IMS has been an important part of world-wide computing since its inception.

On May 25, 1961, United States President John F. Kennedy challenged American industry to send an American man to the moon and return him safely to earth. The feat was to be accomplished before the end of the decade, as part of the Apollo program. American Rockwell won the bid to build the spacecraft for the Apollo program and, in 1965, they established a partnership with IBM to fulfill the requirement for an automated system to manage large bills of material for the construction of the spacecraft.

In 1966, 12 members of the IBM team, along with 10 members from American Rockwell and 3 members from Caterpillar Tractor, began to design and develop the system that was called Information Control System and Data Language/Interface (ICS/DL/I). During the design and development process, the IBM team was moved to Los Angeles and increased to 21 members. The IBM team completed and shipped the first release of ICS in 1967.

In April, 1968, ICS was installed. The first "READY" message was displayed on an IBM 2740 typewriter terminal at the Rockwell Space Division at NASA in Downey California, on August 14, 1968.

In 1969, ICS was renamed to Information Management System/360 (IMS/360) and became available to the IT world.

Since 1968, IMS:

• Helped NASA fulfill President Kennedy's dream.
• Started the database management system revolution.
• Continues to evolve to meet and exceed the data processing requirements demanded by today's businesses and governments.