The Colossus That Works

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of the IBM laboratories to satisfy that demand? Opel is clearly not ready to sit back and relax despite his company's achievements. Says he: "We've got an enormously successful operation. Therefore you could be complacent; you could play it safe and not change. All the natural forces in the business pressure you in that direction." But one sign that the pace of the past two years will continue will be the arrival of a home computer, which IBM originally code-named "peanut." This will sell for about $700 and could reach stores in late fall. The machine, fully compatible with the PC, will come with a built-in disc drive and cartridge slot for software. "It will offer the best performance on the market for its price," asserts Clive Smith, a computer watcher with the Yankee Group, a Cambridge, Mass., research firm.

IBM is also developing a raft of exotic technologies. These include Josephson Junction and quiteron switching devices that operate in trillionths of a second at temperatures that approach absolute zero (-459.67° F). Says one IBMer: "There's nothing, literally nothing, noteworthy in the field that IBM doesn't have its fingers into."

The biggest future payoff for IBM is likely to come in the field of office automation. The key to the so-called paperless office will be computerized networks that shuttle messages between computer terminals, telephones and other office equipment. All can then be consolidated into a "work station" atop a desk. "The world of the future is centered on powerful work stations," says Lewis Branscomb, IBM's chief scientist.

Last month IBM showed that it was determined to become a leader in developing the automated office by agreeing to acquire 15% of Rolm. That company's advanced PBX system, a type of computerized switchboard, can be used to direct the flow of voice and data traffic between work stations. The investment will enable the two firms to work out ways to link IBM computers with the Rolm PBX.

In fact, IBM has long been deeply involved in telecommunications. In 1975, the company bought a one-third interest in Satellite Business Systems, which transmits voice and computer data. IBM is seeking partners for communications ventures in Europe. In March 1982, it won an $18 million contract to upgrade the British telephone system, and it is installing a computer-driven telephone information service in West Germany.

IBM's moves into telecommunications will put it squarely in competition with American Telephone & Telegraph, now the world's biggest company. An extended battle between the two giants seems inevitable in the area where computers and communications overlap to create the Information Age. Once the separation of A T & T from its regulated telephone units goes into effect next January, the company will be able to use its Bell Laboratories and Western Electric facilities to develop products to compete direct ties to develop products to compete directly with IBM. AT&T through the new American Bell is expected to introduce computers next year, and it already has the capability of offering a wide range of data-processing services similar to those IBM provides.

In that upcoming clash of the titans and the continuing fight for the world computer market, IBM will be tough to beat. Its resources—human,