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Alison Butterill is the WW Offering Manager for IBM i. In this role, she works with the IBM i team to define the future of IBM i including the content for releases and technology refreshes. Over the last few years, Alison has spent time working with clients to implement innovative solution using Cognitive, Machine Learning, Robotics, Internet of things and other forms of AI and IoT.
Today, Alison’s responsibilities include working with the IBM i sales, marketing, development teams as well as clients and partners to ensure that the IBM i Operating System and associated software products reflect their requirements.
Having worked in the mid-range area for more than 30 years, Alison has held a wide variety of positions at IBM, primarily with midrange servers and software. She has held a range of positions including field Systems Engineer, an instructor in Customer Technical Education, national support representative for IBM Canada, and Worldwide Technical Marketing support representative for the development tools and compilers from the IBM Toronto Laboratory.
Alison is a regular speaker at industry and technical conferences around the world.
Susan Gantner is an IBM i evangelist specialising in modern application development, primarily with RPG and RDi. A developer, trainer and author, she has been an IBM Champion for Power Systems for many years.
Susan’s career began as a programmer in Atlanta on a variety of platforms. After developing applications for 10 years, she joined IBM as a Systems Engineer and later worked in both the IBM Rochester and IBM Toronto labs, supporting developers on her favourite platform.
She was part of the team who created the still popular IBM redbook, “Who Knew You Could Do That with RPG IV?” and the more recent “Modernizing IBM i Applications” redbook. She has authored a wide variety of articles on the subject of modern development tools, techniques and languages for IBM i for IBM Systems Magazine, IT Jungle and others.
Susan now works with Jon Paris as half of Partner400 – teaching and writing about modern development techniques. She is also a part of System i Developer, hosts of the RPG & DB2 Summit and virtual educational offerings for RPGers such as Lunch & Learn sessions and workshops.
You can check out the collected works of Jon and Susan at authory.com/jonparisandsusangantner
After working on a variety of systems for many years, Jon Paris was introduced to the System/38. Thus began a “love affair” that ultimately led him to join IBM’s Toronto laboratory, working on the S/3X and AS/400 compilers.
While with IBM he played a major role in the definition of the RPG IV language and in promoting its use.
Jon left IBM in 1998 to focus on providing IBM i users with education and consulting services to enhance their application development skills.
Together with his partner Susan Gantner, Jon runs Partner400, a consulting company focused on application modernization on the IBM i platform. Partner400 were also a founding member of the System i Developer education consortium.
Jon and Susan have authored a great many articles and were co-authors of the RPG Redbook: Who Knew You Could Do That with RPG IV – A Sorcerer’s Guide to System Access and More. You can check out their collected works at authory.com/jonparisandsusangantner
Paul Tuohy, IBM Champion and author of Re-engineering RPG Legacy Applications and The Programmer’s Guide to iSeries Navigator, is a prominent consultant/trainer/educators for application modernisation and development technologies on the IBM Midrange. He currently holds positions as CEO of ComCon, a consultancy firm based in Dublin, Ireland, and founding partner of System i Developer, the consortium of top educators who produce the acclaimed RPG & DB2 Summit conference. Previously, he worked as IT Manager for Kodak Ireland Ltd. and Technical Director of Precision Software Ltd. In addition to hosting and speaking at the RPG & DB2 Summit, Paul has been an award-winning speaker at COMMON, COMMON Europe Congress and other conferences throughout the world. His articles frequently appear in IBM Systems Magazine, The Four Hundred Guru, RPG Developer, and other leading publications.
Paul also produces the popular iTalk with Tuohy podcast with IBM Systems Magazine.
Douglas Gibbs is the Product Manager IO across the IBM Power portfolio and has been in this role since 2018. Douglas is responsible for the internal and direct attached storage, network adapters, fibre channel adapters, racks PDUs and variety of other bits and pieces. His previous roles within IBM include DB2 performance on Power and managing a very large group of systems and software used to provide multiple customer solutions.
Mike has been associated with the IBM Mid-Range since 1977 and has made a career in Systems and Data Management. Mike has grown with the systems, always seeking out the best way to configure and implement the systems and how to make our tools and applications get the best out of these configurations. In getting to grips with more and more ways to manage and bring out the most in this unique Platform, Mike has embraced many new technologies, philosophies and methods and is well placed to make comment on current market trends and opportunities. Now as the Chairman representing i-UG and Common UK, Mike is putting forward some challenging, independent and pragmatic views on the options we have for growing, adapting and looking after our systems and applications as the platform moves inexorably forward.
I have worked in the IBM Business Partner world for over
thirty years now and despite IBM’s best attempts I still love them ;-)My career
started as an RPG developer but for the last twenty years I have specialised in
System Design, installation and management. In 2008 I founded my own
company (Rowton) and now I and my team spend my time supporting clients or
designing new IT solutions using a combination of Power servers, Intel and
storage with a little extra cloud magic where it’s needed.
