Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
puters and employing thousands of software personnel but also creating new and
innovative kinds of software and computerized telecommunications equipment.
This decade witnessed the arrival of packet switching, pulse-code modulation,
binary synchronous communication (BSC), and the invention of IBM's Extended
Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code (EBCDIC) and the American Standard
Code for Information Interchange (ASCII). These led to high-speed digital tele-
communications switching and, of course, more software personnel for the tele-
communications industry.
The arrival of credit cards, debit cards, and ATMs in the early 1960s would
not have been possible using only manual clerical workers. Computers and soft-
ware were necessary adjuncts to these major changes because both credit cards and
ATM transactions require real-time processing with results needed in not much
more than a few seconds.
The combination of credit cards and ATMs caused the hiring of perhaps
100,000 new computer and software personnel nationally to handle the increased
data-processing capabilities of these new financial tools.
Early Specialized Outsourcing
Computers alone are not sufficient for handling large collections of records and
data. The 1960s witnessed the emergence of database technology and the arrival
of commercial database management systems (DBMS). The early DBMS systems
were sequential and handled files with fixed-length field structures. Future dec-
ades would see relational databases added to the mix. The IBM
information man-
agement system
(IMS) first appeared; it was used on the Apollo spacecraft and
also became a successful commercial application.
Because the development of computers and software is not the primary busi-
ness mission of banks, insurance companies, and many other industries, the rapid
growth of software and computing was a mixed blessing. Businesses needed com-
puters and software to compete, but they may or may not have been very efficient
and effective in running their own software organizations, which required business
skills far removed from their traditional focus.
Thus, the rapid rise of computerization and software would soon create another
new industry of specialized companies that provided software and computer
power to companies that needed these modern capabilities but did not want the
burden of running them. One of the archetypes of these new specialized “out-
source” companies was Electronic Data Systems (EDS), which was founded in
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