Norsk Data

Last updated
Norsk Data
Industry Computer hardware, Computer software
FoundedAugust 8, 1967;56 years ago (1967-08-08)
Founders Lars Monrad Krohn, Per Bjørge, Rolf Skår
Defunct1992
FatePurchased by Telenor
Successor Telenor
Headquarters
Oslo
,
Norway
Products Minicomputer
Number of employees
over 4,500 (1987)

Norsk Data was a minicomputer manufacturer located in Oslo, Norway. Existing from 1967 to 1998, it had its most active period from the early 1970s to the late 1980s. At the company's peak in 1987, it was the second largest company in Norway and employed over 4,500 people.

Contents

Throughout its history Norsk Data produced a long string of extremely innovative systems, with a disproportionately large number of world firsts. Some examples of this are the NORD-1, the first minicomputer to have memory paging as a standard option, and the first machine to have floating-point instructions standard, the NORD-5, the world's first 32-bit minicomputer (beating the VAX, often claimed the first, by 6 years).

Historical overview

Norsk Data-Elektronikk in 1971 Norsk Data 1971.jpg
Norsk Data-Elektronikk in 1971

The origins of Norsk Data go back to the development of digital computers at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment at Kjeller, Norway, where several early computers had been designed, such as the SAM and the SAM 2, also known as the FLINK.

The success of this program resulted in the founding of A/S Nordata – Norsk Data Elektronikk on August 8, 1967, by Lars Monrad Krohn, Per Bjørge and Rolf Skår. The company became a significant supplier of minicomputers to many research projects, in particular to CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, where they were chosen to produce the computers for many projects, starting with the SPS Project, [1] Norsk Data's international breakthrough contract. The other market segments Norsk Data succeeded in were process control, Norwegian municipal administration data centers, newspapers, as well as parts of the educational, health, and university sector.

For a period in 1987, Norsk Data was the second largest company by stock value in Norway, second only to Norsk Hydro, and employed over 4,500 people.

In March 1991, shortly after the January Events, Norsk Data donated the first computer to Lithuanian Institute of Mathematics and Informatics. This donation started the development of LITNET, an academic and research network in Lithuania. Later that year, the network connection lines directly connecting Vilnius to Moscow were shut down. With the help of additional hardware donated by Norsk Data, Lithuania was able to use its first satellite-based Internet connection, which operated at 9,6 kbit/s. This was the first Lithuanian communications line that was totally independent from the former Soviet Union. [2]

After a long period of exceptional success, the Norsk Data "empire" collapsed in the early 1990s, mostly due to not realizing the impact of the PC revolution (as well as the growing competition from Unix-based workstations). [3] In 1989, alongside upgraded versions of the company's proprietary minicomputer range, notably the ND-5850, attempts were made to introduce Unix products such as the Uniline 33 range, based on Motorola system designs for the 68030 processor. Such conventional Unix systems were primarily aimed at international customers, whereas in Scandinavia the company reportedly sought to offer only its NDIX implementation of Unix for its own proprietary architecture. Systems based on Motorola's 88000 processor were planned to follow on from these new 68030-based products. [4]

Efforts to restructure the company in 1990 were initially perceived as moderately successful, with executives and analysts expressing beliefs that such restructuring had put the company in a more favourable position than competitors who were yet "to swallow the same bitter pill" of refocusing and workforce reductions. [5] Development of Norsk Data technology was continued by Dolphin Server Technology, with this spin-off company aiming to supply Motorola 88000-based systems to its parent. [6] Indeed, Norsk Data introduced the Uniline 88 series of 88000-based systems, developed by Dolphin, initially in Scandinavia during 1990 and then in the UK and Germany during 1991. [7] Norsk Data also announced an agreement with Data General to resell that company's Aviion line of 88000-based products. [8] Norsk Data was purchased by Telenor and went through several rebrands and relaunches.

Notable innovations

Throughout the times, Norsk Data produced a long string of innovative computers. Some examples of this include:

Post-breakup companies

Although the Norsk Data breakup caused a large number of layoffs, a large number of employees and intellectual property lived on in various smaller companies. Some went bankrupt quite quickly, some were bought for tax purposes.

The hardware research and development group was split off into Dolphin Server Technology in 1989. [11] Dolphin later split off into a number of companies, by far the most successful of these being Dolphin Interconnect Solutions, a cluster interconnect hardware company.

Norsk Data UK

In the UK, Telenor kept the Norsk Data name for several years, focusing in on hardware support and maintenance contracts, mainly with HMCG and local governments.

At the tail end of the "dotcom boom" Telenor decided to try and expand the service by acquiring the ISP CIX and XTML, a hosting company in Manchester, UK. [12] The total expenditure on acquisitions was more than £50 million.

