The Master Terminal

Chris Hodgins

Hailing from Scotland, Chris joined the CICSPlex SM development team straight out of university in 2005 and has learnt just enough about CICS and mainframes to be dangerous.

Despite the deadly mix of inexperience and enthusiasm, Chris has so far resisted all attempts to be assimilated and learn the “old ways” (although mostly just to give Grant something to moan about).

Grant Shayler

Grant is very old. Well Chris makes him feel that way. He really isn’t as old as most people think being born the same year as CICS (if you really must know).

Grant first started working on CICS in the late 80s (Yes Chris, last century) and has also worked with Websphere MQ, CICSPlex SM and RACF amongst other things.

Grant being a Kiwi has only a slightly more understandable accent than Chris.

Peter Havercan

Peter was born a year after WW2, installed his first CICS system 26 years later, attended his first CICS user group meeting in 1973, but didn’t join IBM in Hursley until 1985. Since then he has mainly worked on CICS Security and CICS Web Support, developing things like SSL support, document templates, and URIMAPs. By the subtle ploy of rejecting early retirement, he has now become the oldest CICS developer, but this has not prevented him from embracing modern Web2.0 technologies like Atom, Ajax, and mashups.

William Yates

William Yates is a system tester for CICS and so is ‘lucky’ enough to play with all the new features of CICS before it is released.  He is interested in webservices, application modernisation and CICS connectivity.  he lives with his wife and small puppy in Portsmouth.

John Tilling

John joined CICS in 1983 as a computer science student from York University and apart from 9 months back in York to finish his degree, has been in CICS ever since!  Often asked why he never moved, he always replies “No need, the cool stuff always come to CICS”, meaning CICS has always embraced new technologies head on, being leading edge, which is why its still here 40 years later. He has concentrated on how CICS gets at data, working in data access components including file control, local DLI, CICS-DBCTL, and was responsible for restructuring the CICS-DB2 Attachment Facility and the CICS-MQ Attach to exploit OTE.

Kathryn Briscoe

Kathryn has been working in the CICS Information Development team since joining IBM in 2002. Kathryn splits her time between team leading, writing and improving information in the Web services area, and enhancing the Eclipse-based information center. She tries not to worry when updating documentation that is older than she is!

James O’Grady

James joined IBM as a Tester in late 2007, and has been playing around with CICS Web Services, Java, COBOL, C and Assembler ever since.  Before joining IBM, he worked as a Systems Programmer at an insurance company, fixing some problems and causing some others!  My current favourite activity is bolting together lots of different CICS technologies to test WebSphere (BMS to CICS COBOL to CICS Web Support and back again…).  Got to love Basic Mapping Support, even if it does have less colours than the ZX Spectrum.  When not working on CICS he spends his time sleeping, eating, and dreaming of IBM products.  He’s been working long enough to have used a real 3270 terminal, and has configured Rational Developer for System Z to respond properly when he presses the real Enter button (not the one Windows thinks is Enter).

Andy Wright

Andy joined IBM (and the CICS Change Team) in 1988. Before that he read Physics and Computing at Southampton Uni, and remembers as a student saying that the Physics bit was okay, and so was the programming part, apart from when you had to stop and debug things… anyhow, fixing code has grown on him since then. He likes all the classic bits of CICS, particularly temporary storage, recovery and logging. He presents at CICS conferences, enjoys meeting customers, does work for ITSO and a lot of technical authorship. In a pre-IBM life he has been a warehouse forklift truck driver, charity balloon seller, security guard, cleaner at Goodwood racecourse, and been known to play the bongos badly.

Ian Mitchell

Ian Mitchell has the privilege of calling himself the lead Architect for CICS Transaction Server – the privilege of working with such a crack team at Hursley, and such passionate and interesting users of CICS technology. He has worked at Hursley on CICS for more than twenty years. Before they made him Architect, when he was still allowed to write serious code, then he worked on components such as the Recovery Manager, the Logger Domain and Business Transaction Services.

Paul Johnson

Also known as Dr Paul, and more recently just PJ (Can they shorten it any more? No thats not a challenge!).   Joined IBM and CICS in 1984 and got interested in System Management.  Was lead on RDO before moving on to become CICSPlex SM and CICS Tools architect (yes, I have written code; just not so much now). Old? Grant is OLD? I must be ancient then. Ahhh, I recall when CICSPlex SM was just a blank piece of paper…..
Outside of IBM? Wife and four children; interested in anything “outdoors”. TV? What’s a TV?

Catherine Moxey

Catherine is the senior developer for CICS Transaction Server. She first worked on CICS in 1990, getting involved with lots of exciting development projects such as Shared Data Tables, VSAM RLS support and Coupling Facility Data Tables.  Then she went off to the US to work on coupling facility support in the mainframe operating system (just before it became z/OS), and followed this by stints on Web services components of WebSphere Application Server, notably the UDDI Registry.  However, the lure of CICS was too strong, and she has been back working on this excellent product since 2005.