So here we were in the early 1980s with companies scrambling for our attention and knocking themselves out for our money.

NO, not THAT kind of money.  Heck, I don't think that the internet scammers/spammers or jo-jobbers were even out of diapers by then.

The MONEY I mean was that money scheduled for use in voice and data communications systems.

The university I worked for had a well developed and impressive data processing division.  I had many battles with them over territory and predominance in products and services offered to the university community.

The university was a leader in distance learning development with concepts and inventions under their belts. They cooperated with a state 'network' for video classrooms and remote students.  It wasn't so much uncommon as it was wildly popular.  IUPUI, Indianapolis and the IU and Purdue systems were convinced that more could be effectively educated if the university put classes out there in video space.  It worked.

The Data Processing department had an intra-net (within the system) email service.  It was a hardwired terminal to main frame based and had a mediocre reliability factor.  One of my frequent tussels with DP geeks is that they didn't give a whip switch about user reliability and confidence. And they really didn't!  Any time of the day the terminals were taken down and systems re-loaded and re-started.  This efficient act was committed profusely as an alternative to staying late at night and notifying end users of their plans.

The Telecom dept at that time operated as a 'responsibility budgeting equipment and service provider'.   This means we provided phones, billing, long distance and attendant services on a pay as you go basis.   We were a business within a state university.

Accurate billing was a full time job and we embraced the help of computer software to help itemize equipment, calling details and software.   Long before we replaced our 701 stepper switch we were using adjunct computer hardware software provided by DataPoint.  They are long gone now but their long distance switch worked adjunct to our old switch and the telco network.  We were using cost effective long distance call routing Erlang C formulas when that was HOT stuff. 

How I got INTO the internet....internetinvention2.htm