Obituary: Eddie Gillis

Gillis joined UK London Field Group in 1974 as an engineer, initially working on PDP8 Monitor terminals and then the editorial switching system of the day (ADX), Martin Davids writes. He transferred to the London Development Engineering group under Mike Cornish, and played a vital role in designing communications and hardware solutions for the rapid and cost effective expansion of the Reuter Monitor and Dealing networks.

In the 1980s Gillis led the creation of the testing environments for the News, Monitor and Dealing product networks and the newly developed IDN which replaced QRS. These environments were highly complex as they had to simulate real life networking situations in many geographies as well as provide the ability to stress test components. The large number of capacity and product related software releases originating with the London and New York (for IDN) based development teams called for composure, enthusiasm, dedication and hard work in maintaining a current testing environment, qualities which he always demonstrated.

In the 1990s he moved to Internal Systems  and was active in the committee of the day, chaired by Anthony Williams, charged with overhauling all aspects of internal communications. Gillis led the set up of the corporate communications environment, which we now take for granted, with central information access, a corporate intranet and Internet access for all. He retired in 2003. ■