Service Bureau Corporation

Type| Subsidiary
Industry| Time-sharing computers
Fate| Acquired by Control Data Corporation
Founded| 1932; 92 years ago (1932)
Defunct| 1973 (1973)
Parent| International Business Machines

The Service Bureau Corporation (SBC) had its origins 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.[1]

IBM had operated service bureaus 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, IBM spun off its service bureaus to force them to operate at "arms length" from the parent company.[1]

In 1968 IBM transferred its Information marketing Division to SBC. This included the CALL/360 time-sharing service, QUIKTRAN, BASIC, and DATATEXT (a text processing system similar to ATS).[2]

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.[1]

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Yost, Jeffrey R. (2017). Making IT Work: A History of the Computer Services Industry. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-03672-6. OCLC 978286108. https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/978286108.
2. ↑ IBM Corporation. "IBM Archived: DPD Chronology". http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/dpd50/dpd50_chronology3.html. Retrieved Sep 11, 2013.

## External links

* Photo - Rome (IT) service bureau in 1962
* Photo - Hanoi (VN) service bureau 1937

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