Agenda - BEYOND 2026

Kick off BEYOND 2026 in a relaxed atmosphere and use the pre-event evening for a personal and enjoyable start to the event. At the HORIZONT-sponsored Get Together, you’ll meet other attendees, speakers, and the teams from HORIZONT and Beta Systems before the official conference begins. This is where first conversations, new connections, and a shared start set the stage for two inspiring event days.

An exclusive evening for invited executives. In a private setting, the CXO Dinner provides space for open conversations about IT strategy, digital sovereignty, and the future of enterprise automation. A format for personal exchange at the decision-maker level.

Start the first day of BEYOND 2026 at a relaxed pace. During registration, you’ll receive your materials and have the opportunity to meet other attendees over coffee and initial conversations. Also take the time to visit the demo stations for a first look at current solutions and new product features.

To kick off the event, a member of the Executive Board of Beta Systems Software AG will provide insights into the strategic direction of the group and the future of enterprise automation. The keynote will focus on how orchestration, observability, and artificial intelligence can be combined into a powerful, integrated platform. In doing so, it will set the stage for the key topics and ideas that will shape the entire event.

Digital sovereignty is far more than a political buzzword, it is increasingly becoming a strategic and operational core issue for organizations. This session explores dependency on foreign IT systems, control over business-critical backend services, and the requirements that organizations must meet today in regulated and security-critical environments. Presentations and panel discussions examine how independence, governance, and future-readiness can be effectively combined in modern IT landscapes.

Use the lunch break for personal exchange in a relaxed atmosphere. During lunch, you’ll have the opportunity to continue morning conversations, make new contacts, and connect with attendees, speakers, and experts from the community.

Parallel Sessions

This session is dedicated to real customer requirements, concrete business cases, and successful solution approaches around ANOW!. The focus is on practical experiences, insights into evaluation and decision-making processes, and examples of how organizations successfully tackle business challenges with modern automation and orchestration solutions. The format is complemented by exchange, discussions, and new perspectives from practitioners.

This session focuses on business-critical requirements in the data center environment and concrete solution approaches for modern operating models. Topics include system replacements and migrations, strategies for reducing vendor lock-in, and solutions for log and output management. The session offers practical insights into current challenges and shows how stability, flexibility, and future-readiness can be combined in complex IT environments.

In this presentation, we show how XINFO Next positions itself as a central analysis and information system in modern, hybrid IT landscapes. From the traditional mainframe to distributed systems and cloud-native architectures, XINFO Next enables end-to-end transparency across complex workload processes. Learn how data from different systems can be consolidated, analyzed, and presented for specific target audiences.

The coffee break offers space for new conversations, spontaneous encounters, and further professional exchange. Take the opportunity to dive deeper into session content, expand your contacts, and take away new ideas from the community.

How can organizations move from reactive, manual operational processes to intelligent and increasingly autonomous IT? This session examines how automation can help make operations more efficient, stable, and resilient. The focus is on new perspectives on self-healing infrastructures, the shift from firefighting mode to proactive operations models, and the question of what role autonomous processes will play in future IT operations.

Wind down the first event day together in a pleasant atmosphere. The networking dinner provides the ideal setting to continue conversations from the sessions, deepen contacts, and round off the day in a relaxed manner with attendees, speakers, and experts.

Start the second event day in a relaxed atmosphere with a shared breakfast. Take the opportunity to have initial conversations, further deepen contacts, and start the day refreshed.

For many organizations, the mainframe remains a central component of business-critical IT, but what role does it play in modern, hybrid IT landscapes? This session examines how existing systems can not only be maintained but strategically evolved and leveraged as a genuine competitive advantage. The focus is on new perspectives on modernization, integration, and the full potential of a mainframe that combines stability with future-readiness.

Parallel Sessions

This session provides an outlook on the future development of ANOW! and shows what new features, capabilities, and strategic priorities will shape the platform in the coming years. The focus is on the product roadmap, the long-term vision, and open exchange with the product team. Attendees have the opportunity to assess upcoming developments early and engage directly with the people responsible.

This session focuses on the future direction of modern data centers, key market trends, and the evolution of business-critical IT environments. In addition to insights into product vision and roadmap, relevant developments in the mainframe and data center space are also addressed. Interactive discussions create space to explore strategic questions, current requirements, and future perspectives together.

How can JCL quality assurance be efficiently integrated into today’s development workflows? In this presentation, we show how SmartJCL sustainably improves JCL quality assurance while bringing it closer to modern development processes. In addition to proven features for analyzing and validating JCL, the focus is particularly on integration with current development environments. A highlight is the new Visual Studio Code extension, which enables JCL to be validated and optimized directly within the development process.

Use the lunch break to continue morning conversations and make new connections in the community. The networking lunch offers space for personal exchange with attendees, speakers, and experts in a pleasant atmosphere.

Parallel Sessions

This session marks the kickoff for new community formats around ANOW!. Programs and approaches will be introduced that are designed to promote learning, networking, and exchange within the community. In the subsequent co-creation format, attendees are invited to contribute ideas and actively help shape the future community roadmap.

This session puts open exchange on technical and product-specific topics at the center. In interactive roundtables and in-depth discussions, attendees have the opportunity to share experiences, explore questions together, and learn from one another. This creates a hands-on format that promotes knowledge transfer, professional dialogue, and new perspectives.

To wrap up the event, the coffee break offers one final opportunity for personal conversations, open questions, and further exchange with the community. Take the chance to solidify new contacts, share impressions, and let BEYOND 2026 come to a close in a relaxed atmosphere.