Forge26 21CS
Agenda

Resiliency on IBM Z requires the question to shift from “do we have a backup” to “can we recover the business”. This presentation looks at how IZBR fortifies the recovery posture by validating backup integrity, protecting trusted copies, and enabling confident restoration after data corruption, cyber-events, or operational failures. Together, these capabilities form a holistic resiliency model: one stream focused on maintaining continuous service reliability and the other ensuring rapid, trustworthy recovery when the unexpected occurs.

Included in the presentation is a demonstration of how the MCP server connects to Bob and provides value to recovering your business.

• Matt Roseblade
• Rebecca Levesque

Why Data Access Matters More Than Data Location.

Artificial intelligence is transforming enterprise architecture by shifting the focus from infrastructure to data. This presentation examines why trusted, governed, and accessible enterprise data has become the foundation for business value in the AI era. Drawing on industry research, executive insights, and real-world examples, it explores the evolution from infrastructure-centric to data-centric architecture and demonstrates why data access, governance, and architectural flexibility are now strategic advantages.

Attendees will gain practical insights into building enterprise architectures that enable AI while supporting security, resilience, compliance, and long-term business agility.

• Rebecca Levesque

IBM z/VSE has not been supported since 30 September 2023, but 21CS VSEⁿ 6.3 and 6.4 are supported and are the recommended path forward.

This session covers the announcements and news since 21CS VSEⁿ 6.3 was released in 2022, including things to consider when upgrading to 6.3 and 6.4, or when upgrading to new IBM Z hardware, and the next steps to take if you care about your VSE workloads.

• Gonzalo Muelas Serrano

Some of the VSEⁿ Connectors are now available as cloud-native applications (containers), so customers who already have an OpenShift environment can use it to deploy the VSEⁿ Connectors with server characteristics.

This session walks through the motivation and advantages of using containers, and the steps to deploy the VSEⁿ Connectors container images within an OpenShift cluster.

• Rose Mathew

Planning a storage migration or refresh in 2027? For most teams that still means booking a weekend outage and hoping the rollback plan holds. It’s the kind of project nobody looks forward to. But moving data across tape and disk doesn’t have to take production down at all.

This session shows how a migration runs while the business keeps working, with no outage window to plan around. We’ll walk through how it works, what it does for your uptime numbers, and how it saves you the weekend.

• Kaili AndreProduct Manager, 21CS
• Joshua StilesHead of Product, 21CS

New to Z and already familiar with cloud storage? That experience carries over more than you might think. This session shows how to use cloud object storage with z/OS, so you and your team can move cold data off disk and tape, keep backup and archive copies, and get mainframe data to the systems that need it with ease.

We’ll look at how a cleaner, more familiar approach helps newer team members find their footing fast, and why that matters to keep the mainframe strong as a new generation takes it on.

• Kaili AndreProduct Manager, 21CS
• Joshua StilesHead of Product, 21CS

A second run of the Monday 11:00 session.

Resiliency on IBM Z requires the question to shift from “do we have a backup” to “can we recover the business”. This presentation looks at how IZBR fortifies the recovery posture by validating backup integrity, protecting trusted copies, and enabling confident restoration after data corruption, cyber-events, or operational failures. Together, these capabilities form a holistic resiliency model: one stream focused on maintaining continuous service reliability and the other ensuring rapid, trustworthy recovery when the unexpected occurs.

Included in the presentation is a demonstration of how the MCP server connects to Bob and provides value to recovering your business.

• Matt Roseblade
• Rebecca Levesque

This session covers the VSEⁿ AI ChatBot that 21CS has been working on for the past months, specifically trained for VSEⁿ users, to run on your premises and without needing costly hardware resources.

We will talk about the motivation, value and technologies used, and show a demo open to the audience to ask the AI ChatBot questions about VSEⁿ.

• Gonzalo Muelas Serrano

21CS VSEⁿ 6.4 has been available since October 2025 and customers need to start upgrading to it to stay current and supported.

In this session you will learn what to consider when installing and upgrading to 21CS VSEⁿ 6.4, and especially the new System License Key feature and the setup of the new IBM z17 Network Express Adapter. If time allows, there will be a demo.

• David Jamieson

Technical expertise is important, but some of the most impactful career opportunities come from how we connect, collaborate, and contribute beyond our day-to-day roles. Advocacy isn’t just for speakers, influencers, or community leaders. It’s for anyone who is passionate about sharing knowledge, helping others, and making a difference.

In this story-driven session, you’ll hear multiple perspectives on advocacy, personal branding, and professional growth from individuals with different backgrounds, personalities, and career journeys. Through real-world experiences, we’ll explore how communication, empathy, community engagement, mentoring, content creation, and knowledge sharing can help build credibility, expand your network, and create new opportunities.

You’ll leave with practical ideas, fresh perspectives, and actionable steps to help you champion technology, support others, and advance your career, on your own terms.

• Rebecca Levesque
• Joshua StilesHead of Product, 21CS
• Zaid Darsot
• Anji Stephens
• AWAileen Wynne
• CZClea Zolotow

This session shows how to work efficiently with VSEⁿ, both for sysprogs and application programmers, by using the VSEⁿ Connectors tools (such as the VSEⁿ Navigator and VTAPE server) and the VSCode plugin for VSEⁿ that 21CS will release soon.

• Rose Mathew

Have you ever had a yield transaction loop so badly that you had to shut down the whole OLTP region to stop it? 21CS has come up with a solution that stops the transaction without stopping the whole OLTP region.

The session also covers other enhancements that make your OLTP environment more resilient.

• David Jamieson

Artificial intelligence has fundamentally changed how organizations must think about their data. While businesses have spent decades becoming data driven, the AI era demands something more: they must become data aware. Trusted AI depends on data that is complete, consistent, governed, recoverable, and fit for business purpose.

This presentation explores why resiliency has become a strategic requirement for AI, introducing the concepts of data awareness, operational intelligence, governance, recoverability, and trust. It challenges organizations to move beyond managing infrastructure and begin understanding the quality, readiness, and resilience of the data upon which every AI decision depends.

• Rebecca Levesque