X/Open Co Ltd’s Japan office and the Japan Users Association of Information Systems have joined the Users Council of X/Open. Currently only two Japanese firms – Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp and Nippon Steel Corp – belong to the User Council which has 89 members in all. The Users Association is a user group to which major Japanese corporations belong – the executive council is headed by Mr Kume, chairman of Nissan Motor Co, with membership from executives of Tokyo Marine, NTT, Kao, Itochu, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries – and has backing from Ministry of International Trade & Industry. It changed its name in 1992 from the Japanese Data Processing Association. Through membership of X/Open, the Users Association hopes to add its voice to the technical requirements gathering process which is input to X/Open specifications such as XPG4, while X/Open expects the Association to assist in the Xtra user needs survey and hopes to use the Association to influence large users to specify X/Open branded products in their tenders and internal specifications. The number of X/Open branded products in Japan is particularly small, and this was attributed to the lack of government guidance in specifying branded products in tenders, as well as lack of knowledge of branding on the user side. Currently worldwide there are 719 XPG3-compliant products and 202 XPG4-compliant ones.
