SITA, a co-operative formed by major world airlines in 1949 to provide communications and data-processing services to the air-transport industry.

ECONOMIST: Telecoms

It is ironic that today's computer industry has its origins in a data-processing project carried out in 1890 that was completed on time and under budget.

ECONOMIST: Millennium issue

The industry is dominated by a handful of large companies, such as Automatic Data Processing Inc.

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