IBM Champion Spotlight: Florian Schwanzara

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IBM Champion Spotlight: Florian Schwanzara

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Florian is an Enterprise IT Architect in Germany with more than 20 years of experience in the IT Infrastructure field. His background in hardware, software and the financial industry has led to his roles as leading architect for Fin-Tecs in DACH. Beside the “traditional” Mainframe work, his areas of expertise include secure infrastructure, blockchain, digital asset custody, confidential computing and Zero Trust Architecture. He currently leads Mainframe Modernisation Projects as Solution Planning Senior Manager in the Cloud First Technology Unit of Accenture in Germany.

Florian was a zChampion since 2016 and became an IBM Champion in 2023 and his favourite IBM product is obviously Mainframe (z16). Speaking and presenting are his favourite type of “advocacy”, like lately at the TechXchange EMEA in January 2024! He strongly believes that the Mainframe is an amazing piece of technology, and it will continue over the next decades to fuel our economy much more. As an accomplished professional, he has a lot of success stories to share but he is particularly proud to share this one: “I was the driver of a project to bring the world’s first Ethereum Client to the Mainframe and do a benchmark with a Start-up together – successfully!!!”. If he didn’t work in technology then his dream job would be to become a carpenter!

Lightning round:

· What would be your superpower and why? – Mind reading, because it will make life MUCH easier.

· Ice cream or cake? Ice Cream

· Cats or dogs? DOGS!!! I have a nice and cute golden retriever

· Summer or winter? summer

· Morning or evening? Morning (I love the quiet house and watching the sunrise with a good coffee in my hand)

· eBook or paper book? eBook

· TV shows or movies? Movies

· A night out or a night in? Night in (I love being with my family)

· Cannonball into the pool or dip a toe in first? Sure the Cannonball

· Go-to karaoke song? Summer of 69

· Drive or fly? Fly