The traditional Japanese trading companies constantly flirt with the computer industry, and trading giant Mitsui & Co has signed up with Yokogawa Hewlett-Packard Co to market Hewlett-Packard Co’s HP SoftBench software engineering system for integrating development tools. With the agreement Mitsui becomes the largest distributor of SoftBench in Japan. Mitsui already sells the language development environment from Xerox Corp spin-out ParcPlace Systems Inc. Mitsui will sell and support SoftBench in co-operation with OGIS Systems Inc, an information systems subsidiary of Osaka Gas Co. The price in Japan for SoftBench is $5,400, and the two companies hope to be able to sell over 2,000 copies a year.
