The agreement under which trading giant Tomen Co is to form a joint venture with Santa Cruz Operation Inc for the sale of Santa Cruz products in Japan -it will take over from a wholly owned branch and technical support office set up two years ago arises as a result of the distributorship Tomen Electronics Co held for IXI Ltd products in Japan. IXI was acquired by Santa Cruz last year, and its arrangement in Japan has been very successful for both companies according to inside sources. By contrast Santa Cruz’s operating systems products have had less visibility here, although it is increasing, with only NEC Corp licensing Santa Cruz Unix for use on its PC9800 series of personal computers. The new joint venture company will be 60% owned by Santa Cruz and the remaining 40% by Tomen, Tomen Electronics and Tomen Information Systems. Tomen is aiming for the new company to achieve annual revenues in the vicinity of $136m from a business selling both hardware, software and integration services.
