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Latest - Area of Interest: Modernising industry

Alan Burkitt-Gray

Alan Burkitt-Gray thinks both Whitehall, the government, and Westminster, Parliament, are useless in their understanding of technology. A proper quantum computer is five years away and poses problems because it will be able to decode all messages encoded: organisations such as banks and government are already hoarding encrypted messages in order to decrypt them in the future. Quantum computing will also allow users to encrypt messages so that nobody would be able to read them.

Dennis Blackwell

Dennis Blackwell was a key figure in the British computer industry for over 50 years, in a career that spanned and contributed to some of the most important commercial initiatives of the period. He worked for the UK flagship manufacturer, ICL, and its forbears for 25 of those, starting with English Electric in 1959 and contributed to industry institutions including the British Computer Society (now known as BCS) and the Worshipful Company of information Technologists.

Campbell McGarvie

Campbell McGarvie left school in 1962 with few paper qualifications despite having shown early academic promise. Taking a tedious job as a bank clerk he spent the next four years attending night school and missing out on much of the decade’s excitement. But his efforts paid off when he was hired by Burroughs now Unisys, leading to a long and successful career in the IT industry. In addition to many senior positions, he has held a number of non-exec directorships and is a past Master of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists.

Mark Holford

Mark Holford trained as a solicitor and worked in two practices before joining Thomas Miller as a claims executive and underwriter in 1978. He worked closely with the company’s IT Director to develop applications using pc and minicomputer technology. He helped to build Thomas Miller’s reputation as a leader in the use of IT in insurance.  He was the first person in his firm outside the IT department with a pc on his desk. He used Borland software to build spreadsheets for the company where he worked for 36 years. He can, says his wife, spot when the results of a calculation are wrong rather than just trust the technology. He is constantly searching for new applications for IT.

John Wallace

John Wallace helped automate the first branch of what was to become NatWest and led IT functions in the bank at the cutting edge for over 30 years. John joined National Provincial in 1951 after leaving school at the first opportunity, with a clutch of “pretty miserable O levels” and learned the trade stoking the boiler and taking spare cash to the Post Office accompanied by a colleague and a truncheon. Ten years later he was one of four staff working with Ferranti on a Pegasus serving five branches in London, After taking charge of systems development in the merger with NatWest in 1968, John ran subsidiary organisations providing services including archiving and payroll back to banks and other businesses as well as developing new products and introducing new technologies. Amongst his many firsts he includes the implementation of the world’s largest DB2 system, which uniquely provided the bank with a totally integrated view of each customer’s relationship with NatWest. John gave up banking 28 years ago as head of Group IT. Since them he has held multiple positions, including Chairman of CIO Connect. One of his most challenging roles was Honorary Treasurer of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists, which earned him a standing ovation at his last Court meeting.

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