A major collaboration from an unexpected quarter that could lead to a significant upturn in Data General’s fortunes was announced in Japan yesterday. The company is collaborating with the Japanese telephone giant Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp to develop a new class of hybrid PABXs that will combine conventional computing with speech and data switching in a single unit, the computing elements of the exchange being built around Data General’s MV series of 32-bit mini-computers. The agreement, which involves Nippon Data General as well as the company’s US operations in Dal-las, Westboro and Rockville, will result in products adhering the the ISDN and Open Systems Interconnection international standards, and also to IBM’s SNA. NTT will sell the resulting systems in Japan, while Data General will sell them in the rest of the world. NTT has been committed for a couple of years now to buy more from abroad, but the pact with Data General is its first maj-or collaboration with a US company.
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