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 "arm's 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