Tymshare, Inc. was a well-known timesharing service and third-party hardware maintenance company throughout its history and competed with companies such as Four Phase, Compuserve, and Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC, Digital). Tymshare developed or acquired innovative technologies, including data networking (Tymnet), electronic data interchange (EDI), credit card and payment processing (TTS, Western29), telecommunications provisioning (COEES), office automation (August, Augment) and database technology (Magnum). It was headquartered in Cupertino, California from 1964 to 1984.
The computing platforms included the XDS 940 (Tymcom-IX), XDS Sigma 7, DEC PDP-10 models KA, KI, KL and KS (Tymcom-X/XX, Tenex, August, Tops-20), XKL Toad-1, IBM 360 & 370 (VM, MVS, GNOSIS) servers.
Divisions:
- INSD – Information Services Division
- STD – Systems Technology Division
- DND – Data Networks Division
In 1984 Tymshare was acquired by McDonnell Douglas, restructured, split up and portions were resold, spun off, and merged with other companies from 1984 through 2004 when most of its legacy network was finally shut down. Islands of its network technology continued as part of EDI, at least into 2008.
Rights to use technology developed by Tymshare is currently held by Boeing, British Telecom (BT), Verizon, and AT&T Inc. due to the acquisitions and mergers from 1984 through 2005. (Note: McDonnell Douglas was acquired by Boeing).