Optimize Your IBM MQ and Integration Ecosystem at Middleware Mash-Up 2025

Start your day with fresh coffee, breakfast, and meaningful conversations. This opening hour is your chance to meet fellow attendees, connect with MQ and integration professionals facing similar challenges, and get to know the speakers before sessions begin.

We’ll use this time to better understand what you’re hoping to learn—so we can tailor the day’s discussions to what matters most to you.

Come hungry, leave connected, and help shape the conversation for the rest of the event.

Presented by Robert Parker, Executive IT Specialist, Security Architect, Senior Software Engineer, IBM MQ Distributed

Securing your messaging network is vital to ensure only authorized, trusted applications can access your messages. IBM MQ provides a wealth of options for securing your queue managers and message data but it can be hard to know where to start.

In this session Rob Parker, Security architect for IBM MQ, will take you through:

• The different security features in MQ.
• How each security feature interacts with each other.
• How MQ queue managers determine application identity.
• Some simple configuration examples that secure your data.

Whether you’re just getting started with MQ security or looking to simplify and modernize your current setup, this session will give you the clarity and confidence to take the next step. Join us to learn how to apply the right security features in the right way—no guesswork required.

This session may be delivered virtually. It will not be recorded

When sensitive data and critical services depend on IBM MQ, resiliency isn’t optional—it’s essential. But ensuring availability and durability across today’s diverse deployment models requires more than just traditional high availability.

This session explores the range of resiliency configurations available for IBM MQ, including clustering, Multi-Instance Queue Managers, Replicated Data Queue Managers (RDQM), and container-native Native HA. We’ll break down the infrastructure, recovery behavior, and operational considerations for each—whether you’re running MQ on VMs, containers, appliances, or across geographic regions.

Special attention will be given to Cross Region Replication (CRR), a powerful option for extending MQ resiliency across sites and cloud zones while minimizing data loss. You’ll learn how CRR compares to other DR strategies and where it fits in a broader HA/DR architecture.

We’ll share field-proven insights, highlight tradeoffs, and examine patterns that help support continuity, compliance, and performance—so you can confidently design the right resiliency model for your environment.

Presented by: Bill Karounos, CEO, Founder, & Principal Consultant at TransformaTech, Inc

Join TransformaTech’s Bill Karounos for a practical and forward-looking session on how IBM App Connect Enterprise (ACE) can drive real-world integration across modern enterprise environments. This session is designed for middleware and integration leaders looking to streamline development, connect disparate systems, and harness the power of AI and automation in their integration workflows.

In this session, you’ll see live demonstrations of:

• Integrating messaging protocols like Kafka and IBM MQ
• Mapping data formats such as JSON to EDI X12
• Connecting ACE flows with AI platforms including WatsonX and ChatGPT
• Accelerating delivery with TransformaTech’s ACE code generation tools

Don’t miss this opportunity to see how ACE can transform your integration strategy with real examples and expert insight.

Register now to reserve your seat and stay ahead in your modernization journey.

Join our Ask the Experts panel to connect directly with seasoned MQ professionals who’ve helped teams navigate upgrades, outages, modernization, security gaps, and performance bottlenecks. This open Q&A is your chance to ask the questions that don’t get answered in documentation, training decks, or vendor pitches.

Whether you’re troubleshooting, tuning, or planning your next big shift, you’ll walk away with practical guidance you can apply right away.

Bring your questions. Leave with answers you can trust.

Experts Include:
Rob Parker, Security Architect, Senior Software Engineer, IBM MQ Distributed
Nick Glowacki, Executive IT Specialist at IBM
Kim Clark, Integration Architect, Portfolio Product Management, IBM Automation, IBM Hursley
Jason Easterly, Technical Specialist Manager, IBM Technology, US National Market Midwest (Automation)
Peter D’Agosta, Chief Product Manager at Avada Software
Greg Hanson, Infrastructure Manager at The OCC
Bill Karounos, CEO, Founnder, & Principal Consultant at Transformatech, Inc

Additional Panelists TBA

Some panelists may appear virtually. This session will not be recorded.

Presented by: Greg Hanson, Infrastructure Principal, The Options Clearing Corporation

You’ve invested time and energy into Replicated Data Queue Manager (RDQM) yet you’ve had your eye on the prize, the holy grail of the containerized world: enter Native HA Cross Region Replication (CRR). If you’ve properly architected your RDQM environment, Native HA CRR will be a “drop in architecture” with minimal, if any, impacts to your producer/consumer applications.

This session will cover the RDQM design considerations and how they will help smooth the transition to a multi-region, containerized MQ architecture, allowing your MQ infrastructure to dynamically grow with your business needs. We’ll also cover why Native HA CRR is the go-to solution for a highly available, redundant and resilient MQ infrastructure and how an effective CI/CD pipeline fits into the transition model.

Don’t miss your chance to future-proof your MQ architecture—register now for this session and discover how easy it can be to make Native HA CRR your next “drop in” success!

Presented by: Peter D’Agosta, Co-Founder and Chief Product Manager, Avada Software

In today’s hybrid environments, middleware like IBM MQ and App Connect Enterprise (ACE) plays a mission-critical role—but too often, security threats and performance issues go unnoticed until they cause disruption. This session takes a practical approach to middleware monitoring, showing you what to watch, why it matters, and how to take action before small problems become outages.

Using Infrared360 as the demonstration tool, we’ll walk through real-world monitoring techniques you can apply in your own environment—without relying on message tracing or building custom scripts. Whether you’re responsible for security, performance, or both, this session will help you improve visibility and gain control over your MQ and ACE infrastructure.

You’ll learn how to:

• Monitor for unauthorized access, configuration changes, and other security risks in MQ and ACE
• Identify performance issues like queue buildup, slow message flows, or resource overuse
• Set up alerting and automation to catch issues before they impact SLAs
• Build a practical monitoring strategy focused on visibility, auditability, and actionability

If you’re tasked with keeping your middleware secure, stable, and performing at its best, this session is for you.

Register today and learn how to take a proactive approach to monitoring your MQ and ACE environments—with tools and techniques you can put to work immediately.