This month, Planet Mainframe celebrates influential mainframers nominated by the community. The field benefits from their efforts in making the mainframe what it is today and working towards the mainframe of tomorrow.
Today we showcase a teacher transformed to a prolific technical writer and mainframe sherpa.
Trevor Eddolls
CEO, iTech-Ed Ltd
Chippenham, England, United Kingdom
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Trevor Eddolls began his mainframe career as a science and maths teacher at a secondary school in the UK. After completing a training course preparing him to introduce computer studies at the school, he was invited to spend three weeks embedded in a local computer technology company.
“The idea was to be able to tell the children about ‘real life’ in industry,” said Eddolls. “I even had my photo in the local paper. The company I chose was a mainframe computer bureau that later offered me a job. I started as an operator, and, as they say, the rest is history!”
From there, Eddolls joined Xephon, where he edited most of their Update publications – A5-sized journals full of advice and programs for users of CICS, DB2, MVS (later z/OS), VM, VTAM, RACF, and many others. He also wrote up mainframe-related surveys, chaired and spoke at conferences, and helped develop the company’s early web presence.
Eddolls set up iTech-Ed Ltd in 2004, enabling him to expand from Update publications to working with several companies on internal and external publications. In 2007, iTech-Ed Ltd took over creating the Arcati Mainframe Yearbook. The publication became the de facto reference work for IT professionals working with z/OS – and its forerunner – systems5.
The Yearbook highlights the results of a comprehensive, annual user survey and provides an up-to-date directory of vendors, consultants, and service providers. It serves as a guide for mainframe-related information and strategy, containing papers on mainframe trends and directions, terminology, and evolution. The yearbook continues to be published and is downloaded by over 21,000 professionals.
Also in 2007, Eddolls formed the Virtual IMS user group, followed by the Virtual CICS and Virtual Db2 user groups. Eddolls moderated these groups and the yearbook until 2024, when he passed the torch to Planet Mainframe
In addition to being a prolific writer at Mainframe Update, Eddolls is an accomplished web designer and recognized social media expert. He has spoken at the GSE UK conference for several years – most recently in the new AI stream. He has also been recognized as an IBM Champion each year since 2009.