Cheryl Watson
CEO and co-founder
Cheryl Watson is known around the world for her passion and enthusiasm for IBM mainframes and the software that runs on them. She is most well-known for her z/OS (formerly MVS) newsletter, Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter, published since 1991.
Cheryl discovered her love of computers in 1965 when taking a math class at Portland State University and using an IBM 1620 to calculate PI to 30 precision points! After graduation, she went to work at Consolidated Freightways as a trainee programmer – first in 1401/7010 Autocoder, and then in assembler and COBOL. She was on the system programming team the year when their first IBM 360 was installed (1966), and has avidly followed the 360’s transformation ever since. Her favorite z/OS topics include SMF, WLM, SRM, z/OSMF, and chargeback. She’s never met an SMF record she didn’t like.
After working with several software development firms and in the Amdahl education center, she joined EDS in 1970 for a total of 11 years (on and off), working as an educator, performance analyst, capacity planner, system programmer, CICS administrator, and trouble-shooter in many of their offices around the world. A lot of her outsourcing experience came from this work as an outsourcer. Following EDS, she joined Morino Associates in their England and Germany offices, returning to the US in 1984, and working in SAS on their MICS product (now supported by Broadcom).
After meeting Tom Walker in 1986, Cheryl became an independent consultant, often consulting back to customers of outsourcers, so she saw the other (and often uglier) side of the situation. She taught performance and internals classes and wrote for various journals, such as Bob Thomas’ MVS Journal (now Enterprise Systems Media), and TechSupport magazine. In 1988 Cheryl and Tom formed their own company, Watson & Walker, Inc. See the company history above for their history together. For a fuller bio of Cheryl, see a white paper created by NewEra Software and available on their website.
For relaxation, Cheryl enjoys traveling the world, playing bridge, and doing logic puzzles.
Tom Walker
Co-founder
Tom financed and co-founded the company in 1988. Like Cheryl, he started working with mainframes in 1965. Tom helps oversee all strategy and operating functions of the company, with a particular focus on our marketing and development activities.
Prior to Watson & Walker he was part owner, starting in 1970, of a timesharing company, Dialcom, Inc., in Silver Spring, MD. There, using Honeywell and then Prime computers, he helped design and code software such as a correspondence system for the U.S. Congress, and, in 1979, ‘The Source’, a home computing offering featuring such things as custom databases, UPI news searches, and an email system. (He also, in 1979, coined the command name “chat” to invoke their online user interaction.) The company was sold to ITT in 1982, and he served for a brief time on the ITT board of directors before retiring in 1986. Shortly after that he met Cheryl, and they’ve lived and worked together ever since.
Between 1965 and 1970, Tom worked as an analyst and programmer for the GE Computer division in Charlotte, North Carolina. He was born in Durham, NC and graduated from Duke University.
When not working or traveling with Cheryl, Tom hosts the Peace & Justice Report at WSLR/Fogartyville, a low-power, nonprofit FM radio station and community center in Sarasota, Florida. He and Cheryl also host a weekly Great Books discussion group which has been meeting for over thirty years.
Sydney
Office Manager
Sydney joined the team in March of 2020 as our Office Manager. She also handles Accounts Receivable contacts and finances.
Subscribers to either the Tuning Letter or our software products, work with Sydney during the renewal or new subscriber process.
Sydney has been operating her own accounting business in both FLA and NC and has been counting the beans ever since!