COMMON EUROPE CONGRESS 2025

COMMON EUROPE CONGRESS 2025

WELCOME TO COMMON EUROPE CONGRESS 2025

Don’t forget to reach out to your local country user group to get the discount code for the congress!

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. It’s also a great opportunity for exploring the city… so why not take a family mini-break as well.
Congress education areas targeted are IBM Power hardware, Application Development, Advanced RPG, Open Source tools and Languages, System Management, Db2 and SQL, IBM Storage, IBM i services and microservices, Security and Compliance and much more.
There will be two AIX / Linux tracks, to emphasize the Power Systems character of Common Europe.
Top IBM Business Architects and industry experts have already agreed to share their knowledge on the latest announcements, customer cases as well as practical subjects.
The congress content includes:

3 ½ days of latest education delivered by top IBM and industry leading speakers punctuated by large breaks offering maximum networking,
Three-hour in-depth workshops, 60 minutes’ education sessions and solution provider’s special slots,
A Solution Providers’ Centre open for 2 ½ days with top European and worldwide technology companies at their booths presenting innovative practical solutions that will enhance our solutions,
A Congress Dinner in the hotel with live entertainment.

We have negotiated special room rates in the Congress hotel itself,
The Common Europe Organization Team looks forward to seeing you in picturesque Gothenburg.

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

10:00 CEST

Exploring Database Tools (ACS & VS) LIMITED

Monday June 2, 2025 10:00 - 13:00 CEST

In this workshop, Scott will spend the entirety of the workshop doing a live demonstration of the database and SQL tooling found within IBM i Access Client Solutions (ACS) and Visual Studio Code for IBM i - Database Extension. In addition to discovering the database and SQL features, attendees will be able to engage in a live dialog on the better and best practices for all things database.

Speakers

Scott Forstie

STSM, Db2 for i Architect, 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 →

Monday June 2, 2025 10:00 - 13:00 CEST
06 - R17

Workshop

14:00 CEST

Db2 on steroids - deep dive LIMITED

Monday June 2, 2025 14:00 - 17:00 CEST

This deep dive will be about all the cool stuff Db2 can do now. This is all about the noSQL features. Db2 is now a complete ecosystem of structured and unstructured data, procedural programming, and features that reach services and resources out of Db2 and beyond.

Speakers

Niels Liisberg

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

Niels has developed IBM i middleware used in numerous applications worldwide. He is the architect of the IceBreak application server for IBM i. Over the years he has contributed to the IBM i community with presentations, demos, and loads of open source: ILEastic and noxDB to name... Read More →

Monday June 2, 2025 14:00 - 17:00 CEST
06 - R17

Workshop

10:40 CEST

I never thought of THAT, so I DO Need HA! LIMITED

Tuesday June 3, 2025 10:40 - 11:40 CEST

In this session we will discuss:

Many things that you did NOT plan for that would cause you to need an HA, or at LEAST a DR solution. Virtually every one of these are items from my personal customers, not made up or 'read it on the internet.'

You will be surprised and potentially even shocked by some of these occurrences. At the very least you will be amused!

Despite your security policies, the quality of your building, reliability of power and cooling, you cannot think of everything.

Speakers

Larry Bolhuis

Cloud and Datacenter Engineer, IBM Champion, Service Express Inc.

Larry has grown up with computers since his father became a CE in 1967. He obtained a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Calvin College in 1982 and soon after began working on IBM midrange equipment with the S/34 and S/36. Larry began working on the As/400 at its introduction In 1988.After spending many years as a developer Larry began working on communications, networking, and systems management tasks. Years of... Read More →

Tuesday June 3, 2025 10:40 - 11:40 CEST
06 - R17

IBM i System Management, Strategy

11:50 CEST

Securing IBM i in the Age of Cyber Threats

Tuesday June 3, 2025 11:50 - 12:50 CEST

As cyber threats evolve in sophistication and frequency, securing IBM i environments has never been more crucial. This session provides a comprehensive overview of the current cybersecurity landscape and its implications for IBM i systems. We'll explore emerging security challenges specific to IBM i and discuss cutting-edge solutions to address them. Attendees will learn about advanced security features native to IBM i. Join us for an in-depth look at safeguarding your critical business assets in an increasingly complex threat environment.

Speakers

Koen Decorte

Owner and CEO, IBM Champion, CD-Invest

Koen Decorte is owner of CD Invest, an international IBM business partner with offices in Belgium andSpain. CD-Invest is specialized in innovating and modernizing IBM i applications.Koen studied philology and computer linguistics.His focus is mainly on integrating and using open source... Read More →

Tuesday June 3, 2025 11:50 - 12:50 CEST
06 - R17

IBM i System Management, Security

14:00 CEST

What's New in IBM i Security? LIMITED

Tuesday June 3, 2025 14:00 - 15:00 CEST

Significant security enhancements have been delivered in both recent releases and technology refreshes (TRs). In this session Carol will describe the new and enhanced security-related features of Navigator for i as well as SQL services. She will also describe how and why you should use the security features delivered in the most recent releases.

