Dearly loved husband of Lesley and father of Andree, Jillian and their families. Aged 84 Years.
Vale Peter Rose
Prose, as he was known across the industry, joined IBM in Brisbane, in August of 1963. He was one of a batch of twenty-plus DP Trainees recruited across Australia and New Zealand in anticipation of the System/360 announcement, which came on 7th April, 1964.
After completing his training, Peter was promoted to Associate Systems Engineer, and then to full SE. In early 1967, he was moved to Sydney education centre, and initially took charge of SE education. By late 1968,he had been given the extra load of running all DP Sales and SE training, and then in 1969 was promoted to take charge of Systems Assurance (SA) throughout Southern Region, based in Melbourne. Over the next twenty years, he always carried systems assurance responsibility, no matter what part of the world he served in.
In 1972, he moved to Dhahran in Saudi Arabia, taking charge of the Aramco account, plus SA responsibility for IBM Europe’s Near East organisation, covering all the Arab countries in the Middle East. Here, he won the first of eleven Excellence awards, and the first of three Outstanding Contribution Awards.
In 1974, he attended the European Research Institute, in Geneva, where he designed and wrote a set of extensions to the Computer Systems Simulator (CSS) program product and then was sent to Zurich to define and rectify performance problems in the systems of one of the huge Swiss banks. Upon completion of this task, he returned to Melbourne and SA once again – now with a promotion to the (then rare) rank of Advisory SE. This time, he stayed in Melbourne for more than two years, reporting directly to Jeff Teele, the Manager of Southern Region. In early 1976, he was again promoted, this time to Senior SE.
At the beginning of 1977, Peter moved back to IBM Europe, as a Consulting SE, based in Paris. Here, along with SA, he worked for IBM Trade Development – effectively IBM USSR. His main job over the next two years was the design and export licensing of the results processing system for the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow. This involved building and exploiting relationships with the KGB, CIA, US Commerce Department, the Pentagon and CoCOM.
It should be mentioned that, over the years 1972 to 1980, he also managed to acquire two university doctorates – a PhD in Informatics and then a DSc in geophysics.
In 1979, Peter moved again, this time to London, where he worked in the International Airlines Support Centre (IASC). He initiated, designed and managed the initial development of the Airlines Control System (ALCS) program product. In 1983/1984 he again returned to Melbourne, then back to London, where IBM UK used his high-performance systems design skills to win and install large amounts of business in the British banks. From here, he was promoted back to Paris, reporting directly to the President and CEO of IBM Europe, Middle East and Africa (Frank Cummiskey) as Chief Systems Engineer.
In 1986, he moved to the IBM Americas/Far East organisation, as director of airlines marketing and support, based in Singapore. IBM Australia, as his“home country, then moved him, for the last time, back to Australia His work involved support of the QANTAS account team in Sydney, (led by Peter Bowyer) in their successful push to convert the account from an all-competitive to an all-IBM one.
In 1988, he celebrated his Quarter Century Club qualification with seven other survivors of the 1963 hiring phase, carefully arranged to fall on 8-8-88.
Prose retired from IBM in 1990, becoming design consultant to the then-infant Optus and later, in 1992, head of IT at the University of New England. In recent years, he lived quietly on a property outside Armidale, fighting a long battle against cardiac failure and Parkinson’s Disease. He is survived by Lesley (his wife of thirty-five years), two daughters and three grandchildren.
ame Legge, a long-time friend and colleague of many QCC Members passed away in his sleep on July 8, following a heart attack at his home in Queensland. Grahame qualified as a QCC Member on June 2, 2000. 
