Over the past year or so, DEC has signed agreements to collaborate with all sorts of European telecommunications companies from British Telecom Plc to Siemens AG, and at the end of last week, it announced the first such agreement with a telecommunications company in the US, albeit a European-owned one. It says it will co-operate with Siemens Communications Systems Inc, Boca Raton, Florida on defining, developing and promoting a broad range of products, technologies and systems for the US telecommuncations market, adding that the agreement reinforces its commitment to work with other companies to promote and support open system architectures and industry standards, including ISDN and Intelligent Networks/Open Network Architecture. DEC clearly reckons that the elusive convergence of computers and telecommunications will be better achieved by collaboration between major computer and telecommunications companies rather than by firms from either camp trying to invade the other’s turf from its own resources of by acquisition. Siemens for its part no doubt recognises that although its parent is a major computer company back home, few US users will buy from a firm with no presence on the US computer scene.
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