The name and business focus of this group of companies changed several times in the early 21st Century. Initially combined with the acquired CIX and XTML to form the UK arm of Telenor's Nextra subsidiary, [13] a "communications service provider", [14] the group became Telenor Business Solutions before finally reverting to ND Norsk Data once CIX and XTML had been resold to Pipex, reportedly for less than 10% of the purchase price.

Much of the loss in value of the acquired companies was put down to the astronomical "goodwill" payment included in the purchase price during the "dotcom boom". ND Norsk Data was then renamed 2e2, and with 2e2 came the acquisition of part of Pink Roccade. This bolstered the hardware maintenance side of the company. The growth by acquisition trend continued with several smaller businesses being taken on, and many employees subsequently being laid off. Major losses of high earning contracts such as Thomas Cook, Woolworths, HMP, or Corus, were never replaced with similar-sized customers.

Hardware

Significant Norsk Data computer models include:

Software

In addition to hardware, Norsk Data also produced a wide range of system and application software:

In addition to the above:

Tim Berners-Lee connection

The World Wide Web originated when Tim Berners-Lee wrote the ENQUIRE program in Pascal on a Norsk Data NORD-10 running under SINTRAN III at CERN. [16] They also used ND-NOTIS, that was based on SGML, and emailed with NOTIS-MAIL, using tcp/ip, coded in HTML.

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Minicomputer</span> Mid-1960s–late-1980s class of smaller computers

A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a type of smaller general-purpose computer developed in the mid-1960s and sold at a much lower price than mainframe and mid-size computers from IBM and its direct competitors. In a 1970 survey, The New York Times suggested a consensus definition of a minicomputer as a machine costing less than US$25,000, with an input-output device such as a teleprinter and at least four thousand words of memory, that is capable of running programs in a higher level language, such as Fortran or BASIC.

The 88000 is a RISC instruction set architecture developed by Motorola during the 1980s. The MC88100 arrived on the market in 1988, some two years after the competing SPARC and MIPS. Due to the late start and extensive delays releasing the second-generation MC88110, the m88k achieved very limited success outside of the MVME platform and embedded controller environments. When Motorola joined the AIM alliance in 1991 to develop the PowerPC, further development of the 88000 ended.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Data General</span> Minicomputer manufacturer, 1968–1999

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dolphin Interconnect Solutions</span> Manufacturer of high speed data communication systems

Dolphin Interconnect Solutions is a privately held manufacturer of high-speed data communication systems headquartered in Oslo, Norway and Woodsville, New Hampshire, USA.

Aviion was a series of computers from Data General that were the company's main product from the late 1980s until the company's server products were discontinued in 2001. Earlier Aviion models used the Motorola 88000 CPU, but later models moved to an all-Intel solution when Motorola stopped work on the 88000 in the early 1990s. Some versions of these later Intel-based machines ran Windows NT, while higher-end machines ran the company's flavor of Unix, DG/UX.

AT&T Computer Systems is the generic name for American Telephone & Telegraph's unsuccessful attempt to compete in the computer business. In return for divesting the local Bell Operating Companies, AT&T was allowed to have an unregulated division to sell computer hardware and software. The company made the 3B series computers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nord-10</span>

Nord-10 was a medium-sized general-purpose 16-bit minicomputer designed for multilingual time-sharing applications and for real-time multi-program systems, produced by Norsk Data. It was introduced in 1973. The later follow up model, Nord-10/S, introduced in 1975, introduced CPU cache, paging, and other miscellaneous improvements.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nord-1</span>

Nord-1 was Norsk Data's first minicomputer and the first commercially available computer made in Norway.

Sintran III is a real-time, multitasking, multi-user operating system used with Norsk Data minicomputers from 1974. Unlike its predecessors Sintran I and II, it was written entirely by Norsk Data, in Nord Programming Language, an intermediate language for Norsk Data computers.

The Nord-100 was a 16-bit minicomputer series made by Norsk Data, introduced in 1979. It shipped with the Sintran III operating system, and the architecture was based on, and backward compatible with, the Nord-10 line.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ND-500</span> 32-bit superminicomputer delivered in 1981 by Norsk Data

The ND-500 was a 32-bit superminicomputer delivered in 1981 by Norsk Data. It relied on a ND-100 to do housekeeping tasks and run the OS, SINTRAN III. A configuration could feature up to four ND-500 CPUs in a shared-memory configuration.

PLANC is a high-level programming language.

ND-NOTIS was a office automation suite by Norsk Data introduced in the early 80s, running on the SINTRAN III platform on both ND-100 and ND-500 architectures. It was also available on Microsoft Windows running in networks of Norsk Data servers.

