Mastering your enterprise scheduling environment is no longer just about “running jobs”—it’s about orchestrating business value, ensuring security, and embracing the next generation of AI-driven operations.

If you’re looking to move from a reactive “firefighting” mode to a proactive, strategic posture, the 2026 ASAP University Conference is the most critical investment you can make this year. Below is a deep dive into the 2026 Curriculum, featuring some of the most anticipated sessions designed to solve your toughest operational challenges.

The Future of Orchestration: Why ASAP University 2026 is Your Must-Attend Event

In an era of hybrid cloud complexity and rapid AI integration, the skills that kept your data center running yesterday won’t be enough for tomorrow. The 2026 ASAP University curriculum has been specifically engineered to bridge the gap between legacy reliability and modern agility.

1.  Master the “Single Pane of Glass”: The DWC Track

The Dynamic Workload Console (DWC) is the heart of modern automation. This year, we are moving beyond the interface basics to focus on high-speed efficiency and deep integration.

  • Optimizing Operational Efficiency: Mastering the Dynamic Workload Console (DWC) * Presenter: Ken Thomas * The Why: Operational delays often stem from inefficient UI usage. This course focuses on configurations that maximize speed and responsiveness, alongside hands-on training for the Graphical Designer to simplify complex workload modeling.
  • Mastering File Transfer Orchestration: A Deep Dive into the WWA File Transfer Plug-in * Presenters: Ken Thomas / Harry Hanlon * The Why: Stop treating file transfers as “invisible” risks. Learn to transform ad-hoc processes into fully monitored, auditable, and automated workflows using native job types, reducing manual intervention and improving compliance.
  • Bridging SAP and Enterprise: Deep Dive into SAP Integration and Orchestration * Presenter: Russ Biringer * The Why: Inefficient SAP integration causes costly batch delays. This session provides a roadmap for moving from traditional xagent connections to modern dynamic job types, establishing a single point of control for Finance and HR cycles.

2.  Mainframe Excellence: The “WAPL Wednesday” & Z/OS Deep Dives

For the Z-system experts, we have a powerhouse lineup focused on WAPL (Workload Automation Programming Language) and advanced plan management.

  • Welcome to WAPL Wednesday / From OCL to WAPL * Presenters: Jim Bartlow / Dean Harrison * The Why: With the sunsetting of OCL, transitioning to WAPL is a priority. These sessions teach you how to emulate every OCL command while leveraging new “tricks” that offer more flexibility and power for your mainframe automation.
  • Keeping Your Frogs Clean and Green * Presenter: Doug Specht * The Why: An overgrown database leads to wasted energy and human error. Learn how to use WAPL to identify redundant elements, archive effectively, and keep your current plan manageable and “neat.”
  • I Love It When a Plan Comes Together * Presenter: Dean Harrison * The Why: Planning is often misunderstood. This core session covers the resilience and recovery of plans, helping you automate the creation of schedules and manage unmonitored test environments.

3.  High-Value Strategy: SLA, Resilience, and Security

Business continuity depends on more than just “up-time”—it depends on on-time delivery and ironclad security.

  • Guaranteeing On-Time Business: Mastering Workload Service Assurance (WSA) * Presenter: Mike White * The Why: Learn to prioritize the jobs that actually matter. This course deep-dives into the Dynamic Critical Path function, providing early alerts for potential SLA breaches so you can optimize resources before a delay impacts revenue.
  • 2 for 1: Failover Resilience & Workload Assurance Live Demos * Presenter: Leon Odenbrett * The Why: See a live Master-to-Backup Master failover. This session details the best practices for planning failover exercises and highlights common mistakes that lead to unplanned downtime.
  • Securing Enterprise Automation: Best Practices for Certificate Management * Presenter: Sajjad Kabir * The Why: Expired certificates are a critical threat to continuity. Master the certman utility and learn the automated methods for certificate distribution to ensure secure connections between agents and the mainframe.

4.  The Horizon: AI and AIOps

ASAP 2026 is where the industry’s future becomes actionable.

  • Simplifying and Transforming IBM Z Operations with Agentic AI * Presenter: Wolfgang Schaeberle * The Why: Experience AI Agents in action. Learn how AI assistants are reshaping the IBM Z user experience, providing real-time insights and automating workflows through intuitive chat interfaces.
  • Unified Mainframe Control: Orchestrating Predictability with IBM Concert for Z * The Why: Eliminate data silos. Learn how IBM Concert uses AI to correlate events, reduce noise, and provide a holistic risk assessment across z/OS and hybrid cloud workloads.
  • Predictive Operations: End-to-End Observability with Instana and AIOps * The Why: Move from reactive monitoring to predictive excellence. Learn how to integrate Instana’s real-time visibility with Workload Automation to neutralize threats to your batch processes before they start.

Why Attend ASAP University?

This is not just a lecture series; it is a collaborative lab environment. You will have direct access to:

  • The Rome Lab Developers: The people who actually build the code.
  • Level 3 Support: The experts who solve the world’s most complex scheduling bugs.
  • Your Peers: A community of power users who have already solved the challenges you are facing today.

Don’t wait for your next scheduling audit or system failure to realize you need these skills. Review the full 2026 Catalog and register today to secure your spot in the future of Workload Automation.