Meet the Experts
Adrian Angelov is currently part of the IBM SMPO (Software Migration Project Offices) team, which he joined in 2022. Adrian specializes in delivering migration services from competitive scheduling tools to IzWS. Prior to this role, he spent 10 years in the zOS system support area ,where he held various positions from Scheduling specialist to z/OS Sysprog. Adrian likes traveling a lot and in his free time he enjoys hiking in the mountains.
Anna Dawson started working in IT Operations for a large bank in 1975, supporting their OPC (aka TWSz and IWSz ) environment from 1985. Since joining IBM in 1997 she has supported many users as they moved from other batch schedulers to IWSz and provides exploitation consultancy, health checks and any other IWSz consultancy required. At home she is an unpaid babysitter (and taxi service) for her two grandchildren.
Bilquees Kawoosa is a Senior Services Manager at IBM. Her work includes being an IT Architecture and Delivery Lead. Bilquees specializes in Cloud, Mobile and Custom Application Development.
Brian Fitzgibbon is President and CEO of SEGUS Inc. and was an original founder of the company in August of 1992. For his 40+ year career, Brian has exclusively worked for, or with, software vendors. While pursuing a degree in computer science in New York, Brian was recruited directly from university to work for The Computer Software Company, (TCSC), and worked on functionally extending various IBM operating systems. During his tenure with TCSC he was afforded the opportunity to live abroad in Germany and Australia for several years. After settling back in the United States, Brian joined up with VM Software (later known as Systems Center), and became a Senior Software Architect before leaving to found SEGUS. Brian also serves on the Board of Directors for the ASAP User Group and has been affiliated with the group for almost three decades.
Cecilia Baglioni has been a developer for TWSz for more than 3 years and this is her first ASAP conference. She is interested in Rest Api and modernization of the mainframe. Besides handling TWSz, her favorite hobby is gardening, she loves flowers and practicing at the gym.
Clinton Easterling is the Workload Automation Client Advocate Program Manager for North America. He started this role in May 2018 (6 years now). Prior to this role, he was part of the L2 support team as a technical lead of the HCL/IBM Workload Scheduler products in Austin, Texas. An IBM certified 9.x deployment specialist Clinton has 23 years of experience with the Workload Automation products and a total of 27 years in IT. Clint has been involved as member, presenter, liaison, and part of planning team of ASAP for 19 years. He studied electrical engineering at ITT Tech and served in the United States Army for 8 years. Clinton likes to spend time with family and friends, barbecuing and hosting sporting events in his mancave.
Cristiane Zukauska started working as a MVS and Batch Operator for IBM internal accounts in 2003. This was her debut in the OPC/IzWS world. After few years Cristiane became a scheduler, and a support for code promotion tools. She left IBM Brazil in 2016, for an adventure in Canada. She studied for 4 years, graduated, and in 2021 had an incredible opportunity to join IBM’s IzWS migration team. Currently, she is only a grasshopper in IzWS migration (as she so modestly puts it) but is destined to one day become a guru. Cristiane also works 2nd and 3rd shift as a mom of 3 and loves to spend her time cooking.
Daniel Jaghammar, (Director – ASAP University Board of Directors) born in Sweden. He was introduced to mainframe during his internship in the end of 2016 where batch scheduling caught his attention. After 3 years of batch scheduling, he then moved on to become a z/OS system programmer which he’s been doing since. When not working he keeps himself busy with different sports, the most fun for him is Football or as we say in America “Soccer” and then there is also golf which has grown on him recently.
Davide Canalis started working at HCL Rome Lab in 2017, where he joined the IzWS team. After 5 years, during which he acquired good scheduling knowledge and improved his development skills, he moved to IBM, where he currently works in the SMPO team, leading IzWS migration projects and contributing to the improvement of the tools used by his team. He has a mathematical background which is reflected in his approach to problems. In his spare time, he enjoys sports (football, basketball and CrossFit) and is a strong supporter of As Roma.
