Over in the US, NEC Corp is rearranging the furniture at its NEC Information Systems in Boxboro, Massachusetts to try to improve performance of the business: it has split its computer systems sales organisation into two separate operations, one dedicated to multi-user business systems, the other to personal computers; the move reflects the fact that NEC’s personal computers have been doing much better than its larger business systems, tending to be offered as adjuncts to the micros; the white hope for the business systems marketing operation will be the Astra XL Unix machine built around the Motorola 68020, introduced by the company this time last year, but it will also market the Astra 400 series built around a proprietary NEC microprocessor and operating system, which has collected a few vertical applications, and the 80386-based BusinessMate machine, which runs Unix.
