Bloomfield, Colorado-based McData Corp, lamenting the decline in 3270 business, is shutting down offices on a massive scale in the next three months: its two international offices in the UK and Singapore will be axed along with at least three US regional offices, in a bid to cut overheads; it is definitely closing its branches in Minneapolis, Dallas and New York, and will lose over 10% of staff worldwide; OEM customers abroad will be handled from headquarters, as will a large part of direct US sales; McData, which operated on this basis until it opened regional offices three years ago, made the decision in the light of the weak 3270 market; it is now moving towards products based on IBM’s Escon architecture – it has been selling Escon products in the US for six months and is launching them here.