Dean Harrison has been a Workload Scheduler user for 33 years, who is always trying to make the product do things it was never intended to do. In the 13 years since Dean moved to IBM and later to HCL Dean developed the Workload Automation Programming Language (WAPL) to allow users to push the limits of the product even further. Along the way this turned into a strange affinity with frogs, which have featured in at least one ASAP presentation each year for over a decade. This includes one which was delivered remotely – Transatlantic – thanks to Eyjafjallajokull grounding all the planes that month. As well as being a techie, Dean is a singer/songwriter and has written the ASAP theme song for the last three years.
Domenico D’Alterio is the IBM Principal Product Manager focused on The Linux Foundation’s ZoweTM and IBM Z distribution for Zowe projects. He contributes to the open-source project strategy and direction as well as market success of IBM Z distribution for Zowe. Prior to his current role, Domenico was the Product Manager for offerings in the IBM Z AIOps area working on the strategic directions of multiple offerings. In the previous years, he covered different managerial positions in IBM Development and Customer support organization as well as the role of Product Manager of Z Analytics products, Domenico joined IBM in 1999. Starting as designer, moved to a managerial role in 2006, acting as Development and Customer Support manager in the former Tivoli division of IBM. He graduated in Electronic Engineering, in Italy.
Doug Specht has been attending ASAP since 1993 (despite repeated attempts to keep him away). Doug pretends to know a little something about IBM Z Workload Scheduler (IzWS). for z/OS. He has managed to overcome all attempts to confuse customers via product name changes (re: OPC/A, OPC/ESA, TME10 OPC, Tivoli OPC, Tivoli Workload Scheduler for z/OS (TWSz), and IBM Workload Scheduler for z/OS (IWSz)). Doug has worked on countless migrations from other mainframe scheduling products to IzWS (and its predecessors). He has customized product user exits, written Rexx conversion tools and edit macros, installed and customized new installations as well as assisted with upgrades from prior releases. Doug enjoys finding solutions to unique customer scenarios, particularly when using WAPL. He also enjoys “scope creeping” new product features and functions especially when Dean Harrison is on the receiving end. (Smiley Emoji). Doug dearly misses his colleague, friend, and awesome human being, Cy Atkinson, every day.
Doug Gibbs is a Technical Software Sales Specialist – System Z Competitive Replacements at IBM. Technically focused software Sales and Presales professional experienced in all areas of the Information Technology industry including team management, product development, product support, quality assurance, sales, consulting, project planning, implementation and workload analysis. Skilled in Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) analysis for IBM clients to determine the cost effectiveness of consolidating workload, offloading workload, or adding new workload onto the IBM System Z mainframe platform. His IBM role includes more than 20 years as a technical sales subject matter expert focused on IBM software designed for both distributed and mainframe platforms. Areas of expertise are automation, IT asset management, system performance and monitoring, and financial management.
Federica Gari has extensive experience with z/OS Workload Scheduler, having held various roles over the years including development, Level 3 and Level 2 support, and professional services. She began her career at IBM, later transitioned to HCL, and is now back at IBM as part of the SMPO team, as an IzWS Migration Specialist. She is proud and enthusiastic to be part of such a great team. Federica lives with her family by the sea in Rome. She has a passion for travelling and enjoys staying active through sports like swimming and running.
Franco Mossotto is the lead architect for the IBM Workload Automation products. He joined IBM in 1998 as a Tivoli Workload Scheduler for z/OS developer. Franco has worked in design, development and support of IBM Tivoli Workload scheduling and provisioning products. In the scheduling area Franco worked as developer, chief designer, L3 technical leader for both Tivoli Workload Scheduler and Tivoli Workload Scheduler for z/OS, and as an architect for the development of cloud and Bluemix offerings. Following the IBM and HCL partnership in 2016, Franco transitioned to HCL with the rest of the development team to continue his work on IBM Workload Automation portfolio.
