IBM i Momma Bear Retires
December 4, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan
Alison Butterill is probably the most famous IBM i visage in the world. For as long as we can remember – which is not necessarily any kind of test we realize – Butterill has been front and center, calming and thoroughly explaining the IBM i platform, being the interface between customers and engineers steering its development, and being its official spokesperson alongside of IBM i chief architect Steve Will.
Alison Butterill
We are sad to report that Butterill retired as worldwide IBM i offering manager from Big Blue on November 30. And in a manner that is absolutely consistent with her calm grace, keen intelligence, good humor, and Canadian upbringing, she didn’t make any fuss at all about it.
You know what the difference is between the states in the old Northwest Territory of the United States – Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota – and the Ontario province of Canada? Me neither. And that is why Butterill fit so well into the IBM Rochester organization, which always had a strong Toronto contingent, and it is also the foundation of why Butterill is an international treasure, known the world over for the good work she has done.
Butterill got a degree in 1980 from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario and we don’t know what her degree was but it would be interesting to know if it had anything to do with math, engineering, or computer science. She started her career at IBM right out of university as a systems engineering representative and instructor for the newly launched System/38, which she did for five years before being an IT specialist in IBM’s national support center for Canada between 1985 and 1995. She was literally the face of the AS/400 launch in Canada on June 21, 1988, made famous in the national papers as she showed us at the 35th anniversary keynote at POWERUp in April.
She then did almost a decade as a technical marketing representative for the Toronto Development Lab, then five years as a leader on the iSeries ISV enablement team followed up by three years as the Power Systems application development offering managers. This is when most of us in the outside world started to get to know the calm but firm nature of Alison. In October 2011 she was named IBM i product manager, and despite a title change and bringing on some new people to help share the role in recent years, she has been Momma Bear since that day.
For which we all owe her many thanks. In ways we will probably never, ever know.
Douglas Gibbs, the I/O product manager for the Power Systems line at IBM, will take over as IBM i product manager and program director, who had this to say on his LinkedIn post, which is how we found out about Butterill’s retirement:
“I’m happy to share with you that today, Dec 1, 2023, is a special and exciting day for me. Over the course of 24 years (+1 month) I’ve been able to enjoy a variety of fun positions at IBM and my previously acquired company, DWL, but none of them are as exciting nor challenging as my new adventure. As many of you may know our friend Alison Butterill has retired as of yesterday and she has graciously handed over the IBM i product management baton to me (or perhaps the bottle of maple syrup), meaning it’s my first day as a member of an amazing group of people that are the IBM i product management team. I look forward to working with this team, with more teams from IBM, many more partners and of course all our customers. I loved my previous role as the Power I/O product manager and the people I had a chance to work with there. Thankfully, I will be able to stay close to them and continue to watch all the exciting hardware changes that will happen along with the new features and functions we will bring to the amazing platform that is IBM i. One of the many things I hear is that I have big shoes to fill, I am aware of this and I’m looking forward to the new challenges as well as creating my own future shoes to fill. I’ll be happy to talk about this and share more details about this at some of the future major events I will be attending.
I would like to say a tremendous thank you to Alison Butterill for her many years of dedicated service and attention to her products, her team, her partners, and all of our clients. She has been an amazing role model and being able to spend some extra time with her over the past couple of months is an unforgettable honour. I’m excited to start my new job!”
Gibbs, who is also Canadian, got his start at discount brokerage services provider CT Securities in Toronto as a Web trading support engineer in 1997. (CT Securities is now part of the Toronto Dominion financial services conglomerate.) In November 1999, he took a position as the senior technical professional for master data management (MDM) for DWL, a Toronto ISV that created Web portals for financial institutions to wrap around their applications that was acquired by IBM in 1996. Gibbs stayed at the DWL unit until September 2012, and at that point he was pulled into working on the latest release of DB2 (we don’t know for which IBM platform) and then joined the Power Systems performance team in July 2013 to work on various issues. In June 2018, when we first got to know Gibbs, he was put in charge of the Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface, or CAPI, also known as the “BlueLink” port on Power8, Power9, and Power10 processors. Over the past six years, that evolved into being the I/O product manager for the Power Systems line.
Our congratulations to you, Doug, and Alison, may you enjoy the retirement you so richly deserve,
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“Momma Bear?” Seriously? What a disrespectful way to summarize her many contributions to this platform.
No disrespect intended. Where I come from, this is an honorable term and used often.
100% agreed Tim. When I read the title my first thought was what an inspired description to apply to Alison – the Momma Bear who has so tirelessly looked after her “cub” for many years.
Must be something unique within that “Northwest Territory” (which as you describe the location) isn’t actually the “NORTHWEST” is it? (and yes, I would say it was a “little” disrespectful”. . . . .)
Well, it was in 1787:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Territory
It meant northwest of the Ohio River, and was called the Northwest Territory.
It wasn’t until the Louisiana Purchase and the Gadsen Purchase that we got the Northwest we know today. (I am doing that from memory, forgive my oversimplification.)
Nice article Timothy, thank you.
Briefly met Allison in New Zealand a few years ago now. She certainly has a presence.
BTW – The term “Momma Bear” often symbolizes a protective and caring mother figure, embodying strength and love. It’s used in various contexts to represent the nurturing and protective instincts of a mother.
Wow! I’ve been “doing” IBM (specifically S3/10 &15 ,S/34, S/36, S/38, AS400, iSeries, Power6->Power10) since 1979. This is the1st time I have heard of “Ms. Butterill”………Wow….WHERE have I Been…??!?!?!?! Apparently, NOT with the small contingent of “Butterillites”
Many thanks Alison for your long and excellent service to IBM and to IBM customers and for your help and encouragement to me.
I remember meeting you several times at IBM i User Group meeting in Philadelphia and marveling at how well you represented IBM with you excellent skills and presence and beautiful clothes, all that I lacked in my many years as an IBM Systems Engineer, and crucial skills that are lacking at IBM now.
Thank you Alison.