Ian Sharp
M.A.

Founder, former President and CEO I. P. Sharp Associates Limited

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Ian Sharp, who helped build Canadian leadership in the development of telecommunications networks, admits that his pioneering company was founded on a "whim." Sharp is the 1998 inductee into the Heritage Wing of the C.I.P.A. Hall of Fame. He founded I. P. Sharp Associates in 1964, not guessing that it would leave an international legacy. "It was founded on a whim," he says.

"We just decided overnight to do it. We were a group of eight people who just wanted to be in the software business." Sharp had been chief programmer at Ferranti-Packard in Toronto. Born in Dublin in 1932, he had completed a degree in mechanical sciences at Cambridge University in 1956, then worked in the steel industry in England in operations research, mainly in the use of computers for simulation of industrial processes, before coming to Canada in 1960. At that time Ferranti-Packard was designing and manufacturing general purpose computers.

In 1964 ICL in London purchased the computer divisions of Ferranti, and the Toronto manufacturing operations ceased. Sharp and his team, who had been creating operating systems and compilers, carried on by establishing I. P. Sharp Associates as an independent software company. Gradually they moved into on-line data transmission and emerged as one of the largest worldwide suppliers, particularly in the financial and energy sectors. The company pioneered packet-switch technology in the 1970s and developed IPSANET, a communications network that linked its computer systems to customers in many countries. "We leased lines from various telephone companies throughout the world and implemented our own technology," Sharp recalls. "We did not invent packet switching but we used the technology and implemented our own software-driven network, which was quite unique at that time."

The company grew, over 23 years, from the original eight to about 650 people spread over 20 countries. It was involved in developing computer applications, including several command and control systems for the Canadian Navy, air-traffic control systems and manufacturing process systems. Some of this work is still carried on by PROMIS Inc., a former division of I. P. Sharp Associates, now an independent publicly listed corporation. Sharp became well known in the computer industry for his criticism of government policies and his accusations that telephone monopolies were a deterrent to technological progress, and therefore an obstacle to the diffusion and mass acceptance of computer technology. In 1987 I. P. Sharp Associates was acquired by Reuters and forms the basis of Reuters activities in the organization and maintenance of on-line historical financial data. Ian Sharp continued as president until 1989, when he retired. He retains some involvement with the industry as a member of the board of PSINet, the Virginia-based Internet network provider. In 1985 Sharp received a Significant Contribution award from the Association for Computing Machinery, and in 1990 was granted an honorary membership in the Canadian Information Processing Society.

Of the place in history of I. P. Sharp Associates, Sharp says, "I think we made a contribution to telecommunications and computing in terms of reliability, capacity and geographic reach. "We made it possible for the worldwide subsidiaries of a multinational company to function as though they all lived in the same building. They could not easily do that before the implementation of an intelligent worldwide network."