Vale Thomas Burg – A giant of the NonStop world

[Ed: This post appeared April 19, 2018 on the LinkedIn blog Pulse and was posted by Greg Swedosh. It’s not often that we lose one of our own but we were touched by the thoughts expressed here by Greg and have his approval to repost in case you missed it. Again, this was a big loss for the community in 2018]

I learned last night of the death on Monday of Thomas Burg. He had been battling health issues for quite some time and eventually, despite his courageous fight, lymphoma got the better of him. His passing has left me deeply saddened.

I first met Thomas when I was doing some consultancy work on behalf of XYPRO in the UK and he was working at the same customer site with comforte. I was new to the security vendor game and was surprised that Thomas treated me more as a colleague than as a rival, even though our companies were in competition with each other. As time went on and I got to know him better, I discovered that this was just how he was; always personable, always respectful. Universally admired within the industry. Just a really genuine nice guy.

When I started doing some consultancy work for comforte a few years ago, Thomas was my main point of contact within the company. I spoke to him often and I know that he championed me internally to his comforte colleagues. I believe that he saw me as a kindred spirit in the quest for perfect security on the HPE NonStop platform and we spent much time conversing on the intricacies of how to make NonStop systems more robust, the most recent data breaches in the corporate world and the latest security technologies available. He was an extremely intelligent guy and I knew that I always had to be on my best form to keep up with him. Not that it really mattered to him. I never heard him condescend to anybody, even though he was smarter than most.

He lived on the other side of the planet to me so I would only see him in person once or twice a year at the various NonStop conferences. And I didn’t know him outside of work. My relationship with him was that of a work colleague but I always felt a warm friendship with Thomas. We always had a good laugh during our many chats. Over the last couple of years while he has battled both his condition and the brutal treatment he underwent, I have missed the regular contact that I had with him. He understandably had slipped exclusively into the company of those closest to him and I knew that his outlook was not good. Yet only a couple of weeks ago he reestablished contact with me and we had a bit of a chat. He told me a little of his battle and the drugs that had been keeping him alive. He seemed positive. But maybe he had in fact touched base with me to effectively say goodbye, even though he didn’t actually say it. In any case, I am glad that I got to share a last conversation with him before he went. His loss will be felt deeply by many and my heart goes out to his family and close friends.
Farewell Thomas. I’m glad that I had you in my life. I’ll miss you.