ND-COSMOS was the proprietary computer networking system developed by Norsk Data as the second generation NORDNET system.

Nord Programming Language (NPL), is a procedural programming language by the Norwegian minicomputer manufacturer Norsk Data. It shipped as a standard component of the operating system Sintran III.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of Norsk Data</span>

Norsk Data (ND) was a Norwegian manufacturer of minicomputers which operated between 1967 and 1992. The company was established as A/S Nordata – Norsk Data-Elektronikk on 7 July 1967 and took into use the Norsk Data brand in 1975. The company was founded by Lars Monrad-Krohn, Rolf Skår and Per Bjørge, three computer engineers working at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment which had just built the minicomputer SAM 2. ND's first contract was the delivery of a Nord-1 computer to Norcontrol. Initially in competition with Kongsberg, ND started delivering computers to Norwegian institutions. By 1972 the company had developed Sintran operating system, the 32-bit Nord-5 and a time sharing system.

The Research and Development Network in Norway or FUNN was fourteen computing centers established in regional districts in Norway established by Norsk Data (ND) and the Ministry of Trade and Industry in 1989. These were located in Ålesund, Alta, Bø, Gjøvik, Grimstad, Kirkenes, Kristiansund, Mo i Rana, Narvik, Sarpsborg, Sogndal, Steinkjer, Stord and Tromsø. Each had two Norsk Data-built minicomputers, one running Sintran III and one running Unix. Participating agencies included the Regional Development Fund, the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development, the Norwegian Telecommunications Administration (NTA) and the Royal Norwegian Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (NTNF).

Harris Computer Systems Corporation was an American computer company, in existence during the mid-1990s, that made real-time computing systems. Its products powered a variety of applications, including those for aerospace simulation, data acquisition and control, and signal processing. It was based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. For twenty years prior, it had been the Harris Computer Systems Division of Harris Corporation, until being spun off as an independent company in 1994. Then in 1996, Harris Computer Systems Corporation itself was acquired by Concurrent Computer Corporation.

References

  1. ↑ Adjudication Concerning the Computer System for the 300 GeV Accelerator (Report). CERN. 1972.
  2. ↑ "Istorija" [History]. LITNET (in Lithuanian). Archived from the original on 21 June 2007.
  3. ↑ Haraldsen, Arild (1999). Den forunderlige reisen gjennom datahistorien. Tano Aschehoug. p. 126. ISBN   8251838320 . Retrieved 13 June 2023.
  4. ↑ "Ravaged Norsk Data Introduces Its First Unix Systems". Tech Monitor. 19 October 1989. Retrieved 10 July 2023.
  5. ↑ Radoli, Don (3 September 1990). "Norsk Data comes back to post profit". Computerworld. p. 69. Retrieved 13 June 2023.
  6. ↑ Faden, Michael (February 1990). "Industry Report: RISC on the Rise in Europe". UNIX Review. pp. 14, 16, 19, 21, 23, 25–26. Retrieved 24 February 2023.
  7. ↑ "Norsk Data Hopes to Boost Its Unix Business in the UK with 88000-Based Dolphin Servers". Tech Monitor. 28 April 1991. Retrieved 11 July 2023.
  8. ↑ "ScandinAviion". Computerworld. 2 April 1990. p. 96. Retrieved 13 June 2023.
  9. 1 2 Smith, Kevin (16 December 1985). "Norsk Data Grows Fast by Going Pan-European". Electronics. pp. 62–63. Retrieved 7 July 2023.
  10. ↑ Supnik, Bob (July–August 2004). "Simulators: Virtual Machines of the Past (and Future)". Queue. 2 (5). ACM: 52–58. doi: 10.1145/1016998.1017002 .
  11. ↑ "European Unity Creates New Superpowers". Datamation. 15 June 1990. pp. 118–123, 127–128, 130, 132, 134, 136, 138, 140, 143–146. Retrieved 24 February 2023.
  12. ↑ "Norsk Data Ltd acquires XTML to broaden its range of managed services offerings" (Press release). Telenor AS. 24 August 2000. Retrieved 10 July 2023.
  13. ↑ Brown, Leonard. The Social Networking handbook. pp. 157–158. ISBN   9781743041369.
  14. ↑ "Nextra strengthens European presence by including UK based Norsk Data, XTML and CIX" (Press release). Telenor AS. 2 February 2001. Retrieved 10 July 2023.
  15. ↑ "Norsk Data at the Telecommunications Museum". folk.uio.no. Archived from the original on 2011-06-07.
  16. ↑ See Tim Berners-Lee's FAQ or the ENQUIRE article
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