We heard from Greg Hondromatidis that his close friend and our ANZ colleague Mark Roy passed away on June 27 aged 58 years.
Greg has prepared the following tribute which highlights Mark's career at ANZ Bank. He will be missed.
Mark Roy – Tribute
I am honoured to be writing Mark Roy’s tribute on behalf of all ANZ staff (past and present). He was a colleague and friend of mine for nearly 40 years.
During the mid 1980’s, Roger Jordan and Denis McGee visited the Esanda office in Perth, when Esanda were in a recruiting phase to extend their Computer Operations team in Melbourne to support the Emperor II rollout….this is where Mark was first noticed for his natural talent and intelligence – he was known in the office as the “Data Centre guy”, always fixing problems that others could not.
During the same period Esanda was growing their national network of System/38s and required personnel from each state to support their respective environments. Mark was prompted by both Roger and Denis to apply for a Computer Operator role within the Esanda team in Melbourne, which he did and was supported during his transfer process.
I can still vividly recall interviewing Mark with Merv Williams – Mark’s appearance was of a colourful nature, short hair with a streak of colour down the middle, large laced up Doc Martin boots, a grey dust coat and his signatory “red socks” – this is why I can still recall the moment.
Unbeknown to both of us, Mark had left school after completing year 8, yet his responses during the interview process were of a superior mindset and needless to say he successfully obtained a role within the Esanda Computer Operations Team.
For training in his new role at Esanda, Mark was given a note book to assist him with references of all computer operations tasks across all shifts. Mark politely said it was not required and unnecessary for him to write anything down. I was unaware at the time, that Mark had a photographic memory.
So the moment of truth had come upon Mark, it was his turn to run the midnight processing shift for Esanda by himself – without any notes! I watched him begin the nightly job processes, which he did with ease and told him, “Esanda online needs to be up by 0700 am” – he said, “yep, no problem”.
I left it to him and returned around 0430 am to check the processing status only to find that Mark had his boots up on the desk, laying back in the chair and enjoying a smoke – back then you could do those things. I was fuming when I approached Mark, only for him to turn around and tell me, he had finished the entire processing for midnight shift in just over 4 hours, when it normally took 7 hours! He explained how he had run overnight batch jobs concurrently and manipulated the system to maximum efficiencies. Mark’s enhancements and streamline approach was incorporated into new processing procedures across Esanda’s systems.
During Mark’s first week “on the job”, I advised the Head of Database Services, Geoff Stops to promote Mark into his team, as he was a talented individual.
Mark was transferred within the week and excelled. He was promoted quickly to Management level and went on to lead various teams and major projects for ANZ throughout the world.
During the major AS400 rationalisation project, Mark worked in London, New York, Germany, Greece, Channel Islands, Papua New Guinea and a 2 year stint in New Zealand too.
Some of the teams Mark led were the AS400 Technical Services Team and the ANZIB team. Mark also setup the Bangalore Technical Services Management Team in India.
Throughout the late 80s and 90s there were many PFEs (Pleasant Friday Evenings), at work which were relaxing, social events. In such environments, things do happen….as our team were chatting amongst ourselves, we noticed Cathy Sheehan (who was another Esanda Emperor II project team member), and Mark becoming very friendly and in deep conversation. They had started dating and eventually tied the knot.
After managing other teams, Mark returned to the AS400 team that he loved and transformed it into the Midrange Technical Services team, to cover all Midrange Business Units within ANZ. This team eventually became the iSeries Technical Services team which Mark led until his departure from ANZ in 2010.
Mark’s passion for everything IT and superior knowledge, took him to IBM Rochester USA, where he worked in their labs co-authoring numerous IBM I Red Books for Power Systems – an invitation only, for the brightest of minds.
Upon Mark’s return to Melbourne, he started his own company across the IBM Midrange landscape, becoming an expert across all areas of Information Technology, with numerous clients and recognition from many industries throughout the world.
Cathy and Mark became proud parents to James and Samantha and their family was complete. The children have grown up now and are pursuing their respective goals.
Over the last few years, Mark kept in touch with a few of his early day colleagues at Esanda.
I was fortunate enough to visit Mark in his final days, to thank him for everything he had done for me, the many teams he managed and for everybody else at ANZ who knew him – it was a special moment.
Mark was a compassionate, kind and gentle human being, with the patience and intelligence of no one else who I have met.
RIP Mark……our thoughts are with Cathy, James, Samantha and the extended family.
Mark’s funeral will be held on Saturday and I will attend with Binh Vu on behalf of ANZ and ANZROC
Greg Hondromatidis
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