Rufus Credle is a Certified Consulting IT Specialist at the IBM International Technical Support Organization (ITSO), Raleigh Center. In his role as project leader and information developer, he conducts residencies and develops IBM Redbooks, Redpapers™, and Solution Guides. The topics include network operating systems, enterprise resource planning solutions, voice technology, high availability, clustering solutions, web application servers, pervasive computing, IBM and OEM applications, WebSphere Commerce, IBM MQ, IBM CICS, IBM System x, and IBM BladeCenter. Rufus' various positions during his IBM career include assignments in administration and asset management, systems engineering, sales and marketing, and IT services. He has a BS degree in Business Management from Saint Augustine's College and has been employed at IBM for 34 years.

George Burgess is a Software Engineer in CICS Development at IBM Hursley Park in the UK. Previously, he spent three years as a subject matter expert on CICS Transaction Server on z/OS for the Peoples Republic of China. He has 29 years of experience as an application programmer, systems programmer, CICS developer, and IBM Tivoli® OMEGAMON® XE for CICS developer. His other areas of expertise include Common Business Oriented Language (COBOL), IBM DB2® databaes, Java, IBM MQ, IBM IMS™ database management system, Data Language Interface (DL/1), Virtual Storage Access Method (VSAM), JCL,
IBM z/OS, and OMEGAMON.

Paul Cooper has worked in the CICS Development organization at IBM Hursley Park for more than15 years. In that time, he has helped develop the Java technology in CICS, web services in CICS, mobile support for CICS, and the CICS cloud infrastructure.

Mark Hiscock is the Operational Decision Management development team lead for IBM z/OS. He is based in Hursley, in the UK. He joined IBM in 1999 and holds a first-class degree in Computer Science from the University of Portsmouth. He has more than 10 years experience working in mainframe development on products such as IBM Operational Decision Manager, MQ, CICS, DB2, WebSphere Message Broker, and WebSphere Application Server.

Mark Hollands is a Software Engineer in the CICS Development organization. He has two years of experience in developing IBM CICS Explorer® plug-ins for several of the CICS tools, including CICS Configuration Manager and CICS Deployment Assistant. After graduating with a degree in Computer Science, Mark joined IBM as a Software Developer. He worked on WebSphere Voice Response before transferring to CICS Tools Development.

Mitch Johnson is a Client Technical Specialist for IBM MQ, IBM Operational Decision Manager, and CICS in Advanced Technical Skills in the United States. He was previously a consultant for WebSphere in IBM Software Services, where his expertise was WebSphere Application Server on z/OS. He has worked on five previous IBM Redbooks publications and Redpapers that dealt primarily with connectivity to z/OS resources from WebSphere Application Server and other resources. His areas of expertise include CICS, DB2, IMS, MQ, z/OS, Java, and Java Platform, Enterprise Edition connectors and security.

Subhajit Maitra is a Senior IT Specialist and member of the IBM North America System z WebSphere Technical Sales team. His expertise includes IBM Operational Decision Manager, IBM Integration Bus, and IBM MQ on System z. Subhajit is also an IBM Global Technical Ambassador for Central and Eastern Europe, where he helps IBM clients implement business-critical solutions on IBM System z. His 21-year career in information technology includes roles as a developer, designer, and architect in the healthcare, financial services, and government industries. Subhajit previously worked with the ITSO in creating and delivering workshops worldwide and as a co-author of previously published Redbooks. He holds a master's degree in computer science from Jadavpur University, in Kolkata, India, and is an IBM zChampion.

Geoffrey Pirie is a CICS product marketing manager with the IBM Software Group for application and integration middleware, at IBM Hursley Park in the United Kingdom. He joined IBM as a developer and later moved into management of the CICS System Test and Performance team. His experience and growth led him to join the marketing team for CICS, where he helps manage the CICS portfolio.

Bei Chun Zhou is Software Engineer on the IBM CICS Transaction Server for z/OS service team. He graduated from Tsinghua University and then earned a master’s degree from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He has worked at IBM for four years as a CICS L3 support representative and is now the lead of China CICS L3 team. His expertise is mainly in the CICS Transaction Server. He supports IBM CICS clients in problem solving, system upgrades, health checks, performance tuning, and new feature enablement.