Artifact Details

Title

Timesharing and Remote Processing Services Meeting Session #4: Business Models: Making Money

Catalog Number

102702886

Type

Document

Description

This session explored the different business models that TS/RPS companies created in terms of packaging and pricing their services and the reasons for their selection. Topics covered include:

• How well these various business models worked
• The strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches
• Whether the initial approaches were modified after the start of the companies and, if so, how they were changed
• What the revenue structure looked like over the first few years
• What the principal cost elements were: marketing and sales, development, operations, customer service, management, finance and administration
• Whether additional financing was needed and, if so, from what sources
• The effect that changes in the hardware performance and pricing on the business models
• Sales compensation policies
• The approximate amount of revenues earned by various timesharing companies in the mid- to late-1970s

Date

2009-06-02

Contributor

Bayles, Dick, participant
Belvin, Frank, participant
Brook, Chris, participant
Crandall, Rick, participant
Grad, Burt, moderator
Haigh, Thomas, historian
Hardy, Ann, participant
Hardy, Norm, participant
Humphries, Mike, participant
Jerger, Doug, SI SIG member
Johnson, Luanne, SI SIG co-chair; editor
Lowenstein, Dick, participant
McDonald, Chris, historian
Myers, Gary, participant
Rawlings, Nicholas, participant
Ross, Kenneth, participant
Schmidt, Dave, participant
Stein, Jeffery, participant
Wyman, Mike, participant

Publisher

Computer History Museum

Place of Publication

Mountain View, California

Extent

42 p.

Format

PDF

Copyright Holder

Computer History Museum

Category

Transcription

Subject

100 percent club; Comshare; PDP-10; PDP-11; Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC); General Electric Information Services (GEIS); IBM System/360 Model 65 (S/360-65); Interactive Data Corporation; Keydata; National CSS; On-Line Business Systems; Optimum Systems, Inc. (OSI); RAMIS; Rapidata; Ross Systems; Scientific Data Systems (SDS) 940; Service Bureau Corporation (SBC); timesharing; Tymshare; University Computing Corporation (UCC)

Collection Title

Oral history collection

Credit

Software Industry Special Interest Group

Lot Number

X5386.2009