Ian Sharp - In Memory

This article is written in the memory of Ian Patrick Sharp, a Canadian technology giant who peacefully passed away on July 16th in his 89th year. Many thanks to his dear friends and colleagues Lib Gibson, Jane Minett, and Leslie Goldsmith for writing such a thoughtful account of his career.

Ian Sharp was an illustrious and largely unknown pioneer in Canada’s technology industry. He founded I.P. Sharp Associates[i] in 1964 and grew it into an international success story. From its headquarters in Toronto and 60 offices around the globe, it offered proprietary “cloud computing” services over its Internet-like telecommunications network decades ahead of any other company.  I.P. Sharp’s Fortune 500 clients included Morgan Stanley, Hitachi, McGraw Hill, Hong Kong Shanghai Bank, British Petroleum, Xerox, Credit Suisse, and Kodak. It is a success story very few Canadians know.

For over 20 years, I.P. Sharp Associates pioneered countless applications that were decades ahead of their time. Developed in the 1970s and 80s, these applications would be considered innovative even today: database systems to support analyses of financial markets and the aviation and energy industries; a real-time global financial system to manage interbank money market exposures; an international stock settlement system; a real-time energy trading platform; an international stock borrowing and lending system; and an international financial consolidation system, to name a few. They were built using a proprietary computer language called Sharp APL[ii] that was a game-changer for the many companies that adopted it. Sharp APL afforded I.P. Sharp an almost unfair competitive advantage due to its fast software development times. Technologically, I. P. Sharp was a 21st century company in the 20th century.

There were many reasons for I.P. Sharp’s success, but the biggest one was the man himself. They say if you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together. Ian had a nose for finding exceptional people. In the infant cloud computing industry, there was no strategic road map for success and no formula for the kinds of people who could blaze the trail.  You couldn’t be guided by a person’s experience, because no one had any directly relevant experience.

Ian’s hiring strategy was to attract smart young people who could understand a problem and then invent a solution. He instilled in his young employees a desire to do right by the customer and he gave people latitude to figure out what that meant.  He entrusted people with big challenges and then left them to get the job done.  As the business grew and as international customers wanted support around the world, people were dispatched to open offices in cities they’d never even visited, where they knew no one, and where they were expected to find more customers. “Go build a business”, Ian told them. And so they did. London. Paris. New York. Singapore. Sydney. Zurich. Oslo. Los Angeles. Hong Kong. Copenhagen. Vienna. Helsinki. Brussels. Frankfurt. Mexico City. The list goes on.

The culture that Ian fostered, the invigorating intellectual challenges that begged for solutions, and the opportunity for adventure combined to attract a fascinating mix of people and gave them an experience they struggled to match in later jobs. People really liked working for I.P. Sharp and some of the best recruits were attracted by their recommendations. Ian's wife Audrey was an integral part of the company from the start, both socially and technologically, and many employees attracted friends, daughters, sons, siblings, spouses,  and even parents to join. 

When Ian selected people, what counted most was talent, dedication and a passion to serve the customer.  Your gender, nationality, religion, race, sexual orientation, or university major (or if you even finished university) didn’t figure into the equation. I.P. Sharp was widely diverse before governments and CSR started to track these things. Culturally, IPSA was a 21st century company in the 20th century.

I.P. Sharp was 600 employees at its peak, spread around the globe and linked by an email system far ahead of its time. Developed by a talented youngster who had earlier joined part-time as a 16-year-old, it was the glue that held this far-flung workforce together. Distance and time zones led to a company that lived almost entirely virtually fully fifty years ago. This new world of global applications would not have been possible without a high degree of collaboration. Many lasting friendships were forged across many countries. The 50th anniversary in Toronto, attracted hundreds of “Sharpees” from across North America and Europe – fully 28 years after the company had disappeared when it was acquired by Reuters.

Another strength of Ian’s was his unshakeable commitment to delivering for the customer, in ways that pushed the boundaries of what was conventional, or even possible, at the time. He was smart, strongly analytical, a great listener, and an excellent communicator. Sometimes the customer would not realize that the unassuming man sitting quietly at the back of the room was the president. Until, that is, he would close the meeting with an insightful and incisive summary of the problem and the solution that should be developed. And a commitment to deliver sealed by his word and a handshake.

Although modest and quiet, on stage Ian’s wit came to the fore and was widely renowned. Everyone enjoyed a speech by Ian, invariably delivered in exactly the allotted time despite his lack of a wrist watch.

In many ways, Ian was an unlikely person to have built such an extraordinary company. Born in Dublin of an Irish mother and Scottish father, he was raised in London and Leeds, and trained as a fighter pilot during his National Service before entering Cambridge University in 1953, where he graduated in Engineering. Ian emigrated to Canada in 1960 and found a job as chief programmer at Ferranti-Packard in Toronto. There he headed a small team that wrote the operating system and compilers for an early multi-programming computer, the FP6000. When Ferrante exited the computer business in 1964, Ian, along with his team, founded I. P. Sharp Associates and embarked on a consulting business.

It was a pivotal consulting project, when Roger Moore[iii], one of the co-founders, co-developed the IBM interpreter for APL, that launched I.P. Sharp on a different trajectory as a timesharing company. I.P. Sharp began offering a commercial APL timesharing offering – known as cloud computing today – that was the basis of the applications the company built for its Fortune 500 clients.

For all of Ian’s success, he was never a self-promoter, always stepping back to give credit to his people. As with all great companies, I.P. Sharp “graduates” spawned many successful businesses in the technology world. Ian’s influence touched them all.

Those who were fortunate enough to have known Ian universally benefitted from his leadership and wisdom. It is a testament to Ian’s modesty that his outstanding success tended to fly mostly under the radar in Canada[iv]. But his legacy still lives on in the Canadian technology scene today and his impact remains felt around the world.

[i] Sharp Electronics and the eponymous I.P. Sharp Associates are completely unrelated. Likewise, Issy Sharp of Four Seasons and Ian Sharp are completely unrelated.

[ii] APL is a powerful computer language invented by Ken Iverson (a Canadian honoured with computing’s highest award, the ACM Turing Award) in the late 1950s while he was a professor at Harvard University. Ken was later to join I.P. Sharp, helping cement the company’s reputation as the place for APL.

[iii] Roger was a co-winner of the Grace Murray Hopper Award awarded to those who make a significant contribution to computing before the age of 35, following in the footsteps of Ian, who counted the Grace Murray Hopper among his many awards.

[iv] However, a perusal of the Globe and Mail archive will find references to Ian Sharp and I.P. Sharp Associates.