Main Tent Speakers Biography
Kelly Ryan
Director, System z Product Portfolio
Kelly Ryan is currently the Director of the System product portfolio responsible for managing and delivering the hardware and operating systems in System z from inception through delivery. Previously, Kelly was the Product Development Team (PDT) Leader for the zEnterprise, IBM’s next generation mainframe system. Kelly has held many positions in IBM on the server teams, software teams, and in IBM global services. She is an IBM Certified Project Executive.
Adam J Sturges-Beer IBM Director of Europe System z Software Sales
Adam J. Sturges-Beer joined IBM in 1987 after graduating from the Boston University College of Engineering. He worked in sales roles in various sectors before joining the newly-created SWG Division, where he worked in Sector Sales (Public Sector, Financial Services, Utilities and Energy) and in Channel and Technical Sales (for the Information Management brand for Europe’s South Region). He joined the System z family in 2000 as Sales Manager for Europe’s South Region. From 2005 to February 2011, Adam was the Director of System z Software Sales for Southwest Europe. In 2011 he joined the Ray Jones worldwide System z team as Director of Worldwide System z Software Sales, based in New York. In 2012, with IBM's reorganization of Europe into one IOT he has returned to Europe to lead this new unit for System z Software Sales.
Technical Agenda Speakers Biography
Alex Louwe Kooijmans IBM ITSO Project Leader, Java, SOA and application modernization on System z
Alex is not actually speaking in the Nordics, he is the SME speaker leader, leading and coordinating the entire speaker agenda. We are therefore recognizing him in the biographies.
Alex Louwe Kooijmans is a project leader with the International Technical Support Organization (ITSO) in Poughkeepsie, NY, and specializes in SOA technology and solutions on System z ® . He also specializes in application modernization and transformation on z/OS, both from an architecture and a tooling perspective. He has organized various marketing, education and technical sales seminars, forums and road shows around the world in relation to System z. Previously he worked as a Client IT Architect in the Financial Services sector with IBM® in The Netherlands, advising financial services companies on IT issues such as software and hardware strategy and on demand. Alex has also worked at the Technical Marketing Competence Center for zSeries® and Linux® in Boeblingen, Germany, providing support to customers starting up with Java™ and WebSphere® on System z. From 1997 to 2000, Alex completed a previous assignment with the ITSO, managing various IBM Redbooks® projects and delivering workshops around the world.
Anthony Papageorgiou Software Developer for CICS
Anthony Papageorgiou is a Software Developer for CICS TS working at IBM Hursley UK. Before he joined IBM in 2007 he worked for Mintel International Group Ltd as a Web Developer. Anthony holds a degree in Computer Science from the University of Warwick. His areas of expertise include Web 2.0, Event Processing and Mobile Technologies and he was closely involved with the design and
development of their support in CICS V4. He is currently working as a developer on the eclipse based CICS tools.
Anuja Deedwaniya z/OS Software Architect
System z
Anuja Deedwaniya is a Senior Technical Staff member working in the Systems Technology Group for the z/OS Development lab in IBM Poughkeepsie, New York. She also works as a Software Architect for z/OS Simplification and the System Management initiative. Anuja has over 29 years experience at IBM in various areas of mainframe design and development and is responsible for the design and delivery of IBM z/OS Management Facility.
Charles Webb IBM Fellow - System z Processor Design and Hardware Architect
Charles Webb has been with IBM in Poughkeepsie since 1983, and has worked on processor performance analysis, processor design, and system design, all on the IBM mainframe platform. He made major contributions to a number of System/390 and zSeries mainframe processors, and helped to lead mainframe design through the transition from bipolar to CMOS technology. Charles is currently responsible for the roadmap and technical strategy for future IBM System z processors. He holds more than 60 patents, has received four IBM Outstanding Innovation Awards and three IBM Corporate Awards, and was named an IBM Fellow in 2003.
Claus Schrøder-Hansen IT Architect
Claus Schroder-Hansen is from IBM Denmark and works in Global Business Services as an IT Architect specializing in J2EE applications as an Application Architect.
Diego Bessone IBM Solutions and Brand Specialist Tivoli on System z
Diego Bessone is currently responsible for IBM Tivoli software for System z worldwide. He began his career at IBM as the sales strategy leader for these products in Argentina, then in Latin America. After just 13 years he now has a worldwide leadership role, growing market share for the platform year after year, while helping our customers maximize the value they get from System z. Before joining IBM Diego was an IT strategist, guiding various companies in the definition, design, and implementation of
information systems that play a central role in the success of their lines of business. He also was a consultant and project leader in companies requiring specific advice on transforming, updating and implementing their business systems.
Flemming Petersen Rational and Enterprise Modernization Specialist
Xavier Giannakopoulos is the product manager for Tivoli Workload Automation where he has world-wide responsibility, primarily on the distributed side. He has the working knowledge of the Development Process, technical support, HR management and client handling. He joined IBM in the Workload Automation area after a Master’s Degree in Computer Science and work in Al Research, followed by a MBA degree at Warwick. He has a wide experience both at technical and business levels on the evolution of the Workload Automation market, and is now pursuing specialization on the cloud area. He has been very instrumental in meeting up with several clients and discussing their organization’s strategy and future vision.
