Richard Holway MBE pays tribute to the life and career of John Pearce 1936-2026.
I am sad to announce the death of John Pearce, the co-founder of Hoskyns, on 22 February 2026 aged 90.
After university, his first job was at Joseph Lucas and Smith Industries in 1956 as an electronics engineer on the IBM 650. In 1960 he joined IBM and in 1962 was transferred to IBM in the US. It was there that he met John Hoskyns (seven years his senior). They decided there might be a market for a consultancy specialising in data processing. They formed the company in March 1964 charging £40 a day for their services – a hefty amount in those days! Their first project was with Laycock and, out of this came Centrefile – the first multi user, real time commercial system in Europe.
This gave Hoskyns and Pearce the confidence to start recruiting more consultants and developing more products and services.
Indeed I was one of the new intake in 1968 (together with Geoff Unwin who would go on to become the CEO of Hoskyns and later led its IPO)
As well as Centrefile, the two Johns whilst at Hoskyns went on to:
– Launch the first standard application packages for ICL systems in 1968
– Invent Segmented Level Programming in 1968. Now taken for granted as the basis for all software development
– Close the first FM (now outsourcing) contract at Leyland Paints in Chorley. in 1970.
– Build, what was in 1970, Europe’s largest real-time system at the Police National Computer Unit (PNCU)
– Provide the first true turnkey systems for DEC and HP ‘minis’ in 1974 and 1976 respectively. Indeed becomes largest UK reseller for both
Pearce was closely involved in the sale of Hoskyns to Martin Marietta in 1975 after which John Hoskyns left to go into politics. Pearce left in 1976.
Hoskyns went on to become the lead supplier of IT Services to the UK market, IPOed in 1986 and was acquired by Capgemini in 1990. There is still much Hoskyns’ DNA in Capgemini UK to this day.
Pearce then joined the National Enterprise Board in 1976 where, under an organisation called Insac, the NEB invested in software products with the likes of SDL, CAP and Logica. One of these was Viewdata – perhaps a forerunner to the internet – for travel agents. My wife well remembers using these terminals in her time as an area manager at Pickfords Travel in the 1980s.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Pearce went on to develop other products and services before his eventual retirement.
At Hoskyns, I worked with Pearce on a number of projects between me joining in 1968 and Pearce leaving in 1976. He was pretty hands on. A hard but fair taskmaster. He was a true pioneer of the UK IT Software and Services sector with many ‘firsts’ to his credit.
AIT interview
John Pearce was interviewed for Archives of IT by Alan Cane on 20 April 2016 at the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists’ Hall.