Under regulatory pressure in 1969, IBM announced its decision to unbundle the sale of computer hardware from its software and support services; i.e., mainframe computers from computer programs, etc. (At this time, the computer industry was dominated by mainframes and their related operating systems, principally from IBM.) The decision opened new markets to competition and provided an opportunity for entrepreneurs to enter the nascent software industry — an opportunity Charles Wang along with his friend and business partner Russ Artzt exploited by creating a company to develop and sell IBM mainframe software, so they developed several products for that market with modest success. In 1976, they obtained exclusive, North American distribution rights for CA-Sort, a sort/merge/copy and data management utility software program that helps mainframe computers manipulate data efficiently. The sorting product had previously been distributed by independent software vendor (ISV) Pansophic Systems under the name PanSort. CA-Sort was originally developed by a Swiss ISV named Computer Associates, founded by Sam Goodner and Max Sevcik several years earlier. The product had found success in Europe, but sales in North America hadn't kept pace. Wang and Artzt established a new venture (in partnership with the Swiss company), which they named Trans-American Computer Associates and went to market with CA-Sort, along with their original products.