Henrik Thorsen IBM Nordic Technical Director, Senior Consultant
and IT Specialist
Henrik Thorsen worked with large systems for 30 years, and was involved with LSUs for the last 26 years. Henrik is currently working as System z technical sales leader for the Nordic countries. His responsibilities include both pre-sales and sales activities within IBM. He also worked in Poughkeepsie and there he held both management and large systems technical project leader positions across the years.
Hiren Shah Senior Software Engineer
Hiren Shah is a Senior Software Engineer in IBM Systems Group. He is presently working on Unified Resource Manager also known as zManager, the platform management firmware for zEnterprise systems. He has extensive experience in design/development of Performance Management software. Prior to joining zManager project, he was working on z/OS Workload Management. He had made significant contribution to development of Intelligent Resource Director (IRD) on z/Series. He holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering and a MS in Computer Science from New Jersey Institute of Technology.
Klaus Oxdal Redhat Sales Manager
Klaus Oxdal is the Redhat Partner Sales Manager with experience in the Nordic IT-market. Today he is responsible for the Business Partner Organization and the Alliance Partner Organization within Redhat Nordic, and strategic alliance to IBM Nordics.
Otto Lauritsen Senior Storage Specialist
Otto Lauritsen is a Storage Technical Sales Specialist working in Systems Technical Group, IBM Nordic, doing technical pre-sales for storage. He has 28 years experience working in IBM with storage products, both in sales and pre-sales roles. He has participated in designing, implementation, and follow-up support for storage infrastructure related projects for larger enterprise customers in Norway, This includes open and System z platforms. In his current position in IBM, his main focus is technical support in storage infrastructure optimization projects for Enterprise customers.
Per Rosenquist IBM IT Specialist, zChampion
Per Rosenquist works for IBM Denmark in System z pre-sales in the Systems and Technology Group. He has more than 30 years of experience in working with IBM System z mainframes, mainly with z/VSE, z/VM, and Linux on System z. Prior to joining STG, Per worked in IBM Strategic Outsourcing as a Systems Programmer and a Technical Solution Manager.
Peter Schouboe IBM Information Management
on System z, Nordics
Peter Schouboe has worked in IT since 1987 including more than 11 years of experience as a DB2/z DBA, and Application Architect. For the last decade Peter's focus has been on Information
Management solutions, mainly directed to the mainframe platform. He has been with IBM Sales and Distribution for four years, working on Information Management solutions across the Nordic territory. His formal education is Datanom, from Copenhagen Business School, which has been supplied with modules from the Danish IT University, ITU.
Richard Schärtel, Sales Engineer, SUSE
Richard Schärtel is Sales Engineer for the SUSE business unit within The Attachmate Group. Richard is responsible for the Scandinavian market and based in Stockholm. Richard has more than ten years experience within IT infrastructure, in particular within operator- and enterprise environments. His expertise today covers the SUSE core product SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, further SUSE Studio, SUSE Manager and SUSE Cloud. Besides living in the virtual IT world Richard enjoys the great outdoors and being out sailing with the family in the Stockholm archipelago.
Soeren Understrup IBM GDPS Developer
Soren Understrup is a Senior IT Specialist working out of ITS Denmark, specialized in GDPS. He has 40 years of experience with the IBM mainframe and has been working with GDPS since 1998 supporting GDPS implementations at customers both locally and internationally. He is also regularly involved in the documentation delivered as part of the GDPS solution. He is a member of the GDPS Design Council and contribute to the IBM WW delivery as a core team member in the Community of Practice.
Tommy Joergensen IBM Senior IT Specialist,
CICS & WebSphere
Tommy Joergensen is a Senior IT Specialist working in the Software Group Nordic in Technical Pre-sales supporting System z software, specializing in WebSphere and CICS products. He has more than 30 years of experience with CICS and more than 10 years of experience with WebSphere on System z. More recently, Tommy has been working in PSSC Montpellier supporting System z software and new workloads on System z. He has co-authored several IBM Redbooks publications and participated in ITSO workshops.
Uno Bengtsson IBM Senior IT-Specialist
System z zChampion
Uno Bengtsson works for IBM Sweden. He has been with IBM for 10 years, and first worked as a consultant focusing on High Availability solutions and Security on z/OS. Uno now specializes in System z and z/OS.
Wolfgang Hengstler Product Manager DB2 Analytics Accelerator
For more than 30 years Wolfgang has held positions within IBM. He started in software development and then moved to product and market management for IBM Software Group, IBM Storage & Technology Group, IBM Tivoli and IBM Global Services. He has specialized in projects covering operating system components, OO SW wrapping technology, system automation products, and hosting services. Wolfgang currently works in the IBM Information Management Development lab in Boeblingen, Germany, as Product Manager for the IBM DB2 Analytics Accelerator.
Xavier Giannakopoulos Tivoli
Workload Automation Product Manager
Xavier Giannakopoulos is the product manager for Tivoli Workload Automation where he has world-wide responsibility, primarily on the distributed side. He has the working knowledge of the Development Process, technical support, HR management and client handling. He joined IBM in the Workload Automation area after a Master’s Degree in Computer Science and work in Al Research, followed by a MBA degree at Warwick. He has a wide experience both at technical and business levels on the evolution of the Workload Automation market, and is now pursuing specialization on the cloud area. He has been very instrumental in meeting up with several clients and discussing their organization’s strategy and future vision.