The Service Bureau Corporation (SBC) had its origin in 1932 as the Service Bureau Division within
IBM and was spun off as a wholly owned subsidiary in 1957 to operate IBM's burgeoning service bureau businesses.
IBM had operated
service bureau
A service bureau is a company that provides business services for a fee. The term has been extensively used to describe technology-based services to financial services companies, particularly banks. Service bureaus are a significant sector within t ...
s in major cities beginning in the 1920s allowing users to rent time on
tabulating equipment, and later computing equipment, to solve problems which couldn't justify a full-time equipment lease. In 1956, as a result of a
consent decree with the
United States Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United Stat ...
, IBM spun off its service bureaus to force them to operate at "arms length" from the parent company.
In 1968 IBM transferred its Information marketing Division to SBC. This included the CALL/360
time-sharing
In computing, time-sharing is the sharing of a computing resource among many users at the same time by means of multiprogramming and multi-tasking.DEC Timesharing (1965), by Peter Clark, The DEC Professional, Volume 1, Number 1
Its emergence ...
service,
QUIKTRAN QUIKTRAN is a Fortran-like, interactive computer programming language
A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. ...
,
BASIC, and DATATEXT (a text processing system similar to
ATS).
In 1973, to settle a multi-year lawsuit charging anti-competitive behavior in IBM's pre-announcement of a nonexistent high-end System/360 Model 92, IBM sold SBC for $16 million to
Control Data Corporation, which had a growing service bureau business of its own.
References
External links
Photo – Rome (IT) service bureau in 1962
American companies established in 1932
American companies disestablished in 1973
Computer companies established in 1932
Computer companies disestablished in 1973
Defunct computer companies of the United States
Former IBM subsidiaries
Time-sharing companies
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