Thomas Haigh
Abstract
Packaged application software established a small but important corporate niche during the 1960s. The author charts the shifting meaning of the word software, situates the first software companies within the overall computer services market, and probes the attractions and limitations of the first packages from the viewpoint of their potential purchasers: managers of data processing.
References
- On the early history of data processing and the role of programming within it, see T. Haigh, "The Chromium-Plated Tabulator: Institutionalizing an Electronic Revolution, 1954-1958," IEEE Annals of the History of Computing (hereafter called Annals), vol. 23, no, 4, Oct.-Dec. 2001, pp. 2-31. Google Scholar
- For discussion of the earliest known use of "software" in the context of computers, see ER. Shapiro, "Origin of the Term Software: Evidence from the JSTOR Electronic Archive," Annals, vol. 22, no. 2, Apr.-June 2000, pp. 69-71.Shapiro discusses a 1958 article by mathematician John W. Tukey, who used the term to describe automatic programming aids (such as compilers and assemblers) of the type provided by computer manufacturers.Google Scholar
- Honeywell, 'A Few Quick Facts on Software," Business Automation, vol. 7, no. 1 Jan. 1962, pp. 16-17.Google Scholar
- "Software on the Couch," Datamation, vol. 7, no. 11, Nov. 1961, pp. 23-24. A similar definition of software as a "programming system package" can be seen in H.R.J. Grosch, "Software in Sickness and Health," Datamatian, vol. 7, no. 7, July 1961, pp. 32.33. See also "The Master Plan for Kludge Software," Datamation, vol. 8, no. 7, July 1962, pp. 41-42.Google Scholar
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- F. Gruenberger, "Rand Symposium 6," in Rand Symposia Collection (CBI 78), Charles Babbage Institute, Univ. of Minnesota, Minneapolis (hereafter, CBI), 1963. This discussion in many ways precipitated the much better known NATO Conference on Software Engineering held in 1968 and 1969. Participants discussed parallels between hardware and software, the difficulty of managing programmers, the importance of literary style in programming, and the applicability of engineering techniques to software. Participants included Barry Gordon, Bob Patrick, Richard Hamming, Francis V. Wagner, and M.D. McIllroy.Google Scholar
- Bauer offered his definition during a Fall 1965 address to the Los Angeles chapter of the ACM. See "Independent Software Companies," EDP Analyzer, vol. 5, no. 11, Nov. 1967.Google Scholar
- For Head's discussion and his own definition, see R.V. Head and E. F. Linick, "Software Package Acquisition," Datamation, vol. 14, no. 10, Oct. 1968, pp. 22-27.Google Scholar
- See particularly H.R.J. Grosch, "Software in Sickness and Health," Datamation, vol. 7, no. 7, July 1961, pp. 32-33, and "Software on the Couch," Datamation, vol. 7, no. 11, Nov. 1961, pp. 23-24. One of the earliest articles to imply our modern definition of "software costs" as including inhouse development of application programs is H.A. Lustig, "The High Cost of Software," Business Automation, vol. 13, no. 5, May 1966, pp. 37-38. Conversely, most of the crises attributed to data processing in this period had little direct relation to software-see D.R. Daniel, "Management Information Crisis," Harvard Business Rev, vol. 39, no. 5, Sept./Oct. 1961, pp. 111-121, orAL Keller, "Crisis In Machine Accounting," Management and Business Automation, vol. 5, no. 6, June 1961, pp. 30-31, for examples.Google Scholar
- In perhaps an extreme example, one author presented service bureaus, contract programming, consulting services, personnel services, package suppliers, proprietary software services, facilities management, "dedicated applications companies," time-sharing services, providers of turnkey systems, and educational services as the 11 components of the "software service" market See FA. Frank, "Software Services: An Outside Outlook," Business Automation, vol. 16, no. 11, Nov. 1969, pp. 55-61.Google Scholar
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- "The Software Explosion," Business Automation, vol. 15, no. 9, Sept. 1968, pp. 24-29. Head went on to help found SMIS, the Soc. of Management Information Systems (known today as SIM), and spent the latter part of his career in senior IT positions with the US federal government and as a consultant in the same area.Google Scholar
- Head earlier detailed his concept of industry-specific computing platforms in R.V. Head, "Old Myths and New Realities," Datamation, vol. 13, no. 9, Sept. 1967, pp. 26-29. For an example of a homebrew 360 operating system, see L. F. Zaino, "How Does an Operating System Work?," Systems & Procedures I., vol. 19, no. 1, Jan./Feb. 1968, pp. 20-23. On the history of MIS and its relationship to the promotion of third-generation computers, see T. Haigh, "Inventing Information Systems: The Systems Men and the Computer, 1950-1968," Business History Rev., vol. 75, no. 1, Spring 2001, pp. 15-61.Google Scholar
- P.H. Rosenthal, "Future Programming of Computer Applications," Systems & Procedures I., vol. 18, no. 1, Jan/Feb. 1967.Google Scholar
- Although the computer utility concept is generally believed to have originated with M. Greenberger, "The Computers of Tomorrow," The Atlantic Monthly, May 1964, pp. 63-67, it goes back at least five years earlier to the 1959 conference presentation published as A.O. Mann, "A Publicly Regulated System of Management Control Services," in Management Control Systems, D.G. Malcolm and A-J. Rowe, eds., john Wiley & Sons, New York, 1960, pp. 245-263. For an early discussion of its relevance to data processing, see R.E. Sprague, "The Information Utilities," Business Automation, vol. 12, no. 3, Mar. 1965, pp. 42-47.Google Scholar
