1970-77: Mansions fit for mainframes
Aer Lingus not only ran the biggest computer operation in Ireland in 1970. It also showcased its IBM mainframes in a manner that was designed to impress. The purpose-built computer room in the airline’s headquarters at Dublin Airport was on the other side of a long glass wall from the reception area. Visitors could see the System/360s that ran its flight reservations system and a growing range of other applications.
This installation started a trend for computer accommodation that not only provided the recommended environment for sensitive equipment but also made a public statement. The Revenue Commissioners, Allied Irish Banks (AIB), Bank of Ireland, the Department of Posts and Telegraphs and the Central Data Processing Service (CDPS), which supported government departments and offices, opened new data centres in the early 1970s. These buildings signified that their owners had made serious investments in computing. Apart from Aer Lingus and Revenue, moreover, their occupants had just acquired their first computers.
Information technology had taken longer to gain momentum in Ireland than in most European countries, but its adoption was now clearly visible.
Aer Lingus outranked all other installations at the start of the 1970s in terms of processing power and in its use of data communications. Revenue, which had opted for Honeywell mainframes, was the second largest user organisation. In order of computing muscle these sites were followed by the two Dublin universities, CIE, Irish Life and the ESB – all of which ran IBM System/360s.
The System/360 range had served IBM well in the 1960s and the vendor set out to consolidate its mainframe leadership by launching a successor, the System/370, at the start of the new decade. CDPS and Irish Life became the first adopters in Ireland. AIB also installed two System/370s – its first computers – in 1973. At around the same time Bank of Ireland acquired a mainframe from the ICL 1900 series. Irish Sugar, Guinness and Independent Newspapers were already running ICL 1900s.
Mainframe users still followed the traditional practice of developing their software internally. They held aptitude tests for their existing workforce, selected people would would become programmers and system operators, and sent them on computer training courses. The organisations usually aimed to create their first code before the hardware arrived.
These procedures had changed little from the 1960s, but the tools of the computing trade had evolved. Visual display units (VDUs) improved the data entry process by replacing punched cards or paper tape. They were considered to be high-cost investments but they were a far more effective input method. Programming work also migrated onto VDU screens. Code testing became faster and errors were far easier to correct.
Many of the country’s larger organisations still outsourced their information processing to bureau services, some of which utilised spare capacity in the big mainframe installations. Aer Lingus, for example, ran applications for the Voluntary Health Insurance Board, the Department of Posts and Telegraphs and Bord Bainne, while Revenue provided batch processing to the Irish Meteorological Service and the Departments of Finance and Social Welfare.
Slowly but steadily more and more bureau customers established computer departments of their own, encouraged and assisted by a growing band of system suppliers. Most selected minicomputer hardware, which was more affordable than enterprise-scale platforms like the System/370 and did not require air conditioning and other environmental controls.
Minicomputers, indeed, took over the Irish computing mainstream in the 1970s. The top tier of user organisations stood apart – a small but distinctive cluster with their mansions fit for mainframes and their in-house software development groups.
1978-84: Computing outside the machine room
Most companies still centralised all their computing operations in specialist data processing departments. And, with just a few exceptions in Ireland, these departments ran just one central computer. By the late 1970s they had accumulated years of practical experience and their core applications, which usually focused on financial transactions, were generally mature and stable.
Data processing managers (DPMs) were a breed apart from other company executives. Most had been trained by the mainframe vendors and many had previously worked for those firms. This meant that they were affiliated with specific vendors and processor architectures. The DPMs dominated their organisations’ information technology strategies because their senior managers lacked the essential knowledge.
The centralised computing model was, however, starting to fray. Minicomputers began to penetrate the branch offices and specialist departments of large companies, foreshadowing the microcomputers that followed in much greater numbers in the 1980s. This proliferation of systems outside the direct control of DPMs presented them with new challenges. Planning and managing systems diversity was much more difficult than driving one big engine.
Office automation accelerated the rise of secondary platforms. The most common use of this term referred to word processing systems for personal users and workgroups, but the minicomputer vendors had a more expansive vision. Their office automation offerings included proprietary software suites that did much more than facilitate text editing. They also featured document retrieval, calendar schedules, telephone directories, graphics builders and a rudimentary form of electronic mail that was usually confined to in-house colleagues.
The office automation suites were heavily marketed, but never adopted on a large scale. Their main significance was that the vendors raised expectations of wider access to information technology in the workplace – expectations that were met in the 1980s, at a much lower cost, by personal computers and inexpensive software packages.