When I’m not looking after my own clients, I help run the UK’s largest IBM i
User Group the i-UG and also serve on the Common Europe Advisory Council (CEAC)
to help IBM shape the future of IBM i. In 2019, IBM made me an IBM
Champion in recognition of the work I have done to help and evangelise the IBM
i platform, Happy Days 🙂
I have a love of teaching IBM i and have spent the last ten years volunteering
to teach at IBM i events around the world, in more recent times I have been
writing technical Articles on PowerWire.EU and creating my online
webinars. I am a firm believer that the more I teach, the more I learn.
Steve Cast started his career as an RPG programmer. He’s held numerous technical and senior managerial roles and is now Managing Director of Redbourn Business Systems, a company he founded in 1994, CEO of AdvantageNFP Ltd, a company he founded in 2001, and IT Director at Bruni Erben. Steve joined the i-UG board in 2020, and now leads the marketing activity.
Steve has a unique blend of technical and senior managerial skills. This allows him to both assess the business benefit of change and to understand and advise on the technical delivery requirements for change. Having supported the IBM CUA and i-UG for many years, Steve looks forward to his new challenge. Raising the i-UG’s profile, meeting other likeminded i-UG members and delivering on the three tenets of the i-UG; Education, Information and Communication.
Chris is a Consultant with the IBM POWER team at Redbourn Business Systems. His early technical career started with a background in Mainframe Systems Programming. In the early 1990’s Chris joined the “AS/400” world, then IBM POWER systems and specialising in IBMi. During his career he has worked with some of the largest users on the platform, including JP Morgan and IBM.
Chris’s technical specialities are working with hardware and Operating System software to help Redbourn’s customers with operational and software maintenance challenges, facilities management, disaster recovery and system performance tuning.
Chris has had a long term relationship with the i-UG. He’s worked with several organisations who actively support i-UG including Bluechip, Rowton IT and more recently at Redbourn Business Systems.
Pascal Ruckebusch adopted IBM i at the exact beginning of AS/400, three decades ago, and never leaved 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 professionalism are widely recognized. 1000+ IBM i partitions are hosting one of the products designed and/or maintained by Pascal before creating M81 … There are now 800 more with M81’s products.
Andy has been an IBM i Consultant/Instructor at FormaServe for over 30 years and has over 40 years IT experience working with S/34, S/36, AS400, iSeries & IBM i. These days, Andy’s skills range across IBM i, RPG, PHP, Zend Server, Zend Frameworks, SQL, DB2 & Node.js. An accomplished instructor & an article writer, Andy specialises in programming on and writing about the the IBM i Platform and you have probably seen many of his articles in PowerWire. Prior to his career in IT, Andy is proud to have served 10 years in the Royal Navy as a communications expert.
Birgitta Hauser has worked on the IBM i for more than 25 years.
Currently she is working in consulting and delivering support on application and database modernization. She also works in education as a trainer for RPG and SQL developers. She speaks frequently at the COMMON User Groups and POWER Conferences in European Countries, USA and Canada.
Birgitta is co-author of 2 IBM Redbooks and the author of several articles focusing on RPG and SQL for a German publisher and IBM DeveloperWorks.
Technical Director of EASI
IBM Champion and Member of CEAC
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 business applications. He is an early adopter of the IBM i GUI’s, System Object Access that later evolved into System i Navigator and recently Navigator for i. He has been involved in IBM i BRMS for the past 15 years, helping to improve the backup strategy of IBM i data. Rudi is member of the COMMON Europe Advisory Council, an IBM and End User Experts strategy think tank for the IBM i. On top of that IBM made him an IBM Champion again in 2022, for the third year in row.
My name is Stan Wilkins, Technical Director at Chilli IT, a foundering member of Chilli who’s worked as an end user for 10 years before working in the IBM Business Partner Community for the last 25 years.
Having worked on the AS/400 since its inception in 1988, I have been involved in most aspects of the system throughout its history up-to the present day.
My day-to-day focus has been on ensuring the infrastructure design that we recommend meets our customer needs and to that I’m actively involved in all aspects of what we do technically here at Chilli.
Mike Davison has worked on IBM equipment in IT Operations since starting on the 4381 running VM/VSE as a trainee Operator in 1987. He’s worked for blue-chip companies in global data centres and has a varied 30+ years’ experience of IBMi, AIX, VIOS, Linux, storage and disaster recovery. Currently a Senior Technical Consultant for Helpsystems, Mikes main role is to provide consultancy and support for customers seeking to secure, monitor and automate their Power system operations.
With over 30 years in computing, Adrian started as an RPG2 programmer in 1988 on the System 36 on a dumb terminal. More recently he managed an international team of engineers for HSBC global bank delivering DevOps tools across a huge global user base. Adrian has over 15 years experience in application life cycle management and joined ARCAD Software in 2020 as Senior Solution Architect to bring his expertise about DevOps, Six Sigma, lean methodology and process improvement to the solutions we provide.
