During the 1960s, IBM and these five computer manufacturers, along with RCA and General Electric, had been known as "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." The description of IBM's competitors changed after GE's 1970 sale of its computer business to Honeywell and RCA's 1971 sale of its computer business to Univac, leaving only five "dwarfs". Fortunately, their initials lent themselves to a new acronym, BUNCH.3
Where are they now?
Burroughs & UNIVAC
In September 1986, after Burroughs purchased Sperry (the parent company of UNIVAC), the name of the company was changed to Unisys.
NCR
In 1982, NCR became involved in open systems architecture, starting with the UNIX-powered TOWER 16/32, and placed more emphasis on computers smaller than mainframes. NCR was acquired by AT&T in 1991. A restructuring of AT&T in 1996, led to its re-establishment on 1 January1997, as a separate company. In 1998, NCR sold its computer hardware manufacturing assets to Solectron and ceased to produce general-purpose computer systems.
In 1991 Honeywell's computer division was sold to the French computer company Groupe Bull.
Other mainframe manufacters during the 1960s and 1970s
Scientific Data Systems (later known as Xerox Data Systems after its purchase by Xerox in 1969) also sold mainframe computers, but with around 1% marketshare, it was not a major factor in the marketplace. Xerox closed the division in 1975, with most rights sold to Honeywell.
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) was founded in 1957 to manufacture computer components, and made many small computers, notably the PDP series. These computers were classified as minicomputers rather than mainframes, but often competed for the same business.
Hewlett-Packard (HP) was founded in 1939 and started manufacturing advanced medical equipment. Later HP also produced minicomputers, which competed with mainframe computers.