Another aspect of decentralisation was a reallocation of data preparation tasks. VDUs appeared in more branch offices, warehouses and sales outlets, whose staff took on keyboard responsibilities that previously belonged to data entry specialists. Document scanners and point-of-sale equipment also made it easier than before to capture customer information and transaction details. Software developers adapted older applications to accommodate the new data acquisition methods, while the cost and reliability of data communications became a major concern for operations managers.
Computing inside offices evolved far beyond the concept of an office automation system. Individual enthusiasts started working with spreadsheets and flat file databases – with or without oversight or assistance from the IT professionals in the computer department.
Meanwhile the number of systems vendors with offices or agents in Ireland kept rising. The influx amazed computing veterans who had learned their craft in the not-so-distant past when IBM and ICL dominated the industry. All of the challengers tried to sell their products into the installations with the biggest technology budgets, but only two of them made significant inroads in the market for large processors.
Digital Equipment opened a sales office in Dublin in 1974, three years after setting up an assembly plant in Galway. It scored its first successes in the top tier of Irish users with mainframe shipments into Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin in 1978. Digital made its biggest impact, however, with its VAX range, which became sufficiently powerful in the following decade to displace mainframes.
Amdahl posed a more direct threat to IBM with processors that it made as interchangeable with the IBM System/370 as was legally permissible. Amdahl chose Swords as a base for configuring its platforms and became another computer maker with a local presence. In 1983 the Department of Posts & Telegraphs became the first installation in Ireland to choose an Amdahl mainframe. Aer Lingus, Irish Life, ESB and Bank of Ireland soon followed this example. All had previously been IBM customers.
1985-90: Distributed systems and decentralisation
Information technology had now escaped the confines of the corporate computer centre. Personal computers became ubiquitous in the 1980s, although it took time for the vendors to iron out the incompatibilities among their products. Architectural standards opened new opportunities for software developers. Applications from independent software providers catered for occupational groups that centralised computer departments had never reached.
The coexistence of these options and mainframe computing practices posed data integrity problems that some IT managers considered dangerous.
Another facet of the PC revolution was the spread of terminal emulation software that made it easier for end users to access corporate applications. Terminals that clearly belonged to a single host computer gave way to multi-function client devices – in the parlance of the time, ‘smart’ PCs replaced ‘dumb’ terminals. This transition started gradually in the 1980s and accelerated in the following decade.
Some large organisations were more tolerant than others when it came to users selecting their own hardware and software. One response was for the established computer departments to act as consultants and trainers for PC users, including senior staff who had never before had a keyboard or a screen in their own workspaces. Another was for the IT specialists to establish formal rules for software selection and maintenance. They might begin with surveys and trials to pick the most suitable spreadsheet and then precede to grander corporate information policies.
The technology, of course, kept evolving and requiring further choices to be made. Could disk storage configurations keep up with the accumulation of data and the need to access it quickly ? What was the optimum mix of single-user machines and workgroup systems ? Which type of local area network was best ? And how should specialist applications fit into corporate strategies ?
New software categories mushroomed in the 1980s, including computer-aided approaches to design, engineering, manufacturing and learning. Computer assistance for management tasks arrived as well in the form of decision support software. There were also initiatives with the so-called expert systems that represented the height of artificial intelligence at that time.
Centralised computing was still commonplace at the end of the decade and large enterprises still relied on mainframes. But they were also investing in distributed systems or in a hybrid approach with data centres that housed several interconnected processors instead of one or two traditional mainframes. By the late 1980s two of the largest installations in the country – the Department of Social Welfare and CIE Group – ran VAX clusters along these lines.
The decentralisation trend also involved replacing homegrown software with packaged applications, transferring more IT responsibility to individual business units and buying technical support from external service providers.
The rate of progress depended largely on the performance of corporate data networks. Most were powered by vendor-specific protocols from either IBM or Digital Equipment and most required leased lines. For some users, however, public packet switched networks now offered connectivity at a lower cost. These networks also supported the emergence of online services that linked trading partners or the members of professional associations.
Improved data communications enabled large computer users to avail of new maintenance and support services for their systems. One notable trend was the establishment of ‘hot sites’ that could take over operations in the event of an emergency at a mainframe installation.
At the end of the decade network service provider Telecom Eireann had built up the largest user installation in the country – as measured by the combined processing capacity of its two Amdahl mainframes. Bank of Ireland and AIB ran the second and third largest computer centres. The Department of Social Welfare and Irish Life ranked next. Aer Lingus and CIE were still among the top ten concentrations of computing power. Financial institutions in general, and the building societies in particular, were showing the fastest growth in data processing and data storage alike.
As far as the general public was concerned, computing in the late 1980s meant PC technologies and the trade that had grown around them. The major data centres and their activities attracted remarkably little public attention. Nonetheless, their growth and diversity should be remembered. And they were still driving some of the most important computing operations in the country.
Last edit: November 2024
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