I. P. Sharp Associates

I. P. Sharp Associates
Company type	Private
Industry	Computer software, time-sharing, consulting, services
Predecessor	Ferranti, Ferranti-Packard
Founded	December 1964 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Founders	Ian Sharp et al.
Defunct	2005
Fate	Acquired by Reuters Group 1987; Closed by Reuters Group 2005;
Successor	Soliton Incorporated
Headquarters	Toronto, Canada
Number of locations	59 offices (1983)
Area served	North America; Europe; Asia; Australia;
Products	Sharp APL (language); APL Plus (language); IPSANET (packet network); 666 Box (mainframe email);
Owner	Reuters Group

I. P. Sharp Associates (IPSA) was a major Canadian computer time-sharing, consulting and services firm of the 1970s and 1980s. IPSA is well known for its work on the programming language APL, an early packet switching computer network named IPSANET, and a powerful mainframe computer-based email system named 666 Box, stylized as 666 BOX. It was purchased in 1987 by Reuters Group, which used them until 2005 as a data warehousing center for business data.