By Carolyn Corvi, MIT, May 1988

“Another factor that had to be taken into account at this time was the rapidly diminishing time-sharing business. This problem was not unique to BCS. “General Electric sold off its failing computer manufacturing line in 1970. It seemed to be headed for another computer disaster in 1983, when its time-sharing business began to crash. When computing power became cheaper to own, nobody needed timesharing”.15 Although experts had been predicting the decline in time-sharing sales for some time, no one anticipated how quickly the market would drop off. BCS was caught in the middle. In 1983 an organization had been created to strategically place new products and services in the market. The combination of time-sharing drying up, and BCS management underestimating the length of time it would take to bring new products to market created an unexpected decline in revenues and profits.”

15. Alyssa A. Lappen, “Messenger of the gods”, Forbes, 21 March, 1988.

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