Ginny Gorman currently serves as CEO of the Beta Systems Software of North America. She started as an Assembler programmer at Sears and quickly moved to a start-up company to write the first TCP/IP stack to run on an IBM mainframe. Then acquired by Sterling Software, and subsequently moved back to start-ups, she is now an experienced manager, with 25+ years’ experience in the technology sector in engineering, customer service, sales, sales management, marketing, marketing management, brand management and training as well as experience with volunteering and volunteer leadership. Outside of work, Ginny enjoys building renovation work, gardening, and her family.
Hans Olsson from IBM Sweden has worked over 30 years for IBM. In the 1990’s he worked at the Nordic Lab where OPC was first developed. He became responsible for the development of the OPC Migration Aid (OMA). Over the last 30 years or so many customers have used this tool to migrate from competitor schedulers to IzWS. Hans supports migrations worldwide and has coded many solutions using the IzWS exits. You will have seen his code in various members of the SEQQSAMP library. When relaxing Hans likes to play Bridge.
Harry Hanlon is a software development consultant with Voya Financial. Harry has over 30 plus years of IT experience. His position requires him to work closely with Unix/Linux admin, network team, DBA’s, security administration, application developers and groups implementing new/changed processes to provide efficient, automated processing. Specifically, his responsibilities include implementation of new instances of IBM Workload Scheduler on servers, maintenance of existing servers, additions, deletions, and maintenance of the IBM Workload Scheduler environment for business needs, as well as disaster recovery planning, architecture and testing for the automation needs. running approximately 115,000 production jobs a day and 90,000 in non-production. And introducing many types of advanced job type.Your Content Goes Here
James Bartlow is a certified Master IT Specialist who tries to be laid back and casual as much as possible and prefers to be called “Jim”. Jim spent many years installing, supporting, and using a variety of scheduling products since first cutting his teeth upgrading OPC 2.3 to TWS 8.1 as part of IBM’s Strategic Outsourcing division (now Kyndryl). Jim is currently a member of the IBM SMPO migration team where he continues to delight his coworkers and customers with a wide selection of hits (and misses) from bygone days. Jim would like to send a shout out to Cy Atkinson, the man who taught me that it’s OK to say, “I Do not know”. We still miss you, Cy!
Jens Buhring, HORIZONT Software GmbH, has more than 25 years of IT experience. He is an internationally recognized Consulting IT Specialist for different HORIZONT product areas running on the mainframe. During his career he has developed expertise that spans application development on the z/OS platform, IWS z/OS administration, workload optimization and a variety of product training. Besides working as a pre-sales technician, Jens is focused on lifecycle management systems for mainframe workload objects like JCL, IWSz AD etc. He is involved in many projects to help HORIZONT’s worldwide customers to improve their business by taking advantage of the latest HORIZONT technologies. He is a frequent speaker on these topics. This year will be Jens’ second visit to the ASAP.
Juscelino Candido has over 15 years in the IT industry, at IBM, he started as an IT Specialist – Workload Automation, in the last five years working as an infrastructure and application IT architect. His areas of expertise include multi-cloud architecture, containers, microservices, observability, virtualization, networks, distributed systems, systems administration, production control, and enterprise job scheduling. IBM Master Inventor with +20 filed patents.
Kurt Wagner has worked for the University of Wisconsin-Madison for over 15 years and was first introduced to Workload Automation over 12 years ago. He started as a scheduler, moved on to lead a team of schedulers, and is now also assisting in admin tasks. During this time, he has been providing automation strategies for the Student Information System at UW-Madison as well as the HR and Financial systems which are used for all 13 Universities of Wisconsin. In his personal time, he is an avid sports fan and still actively plays several sports, most of all soccer. He and his girlfriend love to travel, hike, and try new foods.
