| Norsk Data | |
| Industry: | Computer hardware, Computer software |
| Fate: | Purchased by Telenor |
| Founders: | Lars Monrad Krohn, Per Bjørge, Rolf Skår |
| Defunct: | 1992 |
| Hq Location City: | Oslo |
| Hq Location Country: | Norway |
| Products: | Minicomputer |
| Num Employees: | over 4,500 |
| Num Employees Year: | 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.
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).
See main article: History of Norsk Data.
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 systems.[3] In 1987, Norsk Data sought to expand its collaboration with DIAB of Sweden to provide UNIX-based systems in Norsk Data's portfolio, to offer "a complete UNIX concept" together with the company's ND-5000 products.[4] 1988 saw the company sign an agreement with the Santa Cruz Operation to offer SCO's System V product on its Intel-based personal computer systems.[5] 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.[6]
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.[7] 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.[8] 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.[9] Norsk Data also announced an agreement with Data General to resell that company's Aviion line of 88000-based products.[10] Norsk Data was purchased by Telenor and went through several rebrands and relaunches.
Throughout the times, Norsk Data produced a long string of innovative computers. Some examples of this include:
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.[13] 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.
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.[14] 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,[15] a "communications service provider",[16] 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".
In 2003, Norsk Data was eventually acquired by 2e2, an IT services business pursuing rapid growth through acquisition,[17] joining various other established businesses including elements of PinkRoccade UK Group and ROCC Computers.[18] 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.
Significant Norsk Data computer models include:
In addition to hardware, Norsk Data also produced a wide range of system and application software:
In addition to the above:
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.[20] They also used ND-NOTIS, that was based on SGML,[21] and emailed with NOTIS-MAIL, using tcp/ip, coded in HTML.