Tom Jarosh, AS/400 champion and vice president of Operations, IBM Systems and Technology Group, has succumbed to cancer.
Jarosh, 55, died Friday, Oct. 17, at his home in Ridgefield, Conn., where he was surrounded by his three daughters, Kristy, Shannon, and Brynn.
Jarosh, one of the most dynamic AS/400 general managers in the history of the long-running platform, held the titles of general manager, IBM AS/400; general manager, Midmarket Servers; and later, vice president, Business Development and Blade Servers. He was also vice president, Operations, and vice president, Transformation, Systems and Technology Group.
Taking over the reins of the AS/400 Division in 1997, Jarosh launched a vigorous and well-funded advertising campaign to market the AS/400 and followed up by introducing new models including the iSeries server. He guided the platform's transformation into an e-commerce server and was largely behind the most recent metamorphosis into the combined Power Systems platform hosting IBM i, AIX, and Linux.
In 2000, Jarosh was quoted as saying, that "IBM eServer iSeries is designed to provide integrated solutions that help mid-size customers take advantage of the explosive growth in business-to-business commerce." He was proud of the platform's advanced technology, increased application flexibility, and new tools to help users manage the demands of e-commerce. Under Jarosh's stewardship, the platform evolved into a scalable and extremely fast server line that was able to compete with-if not beat-platforms from other vendors more specifically targeted to individual markets.
In announcing in 2000 that that i2 Technologies, Inc. applications would run on the new AS/400e business servers, Jarosh made it clear that he wanted AS/400 customers to have the best of both worlds-"a totally modern, highly versatile business computer that combines AS/400 traditional strengths of reliability, scalability, security, and service, with the latest in hot new e-business technologies." Jarosh foresaw the future of e-business on the Web, and he wanted the AS/400 to be at the center of a market he believed would explode from $336 million annually in 2000 to a projected $6 trillion within the next five years.
By 2002, Jarosh was working on developing the IBM BladeCenter blade servers. He worked to deliver high performance computing in an ultra-dense server configuration. Perhaps the father of today's drive to reduce cost and complexity in the data center, Jarosh saw the blade architecture as a sweeping new wave with the potential to go much farther than provide support for edge applications and specialized markets. "We intend to incorporate IBM's high-performance computing power, self managing technology, and mainframe-class reliability features into our blade systems," he said.
Born Thomas J. Jarosh on June 5, 1953 in Naperville, Ill., he was raised in Pittsburg, the eldest among 10 children born to Nancy and Donald Jarosh. The engineer-to-be graduated from St. Elizabeth Catholic School in Pittsburgh and later earned his B.S. degree in engineering from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He went to work for IBM there in 1975 and spent the next 32 years helping shape the future of the company.
Both a golfer and gardener, Jarosh's real passion was classical music and he regularly attended performances of the New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera, and New York City Ballet. Friends remember him as "a gentleman with a great sense of humor."
In addition to his daughters, their husbands, and his five grandchildren, Jarosh is survived by his mother and eight siblings. His sister Patty and father Don preceded him in death. Services were in St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church in Ridgefield. Memorial contributions may be made in his name to the Regional Hospice of Western Connecticut in Danbury, or to the Melanoma Research Foundation, Hillsborough, NJ.
More than ever, there is a demand for IT to deliver innovation. Your IBM i has been an essential part of your business operations for years. However, your organization may struggle to maintain the current system and implement new projects. The thousands of customers we've worked with and surveyed state that expectations regarding the digital footprint and vision of the company are not aligned with the current IT environment.
TRY the one package that solves all your document design and printing challenges on all your platforms. Produce bar code labels, electronic forms, ad hoc reports, and RFID tags – without programming! MarkMagic is the only document design and print solution that combines report writing, WYSIWYG label and forms design, and conditional printing in one integrated product. Make sure your data survives when catastrophe hits. Request your trial now! Request Now.
Forms of ransomware has been around for over 30 years, and with more and more organizations suffering attacks each year, it continues to endure. What has made ransomware such a durable threat and what is the best way to combat it? In order to prevent ransomware, organizations must first understand how it works.
Disaster protection is vital to every business. Yet, it often consists of patched together procedures that are prone to error. From automatic backups to data encryption to media management, Robot automates the routine (yet often complex) tasks of iSeries backup and recovery, saving you time and money and making the process safer and more reliable. Automate your backups with the Robot Backup and Recovery Solution. Key features include:
Business users want new applications now. Market and regulatory pressures require faster application updates and delivery into production. Your IBM i developers may be approaching retirement, and you see no sure way to fill their positions with experienced developers. In addition, you may be caught between maintaining your existing applications and the uncertainty of moving to something new.
IT managers hoping to find new IBM i talent are discovering that the pool of experienced RPG programmers and operators or administrators with intimate knowledge of the operating system and the applications that run on it is small. This begs the question: How will you manage the platform that supports such a big part of your business? This guide offers strategies and software suggestions to help you plan IT staffing and resources and smooth the transition after your AS/400 talent retires. Read on to learn:
LATEST COMMENTS
MC Press Online