Best Practices for the Next Era of Software

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

09 - ST CLAIR 3B

This session explores the industry’s shift from traditional, passive AI chatbots to autonomous agents capable of planning, acting, and adapting to achieve complex goals. It examines the emerging “agentic era,” outlines six best practices for designing, orchestrating, and governing agent-based systems, and presents a practical roadmap from prototype to production. Attendees will leave with a clear framework for safely deploying AI agents and positioning their organizations for the next wave of enterprise automation.

Speakers

Mirza Ćutuk

Head of AI, InnoBoost SA

Tuesday June 16, 2026 11:40 - 12:40 CEST
09 - ST CLAIR 3B

AIX/Linux 2

14:00 CEST

Surround and Extend: Using Linux on Power to Modernize Your Core Apps

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

09 - ST CLAIR 3B

Modernizing applications but unsure how modern databases, Linux, and cloud-native platforms fit alongside trusted IBMi and AIX workloads? For many clients, modernization isn’t about replacing what works - it’s about extending it with new capabilities on the same Power platform.This session explores how Linux on IBM Power enables an evolutionary modernization journey by introducing new-age applications, industry and banking solutions, and AI workloads on Linux - leveraging open-source databases to surround existing systems, with PowerVM as the stable foundation. Clients can run diverse Linux workloads - across Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and SUSE supporting modern application frameworks, APIs, digital and AI services, all tightly integrated with core IBMi and AIX environments.We’ll show how PowerVM provides flexibility, isolation, and operational consistency today, while creating a continuous, low-risk path toward cloud-native maturity with OpenShift on Power. As modernization needs grow, workloads can progressively move from traditional Linux partitions to containerized applications managed by Red Hat OpenShift without forcing an immediate platform or operating-model shift.Through real-world “surround-and-extend” patterns, attendees will see how organizations deploy modern applications and databases on Linux, integrate with existing enterprise data, and gradually adopt cloud-native architectures at their own pace. This approach accelerates innovation, reduces risk, and maximizes the long-term value of Power while preserving the stability of the systems that run the business.If you’re looking for a practical modernization strategy that spans PowerVM today and OpenShift tomorrow, Linux on Power offers a clear and proven path forward.

Speakers

Christine Wyatt

Tuesday June 16, 2026 14:00 - 15:00 CEST
09 - ST CLAIR 3B

AIX/Linux 2

15:55 CEST

The Container Diet: Shrinking Container Images on IBM Power for Fun and Profit

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

09 - ST CLAIR 3B

Building a container image is easy, but making one that is production-ready is a craft. Too many modernization projects get stuck with bloated, gigabyte-sized images that waste storage and slow down deployments. Following the "Gentle Introduction to Containerization" at last year’s Common Europe Congress, this session focuses on the developer techniques needed to build lean, fast container images specifi cally for IBM Power.
The session starts with a quick look at container anatomy to explain how image layers work and how the Copy-on-Write (CoW) fi lesystem affects storage costs and runtime speed. Armed with this foundation, attendees will then participate in a live "makeover" of a bloated application to systematically strip away the excess.
Key topics will include:
- The ppc64le Wheel Trap: Why a lack of pre-compiled ppc64le binaries often bloats images with heavy build tools like gcc, and how to solve it.
- Multi-Stage Builds: How to compile natively in one stage and ship only the tiny binaries in a hyper-minimal UBI Micro base.
- Smart Caching: Structuring builds so heavy compilations run once and then cache, making subsequent builds near-instant.
- Multi-Arch Basics: A quick closing look at using manifests to support both x86_64 and ppc64le from a single pipeline.

Speakers