Leadership

Board of Directors: COMMON Europe’s Board of Directors is composed of the following user group representatives:

Executive Committee

JUAN MANUEL ALCUDIA

President

Representing COMMON Iberia

Juan Manuel is a former WebSphere Portal Server Specialist and Specialist on Performance and DB2 on IBM i Software Services and RPG programmer. He is also a longbow archer and a bass player. A renaissance man.

 

 

 

TORBJÖRN APPEHL

Vice President

Torbjörn has been working with IBM i and its predecessors since 1997. Today he has his own company focusing on helping IBM and their Independent Software Vendors (ISV) to fully take advantage of all technologies available on the platform. Currently Vice-president of Common Europe, he was a member of the board for Common Sweden for 10+ years, member of the Executive Committee for Common Europe for several years and is an IBM Champion for Power systems since 2016

PIOTR TKACZYK

Treasurer

President, COMMON Poland

Piotr has been working with the IBM I since 1998 focusing on training, system management and technical support for biggest BP in Poland. He has a BS of Polish – Japanese Institute of Computer Science and numerous IBM’s certification.

He has been a member of Common Poland since 2002, a Board Member since 2013, and President since 2015. He has held the position of  Common Europe Treasurer since 2016.

ROBERTO DE PEDRINI

Technical Director

FAQ400 (Italy)

Roberto has been an RPG Developer for about 30 years, IT Manager before that, and then founder of different small companies in Italy. He has been an IBM Champion for the last three years. 

His passion for AS400 before and IBM i after has always led him over the years to create services for the IBM i community in Italy: starting from a forum (Faq400.com) that has collected a community-usergroup (the Faq400 community) and finally a service company (Faq400 Srl). “I believe in i.”

JONATHON SAWDON

Executive Secretary

Jonathon is a professional actor, writer, drama teacher, presenter and voice coach.
He has  several film and TV credits to his name, has appeared in numerous corporate films and advertisements as well as various corporate and commercial voice overs.
He also works in the business sector as a drama-based trainer and facilitator.

He has been Executive Secretary for CE since 2018.

Members of the Board

CHRISTOPH CUSCOLECA

Representing COMMON Austria

Christoph has been Vice President of COMMON Austria since 2000 and  on the COMMON Europe Board of Directors since 2008. He is a Professor of IT, teaching mainly IBM i System Management and programming at schools and Universities in Austria. He is also a freelance consultant targeting Europe & East Asia.

 PHILIPPE VANDEN BUSSCHE

President, COMMON Belgium   

Philippe Vanden Bussche has been a member of the Common Europe Advisory Council for 10+ years, helping to shape the future of IBM i. For his expertise in IBM i,  IBM has recognized him as an IBM Champion since 2021.

Philippe started his IT career 40 years ago on System/38 and has never quit the IBM i platform since then. His focus moved from Application Development to IT Management to IT Architecture and System Management. As a GDPR trained IT professional he has given significant attention to security and privacy on IBM i.

IGOR NOVOTNY

COMMON Czech Republic & Slovakia

Igor is an eternal IT pilgrim who has already experienced the position of a teacher, customer and also supplier and for more than 30 years has been fully engaged in data processing and storage systems.

Founding member & standing president of Common Czech Republic.

Anders Grønbach

President, COMMON Denmark

Anders Grønbech is CDIO at Logitrans A/S which manufactures internal lifting equipment with facilities in Denmark, China and USA. He has worked at Logitrans since 1989. Logitrans have used IBM solutions since 2002. IBM I, AIX and Linux on Power systems.

He has been an active member of the Common Denmark board since 2013, working as treasurer / administrator.

He is an IBM Champion and sees a big benefit in having a worldwide network of experts due to Common communities. 

NATHANAËL BONNET

Marketing Director

President, COMMON France

Nathanaël , president of Common France, is co-owner of Gaia Mini Systems, a company specialized in IBM i training and expertise.

His entire career is tied to IBM i: share knowledge, support customers, implement new solutions, modernize and allow more possibilities. It is in this spirit that he participates in Common France.