Leon Odenbrett, (HCL), is a Presales Technical Specialist for Workload Automation at HCL. He started working with Workload Automation at Best Buy back in 1996, when it was still called “Maestro”. During his 16 years with Best Buy, he was responsible for maintaining about 100,000 jobs a night. He then went to work for HCL on their Disney team where he led the conversion from Workload Automation 8.2 to 9.4. He was then promoted to the presales team at HCL, where most of you have had an opportunity to work with him. If you haven’t had a chance to meet or talk with him, please search him out and start a conversation, he loves meeting new people and answering any questions about Workload Automation that you may have. Leon is a husband and father of 3 whose hobbies include playing and collecting board games, his collection is now at 152 games.
Marco Cardelli is the Director of Product Management for the WA portfolio, focused on product strategy. He joined HCL Software in September 2016, as part of the partnership agreement between IBM and HCL. Previously he worked for more than 25 years in IBM on Workload Automation products as developer, chief designer, and architect of the mainframe solution.
Marija Perkovic is a Product Technical Specialist at IBM with extensive experience in the mainframe (z/OS) environment, specializing in IBM Z Workload Scheduler (IZWS) and IBM Z System Automation (IZSA) migrations. She supports clients in transitioning to IBM solutions and pre-sales activities, including demonstrations and presentations, to showcase the value of IBM’s scheduling and automation tools. Marija is passionate about helping organizations modernize their operations while minimizing risk and ensuring continuity. Outside of work, she enjoys traveling and she always tries to combine business with pleasure whenever possible.
Mark Philpot is a Sales and Technical resource for Workload Automation at HCL. He has over 20 years assisting customers with evaluation, deployment, and technical review for solutions such as IBM Workload Scheduler. He has excellent communication and analytical skills and is customer-focused, working to do what is best for the customer from a product and licensing perspective. Married for 36 years with 3 grown children with families of their own. If he is not with his children and their families, he is in the garage working on a project car.
Michael White (Director – ASAP University Board of Directors) was born and raised in California, where he worked on TWS since version 8.6 on Windows. He moved to the Midwest to work with Discover in 2019, and he has spent the last five years mastering version 9.4 on RHEL 6-8. His team recently completed a complicated parallel upgrade from 9.4 to 10.1, and He is extremely proud of that delivery. The knowledge he has gained on IWS has provided a rewarding career helping folks perform better automation and make more resilient batch platforms. The future may be uncertain, but IWS will be part of it. He is grateful to be married to his wife for the past 20 years this July with his two teenage children. He drives his 2013 Mustang GT daily, which does not get put away in the winter. Road trips are the best form of therapy.
Nissim Tushiah started working with Workload Automation in 2003 with TWS version 8.1 and has since dedicated his career with focus strictly on workload automation. He had originally worked for a pharmacy chain as both the TWS admin and scheduler until the company had shut their doors, at which point he started consulting and exploring roles in several companies across the country. He has worked as an independent consultant with focus on TWS administration, upgrades, conversions and the like until he joined HCL Software in 2021 and has been working in their Lab Services Team since. In his spare time, he enjoys working on cars, doing house repairs and caring for his adopted dogs.
Nolan Vaughn (Product Management, IT Workload Automation and AlOps) is a seasoned product management professional with extensive experience in both client-facing and B2B software product management. An individual contributor and mentor, he’s motivated by evolving teams into world-class product management practices, customer-centric product innovation, and meeting the needs of the market.
Pasquale Peluso is a Verification Team Leader of HCL Workload Automation Distributed. He joined the company in 2019. During the development of v10.1 he started leading the Engine team as Scrum Master and is now leading the team through the development of 10.1 FP3. Pasquale has gained particular experience on the Docker and Kubernetes distribution of Workload Automation, and he is the author of Blogs and Videos on the official WA web pages and channels. Pasquale has a Master’s Degree in Automation Engineering and has a passion for Rock and Metal music and for Videogames, especially Blizzard ones.
