Ashisuto Corp, the software marketing and support company run by expatriate American Bill Totten, has obtained the overall sales and support rights for Oracle Corp’s Oracle relational database management system in Japan: Oracle has hitherto been sold in Japan by two companies, Digital Computer Ltd, which supported the DEC VAX and Sumitomo U-Station versions, and, from 1985, by Nisshin Products, which went after the mainframe and personal computer markets; Ashisuto has now become the master distributor, and DCL and Nisshin Products are being considered as distributors and support agents; Oracle is still a minor player in Japan, possibly due in part to the split marketing effort, and also because the Japanese versions of the software offered by the two distributors were not identical.
