Its success was based on selling systems built around OEM components from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), and it grew to have over 1,300 employees with turnover peaking around £60 million.

John Gow was a mechanical engineering graduate of the University of Leeds who had gone into computer programming and then became a software support manager at a Lancashire office of the British subsidiary of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC).

[4] Gow engaged with financiers but did not like them and did not want to accept investment from either the Industrial and Commercial Finance Corporation or from merchant banks, fearing they would demand too much control of the company's direction.

[10] They would take actual DEC components and put them together with items such as power supplies and storage cables that they built themselves or obtained from other industry sources.

[11] This allowed Systime to provide full solutions to growing customers, such as Gordon Spice Cash and Carry, that were first embracing computerised line-of-business systems during the 1970s.

[15] Systime's use of the PDP-11 coincided with an upsurge in the popularity of that model within the computer-using community, one that DEC had not fully anticipated, leading to wait times up to three years for systems or components.

[7] In September 1981, Gow announced an ambitious three-year, £46 million expansion plan for Systime, including the building of a second large facility in Leeds, with some of the funding to come from the European Investment Bank and various government grants.

[6] This reflected that Systime was in the process of manufacturing not just minicomputers but also desktop systems, as well as terminals and printers, most of which were targeted to the Western European market.

[24] Systime also ran a service bureau, that offered the creation of application software and that sold maintenance contracts on a third-party basis.

[8] In addition, Systime was considered an exemplar of new industrial potential in Northern England, and the company was often visited by government ministers as a result.

[26] However, the switch from the National Enterprise Board to the successor British Technology Group (BTG) left Systime with uncertain funding while it was in the process of its big expansion; as Gow subsequently said, "we were sailing along and suddenly started to get really tight on cash.

"[4] Gow had previously considered organising a flotation but now did not have time to do so, so he sought investments from other British companies, but they all wanted to stage a full acquisition.

[4] In particular, there were meetings in January 1983 with two large British technology companies, Ferranti and Standard Telephones and Cables (STC), that did not achieve fruition.

[25] The two companies had had existing business dealings, as Systime bought many Control Data peripheral devices to include in its full systems.

[27] The new facility, built for £20 million in a nearby area of Beeston, Leeds,[28] had begun operations in October 1982,[29] with computer production taking place there.

[39] Gow subsequently started his own firm, WGK Electronics, hoping to succeed in largely untapped third-world markets.

[2] British and other European companies protested that many of the computer components prohibited by COCOM were widely available in Asian markets anyway, but the regulations remained in effect.

[2] So in order to sell computers outside Britain, Systime not only had to obtain an export license from the Department of Trade and Industry (United Kingdom), but because American products were involved due to the DEC components in Systime computers, it had to obtain an export license from the United States Department of Commerce.

[10] In 1982, Systime voluntarily acknowledged that it had sold some systems to Eastern Bloc countries without that necessary US export license and agreed to pay a fine to the Department of Commerce.

[10][43] However, lawyers for DEC UK pressed further with more serious charges, saying that Systime had not disclosed that it had shipped 400 DEC-based minicomputers, disguised as jukeboxes, to Switzerland that were in fact then headed for the Eastern Bloc.

[11] In particular, Member of Parliament Michael Meadowcroft, representing the Leeds West constituency, tried to get the British government to intercede against the American action.

[11] Elements of this campaign, by this telling, included hiring of private detectives, surveillance of employees, burglary, bribery, destruction of documents, and spreading of false rumours.

[2] The US–UK trade issues were by no means limited to Systime; smaller firms that could not afford the bureaucratic approval process of an export license were affected, as were much larger enterprises such as IBM and Toshiba.

[2] An investigation in 1985 conducted by Datamation magazine showed that there was an extensive grey market for computers, especially DEC equipment such as the VAX-11, and that Systime was but one of several sources for such products.

[48] The whole matter generated considerable debate during the second Thatcher ministry and a February 1987 editorial from The Guardian, one that mentioned Systime, emphasized the broader importance of the issue and criticised the prime minister for failing to fully take a stand against the Americans on behalf of British technology interests.

[26]) Now, what remained of Systime – "a mere shadow of its former self", as Computergram International described it – decided to focus on Unix-based initiatives among its hardware and software offerings.

[52] A similar tool allowed users of the COBOL programming language on ICL or Wang Laboratories systems to migrate to Unix-based compilation and deployment.

[56] On 2 June 1989, as Computergram International wrote, "Control Data Corp finally got shot of its troublesome UK Systime Ltd business ... and the solution for the once-substantial Leeds systems integrator is dismemberment by management buy-out.

Noted British entrepreneur Peter Wilkinson, who later co-founded Planet Online and a number of other Internet-related firms, began his career at Systime.

[68] The Systime "Glass Palace" was bought and refurbished as the Arlington Business Centre, opened in 1988,[31] and eventually became part of the White Rose Office Park.