A consultant in the ARCAD Software team since 1998, Frédéric Grumeau has assisted many IBM i customers in their digital transformation worldwide, both in the adoption of DevOps on IBM i and in the modernization of their applications. With specialized knowledge of IBM i and emerging technology in distributed systems and cloud, Frédéric is also a key member of the ARCAD Jump Start team, researching into new technologies to evolve the ARCAD solution range. Currently he is focusing on the R&D around the IBM Merlin project, the cloud-based development and modernization environment for IBM i.
Dr Herb Daly is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Wolverhampton. He began his career as a Software Engineer working on large scale telecoms systems and went. As an academic researcher he looks at the technical and socio-technical aspects of Enterprise Systems. He is a former chair of the UKCMG, co-chairs the GSE Skills and Learning Group , and as an IBM Champion for System Z a regular participant in industry conferences, encouraging his students to do likewise. Herb engages with initiatives such as the Linux Foundation’s Open Mainframe Project and is a supporter of his local student societies.
Morten is a performance Specialist at IBM Lab Services Europe. He has 32 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 in 2004, he worked for IBM Denmark and several European banks.
His areas of expertise are database performance, application optimisation and work management for IBM i.
John Taylor is the semi-retired Chairman of Typex (UK) Ltd. Typex specialises in helping businesses to save money with IP Telephony and Unified Communication and Collaboration (UC2). It is a Business Partner of IBM, Mitel and Gamma. John is an author of four IBM Redbooks and of magazine articles. He speaks on UC2 at customer conferences worldwide. He is an IT Infrastructure Systems Architect certified by The Open Group to TOGAF 8 standards. He is the architect of IBM’s BlueNotes family of software products which integrate IBM Lotus Notes and Domino with IBM servers. He designed the UC2Go packages for UC with IBM. John holds the Diploma in Company Direction from the Institute of Directors and is a member of i-UG. He is a Chartered Civil Engineer by profession and lives with his wife and a Border Terrier in Northumberland, England. He can be reached at info@typex.com and via www.typex.com
For more than 25 years, Guy Marmorat has been dedicated to the development of Security Solutions for IBM i (AS/400) and has contributed to the positioning of Cilasoft as one of the World Leaders in Audit and Security Software on IBM i. Guy Marmorat joined the Precisely-Syncsort-Vision Solutions Group at the end of 2017, as “Senior Director of Product Management”.
Today, Guy is delivering Security Services with the Resiliane Company.
Mike Potter is a Solution Architect from TechData. Mike enables IBM business partners to help develop new solutions and deliver technical expertise based on IBM technology’s. Mikes core area is infrastructure based, but also is involved in public cloud solutions. Mike is also the technical lead for TechData’s emerging / disruptive technologies, including cloud and application modernization. He also speaks at Techdata and IBM events, Mike is a IBM Champion for Storage.
Eugene King is a pre-sales consultant with over 25 years of experience with LANSA. Eugene has been working on various integration and workflow automation projects for companies adopting standards, meeting regulatory requirements and seeking to improve supply chain efficiency. Eugene supported numerous LANSA clients across a wide range of industry verticals on new development, modernisation, integration, and mobile, and web projects.
Jim is a multi-disciplined IT leader with over 25 years of experience in the IBM i sector, working across operational, commercial and technical areas of the business at regional and Group level. Jim has a passion for seeking out and implementing technology-led changes that enables organisations to transform the way they work.
Sam is a seasoned IBM i, enterprise content management and legacy application decommissioning consultant. With involvement from concept to completion, Sam is focused on successfully driving digital transformation initiatives for companies across Europe.
Stephan Leisse has over 30 years’ experience in the AS/400 – iSeries – IBM i world as a Freelance Contractor and Employed Consultant. Currently he works as a Senior Sales Engineer in EMEA for precisely, responsible for technical Presales of all Power I related Security, High Availably and Log Shipping products. In his previous role, he worked with complex HA and DR projects implementing MIMIX, iTera, iCluster and Double Take Software. In addition, he is a co-author of IBM Redbooks and speaker for several international events.
Andrew has worked in the computer software industry for over 25 years starting off as a programmer to development manager moving to technical consulting and then to a pre-sales engineering role. He is currently a Principal Sales Engineer at Rocket Software focussing on modernisation, optimisation and process improvement solutions for enterprises within the EMEA region.
Product Manager – Service Express
Darren has been working in the IT industry for 26 years, working across a number of roles and fields he has accumulated a range of skills and working knowledge that he brings to Service Express Europe.
Having started as an RPG programmer, Darren moved on to supporting critical IT systems before building and designing systems for customers across all market segments.
Darren now runs the Product Management team for Service Express in the UK. Putting his extensive experience and skillset into action to ensure that customers pain points are front and centre in from the ideation stage, and onwards, of designing and enhancing existing and new services.