A computer bureau is a
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 ...
providing computer services.
Computer bureaus developed during the early 1960s, following the development of
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 ...
operating systems. These allowed the services of a single large and expensive
mainframe computer to be divided up and sold as a
fungible
In economics, fungibility is the property of a good or a commodity whose individual units are essentially interchangeable, and each of whose parts is indistinguishable from any other part. Fungible tokens can be exchanged or replaced; for exam ...
commodity. Development of telecommunications and the first
modem
A modulator-demodulator or modem is a computer hardware device that converts data from a digital format into a format suitable for an analog transmission medium such as telephone or radio. A modem transmits data by Modulation#Digital modulati ...
s encouraged the growth of computer bureau as they allowed immediate access to the computer facilities from a customer's own premises.
The computer bureau model shrank during the 1980s, as cheap commodity computers, particularly the
PC clone
IBM PC compatible computers are similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT, all from computer giant IBM, that are able to use the same software and expansion cards. Such computers were referred to as PC clones, IBM clones or IBM PC clones. ...
but also the
minicomputer allowed services to be hosted
on-premises.
See also
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Batch processing
Computerized batch processing is a method of running software programs called jobs in batches automatically. While users are required to submit the jobs, no other interaction by the user is required to process the batch. Batches may automatically ...
*
Cloud computing
Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage ( cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over mu ...
*
Grid computing
*
Service Bureau Corporation
*
Utility computing
Utility computing or The Computer Utility is a service provisioning model in which a service provider makes computing resources and infrastructure management available to the customer as needed, and charges them for specific usage rather than a ...
References
Time-sharing
Computer systems
Business models
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