Service Bureau Corporation

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Service Bureau Corporation (SBC)

SBC started in 1932 as the IBM Service Bureau Division and was later spun off in 1957 as a wholly owned IBM subsidiary to run IBM’s service bureau business. IBM had operated service bureaus since the 1920s, allowing customers to rent time on tabulating and later computing equipment rather than lease full systems. In 1956, after a consent decree with the U.S. Justice Department, IBM spun off its service bureaus to operate at arm’s length from IBM.

In 1968, IBM transferred its Information Marketing Division to SBC, bringing in the CALL/360 time-sharing service and software such as QUIKTRAN, BASIC, and DATATEXT (a text-processing system similar to ATS).

In 1973, to settle an antitrust lawsuit over IBM’s pre-announcement of a nonexistent high-end System/360 Model 92, IBM sold SBC for $16 million to Control Data Corporation, which already had a growing service bureau business. SBC then became part of Control Data Corporation and ceased to exist as an IBM subsidiary.