
From the age of Tom Watson Jr. to the era of Lou Gerstner, Jim Brady knitted a seemingly random walk through technical, staff, sales, development, and executive positions participating in most aspects of large systems progress during this time. From the excitement of the introduction of the System/360, a quantum leap in computing; the recovery from the $8 billion Future System fiasco; the restructuring of the MVS operating system to be nearly unhackable; and the architecting of commercial supercomputers; Jim was there in ever increasing roles. Computer Systems Architect is the behind-the-scenes eyewitness account of the events that shaped the mainframe, disk subsystem, and communications. It covers the key people of the time, their personalities, biases, strengths, and weaknesses in the context of the actions they took to further IBM and/or their careers. Computer System Architect is an interesting and fun memoir from small town Nebraska boy that found a way to contribute to one of the most important technologies of his era.