The Unsung Mainframe Publicist
and the Slayer of the “Dinosaur Myth”

Chris Bunyan, who very unexpectedly passed away on September 20th, spent much of his life furthering the cause of IBM mainframes – though many of you, while benefiting from his efforts, are unlikely to have heard his name.  Chris’s forte was that of promoting information interchange among mainframe professionals.

Many of you in the mainframe world have no doubt come across chunky 6”x8” booklets, with the word “UPDATE” printed vertically on the cover, crammed with all sorts of BAL snippets and screen shots.  These Updates, including CICS Update, VM Update, MVS Update, TCP/SNA Update, DB2 Update, RACF Update, and MQ Update, were all Chris’s doing.  Through these Updates, Chris wanted to provide mainframe systems programmers and application programmers with a forum whereby they could share their expertise and experience with peers – and at the same time make some money to boot.  Like most of his ideas, it was a win-win proposition for all, and proved to be a major success (particularly in the 1990s).

Chris, along with Jeff Hosier and Dave Bates, founded Xephon, in Newbury, UK, in 1980.  Xephon (the name comes from the Searcher out of Secrets in "Paradise Lost") was to be a market and technical research organization (à la Gartner) – but one that focused, more or less exclusively, on IBM-centric organizations and issues.  In addition to the Updates, Xephon was also responsible for such mainframe-world staples as: The Handbook of IBM Terminology, The Mainframe Market Monitor (now published by Arcati), IBEX surveys (that charted hardware and software trends among IBM customers), numerous seminars, and Insight IS – the latter, a monthly publication, treasured by many for its eclectic mix of articles dealing with strategic IBM-related trends.

Notwithstanding all of his other achievements, Chris, from our perspective, should be best remembered for his indefatigable efforts to debunk the 1990s belief that mainframes were dinosaurs.  When other publications were revelling in sensational stories as to when the last mainframe was to be unplugged, Chris was busy getting mainframe believers to write articles in his publications defending the mainframe.  Chris came up with the term the “Dinosaur Myth” to succinctly capture his view that all this talk about the imminent demise of mainframes was nothing but a myth.  Those of us, who in April this year, took great delight in celebrating the 40th birthday of mainframes remembered Chris and his “Dinosaur Myth”.  Chris even went on to create a document called the “Dinosaur Myth”, which compares the TCO of mainframes to other servers (now to be found at Arcati.com).

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Though a great believer in information dissemination, Chris, however, always shunned publicity and preferred, instead, for his publications and employees to enjoy the limelight.  Some of us who were involved in the 1990s in defending mainframes will always be grateful for Chris’s unstinting support.  As mainframes enter their 5th decade, stronger and better positioned than ever before, we should try and remember Chris Bunyan and his many gainful endeavours on behalf of us mainframers.

 Compiled by Anura Gurugé, Trevor Eddolls & Mark Lillycrop