Reggie Garner (President – ASAP University Board of Directors), Christian Culture Center Media Matrix Engineer /Live Stream Operator. He has over 35 years of mainframe IT experience. Previously, he worked for HCL Lab Services as a Group Manager. He was responsible for providing his clients with z/Workload Scheduling technical support and training. Reggie has deep institutional knowledge and is experienced on the z/Workload Scheduler. As part of this knowledge, he works closely with clients and peers in educating them through formal presentations. In Reggie’s spare time, he enjoys riding his bike, gardening, and spending quality time with his family.
Russ Biringer (Vice President – ASAP University Board of Directors) is a staff software engineer at The Home Depot. Russ has over 30 years of experience driving innovation and excellence in IT operations. Russ began his career in IT as a UNIX administrator at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida and has been employed by The Home Depot since 1998. Russ leads a team of Dev/Ops engineers that work to improve the performance, resilience, and efficiency of critical infrastructure components. Russ has been working with Workload Automation for 18 years, first as a user, and more recently as the lead Workload Automation administrator. Russ is married and is a father to two sons and two stepsons. In his spare time, Russ enjoys hiking, photography, martial arts, and racing radio-control cars competitively.
Sajjad Kabir is a Solutions Architect with the Lab Services team at HCL. He started working with IBM Workload Automation in 1998 while on assignment in IBM Singapore. He has been assisting clients deploy Workload Automation solutions worldwide. He has worked with clients of all sizes and complexities. He has published an IBM Redbook and numerous articles and blogs. He loves to work with people, especially those who have just started their endeavors with workload automation. With the transition from IBM to HCL in 2016, he has mentored HCL consultants and continued to assist clients with implementing automation solutions on-prem and in the cloud. Sajjad loves to travel, enjoys ethnic cuisines, and SCUBA diving in exotic places around the world.
Steve Viola has been level 2 support for TWSz for almost 18 years, but this is his third ASAP conference (prior to 2014 he was providing support for customers during the conference week). Steve was a z/OS systems programmer for 18 years before joining IBM in 1998. Besides handling TWSz (IWSz) call-outs off-hours, his favorite hobbies are music (piano and voice) and gardening.
Suzanne Luckner (Treasurer – ASAP University Board of Directors) is a seasoned IT professional with over 15 years’ experience in technology services and project management. She is currently responsible for leading a team of Workload Scheduler for Z platform administrators supporting various areas of Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. She advocates always be your authentic self, even when it goes against the standards. In her free time, she enjoys abstract painting, cooking new recipes, and taking care of her two young children.
Umberto Caselli is the Development Manager of Workload Automation Core Services (On Prem, Saas, Bluemix). From 2000 to 2016 Umberto worked in IBM with several roles in software development. We worked as technical lead in the L3 support team of IBM Tivoli Monitoring and IBM Workload Scheduler. As a member of the development team for IBM Workload Scheduler, Umberto acted as Scrum Master and technical leader, with a high focus on dynamic scheduling and integrations with other applications. As member of the OASIS OSLC Automation Technical Committee and co-chair of the OSLC Automation workgroup he is one of the authors of the OSLC Automation specifications.
Warren Wright is a Senior Product Specialist and SME for IBM Z Workload Scheduler (zWS), specializes in the selling of zWS services for migrations from ISV competitive scheduling products to zWS. He conducts technical sales presentations and product demonstrations. He also sells zWS services for product upgrades and value-added solutions.
Wolfgang Schaeberle is a senior product manager at IBM focusing on delivering innovative solutions in the IBM Z AlOps area. He is the IBM product manager for IBM Z Workload Scheduler, IBM Z Service Automation Suite, IBM Z ChatOps, and IBM Service Management Unite. Prior to his current role, Wolfgang was a technical leader and architect in IBM Z Service Management. He has worked in multiple disciplines of Systems Management, especially automated operations, business resilience and performance management.