Pasi Louanto

 COMMON Finland

Pasi studied his degree at the University of Turku. He is one of the founders and CEO of Kaita Finland. He has worked in several companies using the IBM Power Systems platform both in Finland and abroad.

Today, we also want to raise awareness of the broad scope of the IBM platform and the opportunities for young people.

HEIDI SCHMIDT

COMMON Germany

Heidi studied sociology and technical computer science. In this, at first glance, contradictory professional combination, she has discovered exciting (success) potential in the course of her career, which she likes to share with other managers in lectures and workshops. She is the managing partner of PKS Software GmbH and, with her team of over 50 women and men, she concentrates on software transformations in the legacy enterprise environment.

ANDREA RIBUOLI

ItPAss (Italy)

Andrea Ribuoli is an independent IBM i senior developer and consultant. He is passionate for Open Source and worked for PowerRuby Ltd. Nowadays, he regularly maintains an RPM and yum based distribution of Ruby 3 for IBM i PASE.

CLAUDE MULLER

COMMON Luxembourg

Claude has been working at Intesa Sanpaolo Servitia since 1986, starting on S/38 and then from 1989 on AS400.

He runs all activities around production, development, security, quality and system engineering.

He has been President of Common Luxembourg since 2012.

JAN VAN DE GRIENDT

COMMON Netherlands

TROND BJERKVOLD

COMMON Norway

Started as a consultant in IBM Norway in April 1983, working on IBM S/36, and continued with AS/400 when it was introduced in 1988. Initially, my area was IBM ERP systems, however I worked more on operating systems and IBM software like Query/400, PC-support, integrated servers, Domino and more in the years to come.

From 1999 I was in technical sales, working with customer cases and presenting technical news for IBM business partners. When the first IBM ITSO conference was arranged in Europe, I was part of the technical staff assisting Ian Jarman, who was in charge of the conference.

During my years in IBM I wrote articles and held presentations for the Common Norway community. When time allow, I’m still publishing articles (in Norwegian). From 2014 I have been working at Orange Business Digital Service Europe, where I’m the system manager for shared customer services on IBM Power systems. The work responsibility includes both a technical part, hands-on PowerVM, VIOS, HMC, virtual servers running AIX, Linux and IBM i (best operating system ever), BRMS, SAN and more, as well as pre-sale activities.

Currently we use IBM E1080 servers located at a out datacenters in the Oslo, Norway region, for running customer workloads. This make my work very interesting, and enables me to appreciate the various challenges and concerns for Common Europe members.

MICHEL ROETHLISBERGER

COMMON Romandie (Switzerland)

Michel is co-founder and CEO of InnoBoost SA and president of COMMON Romandie IBM Users Group since 2021. As IBM business Partner, he has more than 20 years experience in the Swiss market, notably in the banking sector and with scientific institutions. He is now focused on new IBM technologies like AI,  post-quantum cryptography and Quantum computing.

Besides his strong interest in fundamental physics, he is also passionate about sailing and astronomical observations.

MATS LIDSTRÖM

COMMON Sweden

Mats has been working with IBM i (and it predecessors) since 1987 as a Programmer, Designer, Head of development, CIO and Architect. He has been part of a number of national and international projects throughout the years. Since 2018 he has been working for Apper and is helping customers to take care of their applications with the focus on using the latest IBM i technology to make their business processes as effective as possible.
He also does presentations and runs education around the platform and its technologies.

He is president of  Common Sweden/Data3,  a member of CEAC – Common Europe Advisory Council and an IBM Champion for Power Systems.

Steve Cast

Chairman, i-UG (UK)

Steve is the owner and Managing Director at Redbourn Business Systems, UK.

IBM Liaison

SIMON PORSTENDORFER

ISV Ecoystem Leader EMEA – IBM Systems Power

Simon spent the last 20 years with IBM in various sales roles from Client Executive in the Business Partner Channel up to being the Sales Leader for Scale Out Servers in Europe. He was the responsible Principal Offering Manager for Power Scale Out Worldwide during the Power9 launch with a focus on the non Linux business around IBM i and AIX. Right now he is driving an initiative in Europe to revitalize the ISV ecosystem for Power.