The Origin of "DFH" - By Bob Yelavich

I  have  been involved with CICS since 1968.  I taught Ben Riggins and
his (then) small staff, BTAM.  Ben Riggins is the father of  CICS.   He
was  a  CE/FE  at  one  time and switched over to being an SE.  He was
located in Richmond, Virginia when he came up with the idea for what we
know  today  as  CICS.  His account at that time was Virginia Electric
Power Co (VEPCO).

CICS is entirely Ben's creation.  There may have been  a  person  with
the  initials  "DFH" somewhere in the universe, alive or dead, past or
present, but he never had anything to do  with  CICS.   When  Ben  was
given  the  go-ahead  to  do  something with his idea, he moved to Des
Plaines, Illinois, which was the first development location for  CICS.

Initially,  Ben  reported  to a manager (Skip White) who really had an
industry responsibility and he really didn't manage CICS.   The  first
CICS  Development or Product Manager was Gerry Anderson.  Both Ben and
Gerry have been retired from IBM for some years now.

Among Ben's small group initially were Gerry Hughes, to whom Ben  gave
the  responsibility  for the original master terminal (CSMT) and other
transactions like that.  Carl Leinfelder was given  Terminal  Control,
John  Lawrence  had Program Control (and the introduction of COBOL and
PL/I support in 1970), and Ray VanderVliet had File Control.

IBM software offerings in the late 1960s were assigned three  character  product
prefixes  by  White  Plains.   The  first letter of the prefix usually
implied a category of software.   'D'  seems  to  have  been  assigned
mostly  to  what was then referred to as data base/data communications
products.  That included products like CICS, IMS and GIS.

If "DFH" were someone's initials, the closest thing I can think of  is
Don  Hilgers,  who  came  up with the idea of porting CICS to what was
then called DOS (now called VSE).  Don's account was Ohio Edison,  and
they  wanted  a  product like CICS but they were not on the MVS of the
time (MFT, MVT, EMFT, PCP, etc).  Maybe  there's  a  coincidence  with
Don's  initials,  but  it had nothing to do with CICS being assigned
DFH by White Plains.  I know of no IBM program product  which  got  to
choose its own prefix, much less take the initials of its author.
 
So, in spite of all the myths about "DFH" and CICS, the real answer is
that it was just another three character prefix assigned by IBM White
Plains.