A BRIEF OUTLINE OF THE AUSTRALIAN SYSTEMS DIVISION
John O'Neil - February 2008
Ed note: This draft will become part of the CDA story page as it evolves but is presented here in the meantime.
The idea of a Corporate recognized systems capability in Australia had been a keystone in the strategic thinking of Trevor Robinson and his management team in Australia through the 60's. (See note on Special Systems.) We had actively pushed the Corporation to think in this direction from the original TAB 'Carbine' contract.
The key opportunity to achieve this came with the joint VicTAB/CDA 'Rimfire' study and contract. ETR connived with Ken Davis (GM of VicTAB) to ensure that the contract required that the system be developed in Australia, and that the majority of the terminals (TIMs) be manufactured in Australia.
In the first half of 1969, CDC decided to establish a systems division in Australia, with responsibility for all systems deliveries, installations and support within the Australasian and SE Asian area. Originally the Division was intended to start up in July of 1969, but due to corporate budgeting problems, and the switch of the corporate financial year to match the calendar year, was deferred to January 1970.
In the second half of 1969, JON (who had been in Minneapolis with CDC's Digital Control Systems Division since late 67) was appointed to a staff role to plan the new division.
In Australia, ETR had started to hire a few people with manufacturing and communications experience in anticipation of this. (e.g. Les Randell, Malcolm Thompson).
ASD opened in January 1970. To help smooth the startup, JON brought from Minneapolis 2 experience systems managers, Dale Rostamo and Ben Louw, and an accountant, Jim Matheis) familiar with the Corporate approach to accounting and financial reporting for Corporate systems divisions. Subsequently Dave Noer arrived to add corporate personnel experience to CDA. Formally, the new Division reported to Noel Stone in the Corporate Systems organization - this did not present any significant problems due to the close personal relationship between ETR & JON, and the hands off approach taken by Noel Stone. ASD also had one other US employee in MSP to act as our gopher in solving problems there.
ASD was manned largely by transferring analyst, programming and engineering staff from CDA, many of whom were already involved in projects, which now became the Division's responsibility. Additional personnel were hired as required, particularly for the manufacturing function. The Divisions centre of operations was co-located with CDA in 598 St Kilda Road.
In late 69, the initial facilities for manufacturing and design engineering were explored and in early 1970 a site was occupied in Herald St, Cheltenham. Later the logistics functions of Customer Engineering and ASD were combined; in 1972 (?) the functions were moved to Moorabin. At a later date, the CE Logistics function was moved to a site in Thornbury.
In 1971, to meet the requirements of NZTAB, ASD developed a modified ticketing terminal (D-TIM) that shared a single ticket printer between 2 ticketing stations.
In late 1971, a change in management in the corporate systems organization led to a 'doctrinal' decision to move to a few large systems divisions, and ASD and other smaller systems divisions were closed.
(Lesson - As in politics, beware the ambitious bastards who have dogmatic and doctrinal views on how things should be (and ignore the data).)
For a year or two after the closure of ASD, JON continued to field phone calls from Corporate types asking why the Australian payroll still had so many people when they'd closed this Division (which at the peak had some 100 to 150 people). They couldn't understand that we still had to continue the development of contracted customer systems, build terminals etc.
The software development activities were placed in the CDA Analyst Services organization, and the Manufacturing and Engineering functions drifted around within CDA eventually reporting to Customer Engineering. Despite this, they successfully developed a new ticketing terminal for QTAB, participated in the development of and manufactured the GWS for VicTAB. After the VicTAB cancelled the GWS contract, leading the Corporation to decide withdraw from other wagering systems activities, the manufacturing facility converted to manufacture of 8" and 5 ΒΌ" floppy disks.
A NOTE ON CDA'S SPECIAL SYSTEMS
John O'Neil February 2008
In 1963/4 a number of the early employees of CDA discussed where we could go in the Australian market. Despite Control data's initial success with the Bureau of Stats and with CSIRO we recognized that there was a limited market for CDC systems outside the large government requirements and the universities - at that time the IBM 1401 was the typical commercial system.
From Trevor's choice, many of us (eg Trevor, Bruce Bambrough, George Karoly, Peter Jones, and myself had scientific and engineering backgrounds and were keen to sell into application areas which would allow use of this expertise, and development of Australian content. An early choice was communications based and real-time systems (new in those days!).
We were pretty successful in achieving this - out of proportion to the size of CDC compared to IBM, and even the other 7 dwarfs.
Examples were:
1. 1964/5. Joint development with CSIRO of a drum-based, time-sharing operating system for the 3600 (left the tape based OS for dead).
2. 1966/67 The VicTAB 'Carbine' system - on-line, failsafe.
3. 1967/69 A message switch for the RAAF.1969-
4. 1968/70 A similar message switch for the NZ Ministry of Defence,
5. 1968/70 A real-time, failsafe operating system for dual CDC3300s, developed for BHP and AIS steelworks.
6. 1969/70 An on-course totalisator system for the Royal Thai Turf Club.
7. 1969-71 The VicTAB 'Rimfire' system.
8. 1972/74 The NZTAB system.
9. 1972/74 Development as joint study with VicTAB - the Generalised Wagering System.Sold to VicTAB, QTAB, NZTAB, and Natal TAB.
The first 4 examples clearly established CDA's credentials to engage in systems development activities, and set the scene for Trevor to press for a formal recognition of the capabilities within CDA, and the formation of a "Systems Division" in Australia.
