Obituary: NZ tech pioneer Brian Eardley-Wilmot

Brian Eardley-Wilmot in October 2009. Photo / Dean Purcell

The New Zealand tech industry is paying tribute to Brian Eardley-Wilmot, the entrepreneur who brought Apple and Microsoft products to New Zealand.

The 82-year-old entrepreneur died peacefully at home on Sunday, his family says.

"Brian was a true pioneer in the establishment of the local tech sector," says Bob Pinchin, former publisher of IDG whose titles covered the industry.

"He was a great supporter of the industry and helped and mentored many people along the way."

Many of those went on to establish very successful tech companies in their own right, such as brothers Trevor and Warwick Grey with Renaissance, Pinchin says.

"Brian was fiercely competitive but with it he was incredibly fair, generous and charming. You knew it was Brian on the phone as his opening line was always 'My dear boy'," Pinchin adds.

Richard Pamatatau, former Auckland bureau chief for the DominionPost's Infotech section, remembers Eardley-Wilmot as a larger-than-life character who "loved technology which included cars and was one of the first In Auckland to buy a BMW 8."

His passions included food, wine and conservative politics, Pamatatau says.

Eardley-Wilmot joined the Australian Army as an apprentice at 15. "Thankfully getting out nine years later, having achieved the dizzy heights of a corporal", he told Computerworld in a 2012 interview.

He joined Racal Electronics (now part of Thales), rising to become a sales manager before getting his big break in 1978 when he applied to be the sole distributor of products for Apple - then an upstart, 24-month-old company.

Eardley-Wilmot gained a one-on-one interview with Steve Jobs - which he would later describe as the highlight of his career - and was awarded sole Apple distribution rights for New Zealand and the South Pacific through his newly formed CED Distribution.

Very sad day a true innovator and leading light in the IT arena.

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After selling CED in 1984, Eardley-Wilmot retired - only to enter the fray later the same year as he formed Brimaur (named for himself and his wife Maureen), this time gaining the sole rights to distribute Microsoft products in New Zealand - effectively becoming the putative tech giant's local office.

Microsoft would go on to dominate office software, networking and be a major player in the cloud. But in the mid-80s, it was a case of hustling boxed software in a market where WordPerfect ruled the desktop and Novell's Netware dominated company networks.

Like CED before it, Brimaur would become one of the biggest names on the pre-internet New Zealand technology scene.

Eardley-Wilmot retired for a second time in 1992 when Microsoft opened its own operation in NZ - only to enter the game again in 2009 with Computer Forensics, a data recovery startup. He stepped back from the day to running of the firm in 2015.

A service will be held in the Chapel, North Shore Memorial Park, Schnapper Rock Road Albany, on Wednesday, March 23 at 12pm. In lieu of flowers, his family has asked for a donation in his memory to St John Ambulance.