The Krakow meeting of CEAC welcomed two new members, Waldemar Goras of Huhtamaki Poland Ldt and Philippe Vanden Bussche of GG Noor from Belgium, who joined long-term CEAC members Stephen Way,  Jurgen Walderich, Inge Kjolsvik and Dan Foldager.  The CEAC members who also have roles on the COMMON Board - Olga Miralles, Ranga Deshpande and Joost Festen  - attended for part of the meeting, which was facilitated by Alison Butterill, due to the unavoidable absence of Guy Havelick, who was much missed. Alison was joined from IBM by Craig Johnson, Mark Anderson, Mark Olson, Bob Gintowt and Linda Grigolet.

On the first day, after introductions, Craig Johnson presented an overview of IBM’s strategic trends and directions towards the next release of i/OS, Mark Anderson delivered details of DB2 for i enhancements and Mark Olson summarised Power Systems hardware directions.  Each session was punctuated by discussion around relevant requirements and issues raised by CEAC members .

A pleasant, if noisy, dinner alongside the COMMON Europe board rounded off the day.

The second day began early, to enable all CEAC members to take part in a discussion on the direction of CEAC and the requirements process. News of other new CEAC members was received, and we hope to meet them in conference calls and in person soon.  Following this session, Linda Grigolet brought the meeting up to date on the Power Systems Academic Initiative, Bob Gintowt addressed the evolving Availability Options for the Power platform and Alison Butterill covered advances in Application Development. Again, existing and new requirements and experiences were raised during the sessions by the CEAC members as appropriate and relevant.

Following these presentations, Dan Foldager enlightened the meeting with some background and observations on his company and experiences working in the Mid-Range environment in Denmark, and then the meeting addressed the outstanding and new requirements, making good progress in prioritising new requirements and closing several outstanding ones.

A final summing up allowed the CEAC members to agree that it had been a very busy and productive meeting and enabled them to send some individual messages back to IBM regarding the promotion and profile of the i platform.