- E.H. Menkhaus, "Time Sharing is Everybody's Thing" Business Automation, vol. 16, no. 9, Sept. 1969, pp. 26-35 and p. 38; and R.V. Head, A Guide to Packaged Systems, Wiley-lnterscience, New York, 1971. Others believed that the crucial advantage of the computer utility would come with the automatic interchange of orders, payments, and other information between firms that would follow once different businesses used shared computers to hold their information. These feelings were only reinforced in 1970, as a collapse in the stock market bubble for software and time-sharing firms caused scores of start-up firms to begin unraveling. As Business Automation reported at the time, the future of time-sharing was seen to lie not in the general-purpose computer utility but in the provision of "industryoriented software on a national basis .. Time sharing has become an information transfer business and not a computation or calculation business." See E.J. Menkhaus, "Time Sharing: More Glitter than Gold," Business Automation, vol. 17, no. 11, Nov. 1970, pp. 36-42.Google Scholar
- R.V. Head, "Twelve Crises-Comments on the Future of the Software Industry," Datamation, vol. 16, no. 3, Mar. 1970, pp. 124-126.Google Scholar
- J.E. Hackney and N.L. Paul, "The Wheel Exists," J. Systems Management, vol. 21, no. 5, Nov. 1970, pp. 40-41.Google Scholar
- Wall Street J., "Management and the Computer: A Wall Street Journal Study of the Management Men Responsible for their Companies' Purchases of Computer Equipments and Services," Data Processing Management Assoc. Records (CBI 88), CBI, 1969.Google Scholar
- "Application Packages: Coming into Their Own," EDP Analyzer, vol. 5, no. 7, July 1967.Google Scholar
- R.V. Head and E.F. Linick, "Software Package Acquisition," Datamation, vol. 14, no. 10, Oct. 1968, pp. 22-27.Google Scholar
- Ibid., pp. 25-26.Google Scholar
- R.V. Head, A Guide to Packaged Systems, Wileylnterscience, New York, 1971. Google Scholar
- Ibid., pp. 41-43.Google Scholar
- Unbundling has been the subject of considerable historical inquiry, including several articles in this issue. For contemporary reaction, see A. Dratell, "Unbundling: The User Will Pay for the Works," Business Automation, vol. 16, no. 8, Aug. 1969, pp. 36-41.Google Scholar
- R.V. Head, A Guide to Packaged Systems, Wiley lnterscience, New York, 1971, p. 66. Google Scholar
- For a critical discussion of the largest mainframe software companies at the start of the 1980s, see S.T. McClellan, The Coming Computer Industry Shakeout: Winners, Losers, and Survivors, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1984, pp. 240-263. Google Scholar
- Some software remains in the public domain, particularly in the Linux area where some companies attempt to give away the code while charging for support and services. In the server and enterprise software markets, software is leased annually rather than purchased and is often priced together with service and support contracts. Current industry opinion suggests a general move toward the use of online software (via application service providers-the timesharing systems of the 21st century) and the annual leasing of desktop application software.Google Scholar
- On the recent travails of the ASP industry, see C. Koch, "Boy, That Was Fast!," C/O Magazine, 15 Nov. 2000, http://www.cio.com/archive/111500/boy.html {current as of 16 Jan. 2002}. For a dismissal of the concept as "rehashed time-sharing service bureaus," see B. Lewis, "Rather than Focusing on Best Technologies, Let's Look at and Learn from the Year's Worst," Infoworld, 26 Jan. 2000, http://staging.infoworld.com/articles/op/xml/01/01/29/010129oplewis.xml {current as of 16 Jan. 2002}.Google Scholar
Index Terms
Software in the 1960s as Concept, Service, and Product
Reviews
Stanley G. Siegel
What is software__ __ Even today, people both inside and outside the software industry differ on what the term means. For example, many today equate software with computer code. In 1980, I co-authored the first book on software configuration management. We chose to define the concept in terms more global than was in vogue then (and for many today). For us, software included both computer code and the predecessor documentation that led up to the computer code, for example the code's requirements and design specifications. Haigh's paper looks at the notion of software during the 1960s, while our book had a 1970s perspective. He sets the stage for his book by commenting, in his opening paragraph, on the notion of application programming: They [i.e., data processing pioneers] soon discovered that application program creation was costly, difficult, and ongoing. By the mid-1950s, they had come to care a great deal about programming. But only around 1960, however, would a well-informed data-processing manager have nodded knowledgably if software came up in conversation. During the 1950s the term was not used, although hardware was already well known as a colloquial term for computer equipment. When software did achieve currency, it was as hardware's complement, describing everything else the computer manufacturer provided. This ensured that term's widespread, if ill-defined, use (p. 5). The paper then goes on to describe how the term software was used during the 1960s. This description provides some interesting insight into the 1960s software industry. Online Computing Reviews Service
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