Speakers

Carol Woodbury

IBM i Security SME and Senior Advisor, Kisco

Tuesday June 3, 2025 14:00 - 15:00 CEST
06 - R17

IBM i System Management, Security

15:15 CEST

Sponsor session: Control all your IBM i applications and systems from your current monitoring solution, extremely easily!

Tuesday June 3, 2025 15:15 - 15:40 CEST

Not happy with the IBM i monitoring level of your existing tool such as Nagios, PRTG, SolarWinds, Zabbix, etc ?
In addition, IBM recently stopped the support of their Nagios plugin for IBM i and said that Control for i is the recommended replacement.

Discover how “Control for i” adds instantly 200 ‘Plug & Play’ IBM i checks and how your tool is enhanced without any development required.

If you already know Control for I, come to see what’s new in the version 4.

You will also acquire knowledge on how it is easy to automate answers or trigger a program to well-known messages in MSGQ or System Log.

Learn how you will become more proactive: with high accuracy probes you are alerted of problems before they become critical; this improves the service continuity and reduces emergency response costs).
Note: “Control for i” is compatible with 90% of most commonly used monitoring tools.

Sponsors

M81

M81 is a company specialized in system software running on IBM i operating system (also known as OS/400 or i5/OS), to help IT teams to better manage their systems.The products made by M81 address complex areas, but are very simple to implement and IT teams can work with them very... Read More →

Tuesday June 3, 2025 15:15 - 15:40 CEST
06 - R17

Solution provider

15:50 CEST

Using IBM Navigator in a Secure Manner

Tuesday June 3, 2025 15:50 - 16:50 CEST

With all the increased focus on security these days, the IBM Navigator provides a robust secure interface for managing the IBM i. This session will review how to configure Navigator and your system to leverage TLS at every turn. We will also dive into some additional administer features of Navigator.

Speakers

Tim Rowe

STSM - IBM i Business Architect, IBM

Tim Rowe is the Business Architect responsible for Application Development and Systems Management for the IBM i operating system. His responsibilities include helping to make sure that the IBM i has what is needed to be successful both today and into the future. He sends much of his... Read More →

Tuesday June 3, 2025 15:50 - 16:50 CEST
06 - R17

IBM i System Management

17:00 CEST

Taking the Guesswork out of IBM i Security with Authority Collection LIMITED

Tuesday June 3, 2025 17:00 - 18:00 CEST

This session explores the practical applications of using Authority Collection to take the guesswork out of IBM i Security. Carol will show how you can use Authority Collection to remove *ALLOBJ from a user without the fear of breaking something. She'll also show how you can easily secure an object in the IFS - again - without fear of breaking something. Carol answers your questions, including the best ways to interpret the Authority Collection output.

Speakers

Carol Woodbury

IBM i Security SME and Senior Advisor, Kisco

Tuesday June 3, 2025 17:00 - 18:00 CEST
06 - R17

IBM i System Management, Security

08:00 CEST

Securing and a monitoring SSH on IBMi LIMITED

Wednesday June 4, 2025 08:00 - 09:00 CEST

Many applications and functions are taking advantage of the SSH server on the IBM i, especially with the recent influx of open-source packages being made available to IBM i users. However, by default, it’s rather open to abuse. In this presentation we will explore the options for locking down, and monitoring access to SSH on the IBM i.

Speakers

Stefan Dufaye

Technical Consultant, Rowton IT

I’ve worked with the IBM i for over 25 years. I started as a developer, updating RPG code to make it millennium compliant, but I’ve spent most of my career working on the technical side. Originally supporting IBM i installations for customers and then moving on to manage the hosted... Read More →

Wednesday June 4, 2025 08:00 - 09:00 CEST
06 - R17

IBM i System Management

10:20 CEST

IBM i Performance Analysis for SQL requests LIMITED

Wednesday June 4, 2025 10:20 - 11:20 CEST

The purpose of this presentation is to show practical ways of analyzing performance data collected via iDoctor/Jobwatcher. The focus of the presentation will be DB performance.
This presentation will give input to the performance investigation by demonstrating how to view and extract DB related information from Jobwatcher and use this information for more detailed analysis in ACS (Access Client Solution).
The introduction of the topic will be the recommended JobWatcher definition and the recommended ways to read JobWatcher collections.
For a bit deeper analysis, its demonstrated what pitfalls can occur by using only Plan Cache Snapshots for SQL performance analysis. Here JobWatcher collections can make the analysis much more powerful.

