The Service Bureau Corporation (SBC) was a subsidiary of IBM formed in 1957 to operate IBM's former service bureau business as an independent company.
IBM had operated service bureaus in major cities since 1932 allowing users to rent time on tabulating equipment, and later computing equipment, to solve problems which couldn't justify a full-time equipment lease. In 1956, as a result of a consent decree with the United States Department of Justice, IBM spun off its service bureaus to force them to operate at "arms length" from the parent company.
In 1968 IBM transferred its Information marketing Division to SBC. This included the CALL/360 time-sharing service, QUIKTRAN, BASIC, and DATATEXT (a text processing system similar to ATS).
In 1973, as a result of another lawsuit over the fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) created by IBM's pre-announcement of a nonexistent System/360 Model 92, IBM sold SBC for $16 million to Control Data Corporation, which had a small service bureau business of its own.