Speakers

Morten Buur Rasmussen

Power Performance Specialist, IBM

Morten Buur Rasmussen is a performance Specialist at IBM Technology Expert Labs. Morten has 39 years of experience in the computing field. He started working with the S/38 and AS/400 in 1988 as programmer.Before joining the Lab Services and Expert Labs, he worked for IBM Denmark and... Read More →

Wednesday June 4, 2025 10:20 - 11:20 CEST
06 - R17

IBM i System Management, SQL

11:30 CEST

Security Catalog for IBM i LIMITED

Wednesday June 4, 2025 11:30 - 12:30 CEST

It is very often that clients ask the question that how can we secure our IBM i in today's IT world where ransomware attacks are increasing ? What we can implement in order to make systems more secure ? But security is something which can take most of the time and still a proactive approach is needed for planning, executing and monitoring. The session will broadly cover the different security areas that needs to be review with recommendation in order to restrict the inappropriate use. Different layers of security will be explained in relation to IBM i and how each layer can affect if elevated access in given or unencrypted channels are used. Considering different areas on IBM i and following appropriate steps can make a system much secure than leaving it wide open thinking that system itself is very secure which is a misconception.

By Rohit Chauhan

Speakers

Rohit Chauhan

Senior Technical Specialist and IBM Champion, Tietoevry Tech Services Norway AS

Rohit Chauhan is an IBM Champion and a Senior Technical Specialist with expertise in IBM i platform and IBM Power Systems. He is also a IBM Redbooks author and works at Tietoevry Tech Services, Stavanger, Norway, which is an IBM Business Partner and one of the biggest IT service providers... Read More →

Wednesday June 4, 2025 11:30 - 12:30 CEST
06 - R17

Strategy, Security

12:40 CEST

TBD LIMITED

Wednesday June 4, 2025 12:40 - 13:05 CEST

Wednesday June 4, 2025 12:40 - 13:05 CEST
06 - R17

Solution provider

14:05 CEST

SQL for System and Storage Management

Wednesday June 4, 2025 14:05 - 15:05 CEST

Ryan Moeller (Software Engineer, Db2 for i) teams up with Ann Wilkerson (Lead Developer, IBM i Navigator) to show how Navigator and SQL services can be expanded upon to automate and report on everyday storage and systems management tasks.

Speakers

Ryan Moeller

Software Engineer, IBM

Ryan Moeller is a software engineer working on Db2 for i, specifically on the SQL Query Engine (SQE) team. He joined the team in the Rochester, MN development lab in 2020. Ryan specializes in SQL, database development, and query performance analysis.

Wednesday June 4, 2025 14:05 - 15:05 CEST
06 - R17

IBM i, Systems management

15:20 CEST

Live Demo of Navigator LIMITED

Wednesday June 4, 2025 15:20 - 16:20 CEST

The IBM Navigator is marching forward adding new features and ways to manage your IBM i. This session is all about the live Demo we will show you first hand the new features as well as help answer your questions on how you can take managing the IBM i to the next level

Speakers

Tim Rowe

STSM - IBM i Business Architect, IBM

Tim Rowe is the Business Architect responsible for Application Development and Systems Management for the IBM i operating system. His responsibilities include helping to make sure that the IBM i has what is needed to be successful both today and into the future. He sends much of his... Read More →

Wednesday June 4, 2025 15:20 - 16:20 CEST
06 - R17

IBM i, Systems management

16:30 CEST

Can cloud help me in accomplishing my DR and Cyber Resiliency goals LIMITED

Wednesday June 4, 2025 16:30 - 17:30 CEST

in this session we are going to find out how cloud can help you to accomplish your Disaster Recovery and also your Cyber Resilience goals.

Also the reason for cloud as a DR environment will be discussed.

Speakers

Tonny Bastiaans

offering manager, IBM

Tonny Bastiaans is World Wide Product manager Power System at IBM. Started more than 20 years ago as an engineer on RS6000 systems (the predecessor of Power). He moved via several roles to his current role. With his technical background he is bridging the gap between technic and business... Read More →

Wednesday June 4, 2025 16:30 - 17:30 CEST
06 - R17

IBM i System Management, Strategy

09:10 CEST

Compliance and security management on IBM i with IBM PowerSC LIMITED

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

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 networking, IBM... Read More →

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

Power Hardware / Storage

10:20 CEST

Using Function Usage to Add another Layer of Security to your IBM i Configuration LIMITED

Thursday June 5, 2025 10:20 - 11:20 CEST

Come to this session to understand what Function Usage (formerly known as Application Administration) is, how to access it, how to implement settings to add an additional layer of security to your IBM i Security strategy and how discover or report on current settings. Carol will also discuss the audit journal entries that are generated by function usage and describe several ways to utilize this information. Information on the functions added in the latest release will also be discussed.

Speakers

Carol Woodbury

IBM i Security SME and Senior Advisor, Kisco

Thursday June 5, 2025 10:20 - 11:20 CEST
06 - R17

IBM i System Management, Security

COMMON EUROPE CONGRESS 2025

From €204.79