The Software Information Centre staged Software Show ’87 last week, and although the Japanese market for software products is not large, the show attracted over 70,000 people, and the market, put at $820m in 1985, grew 47% last year, and is expected to grow at a similar rate for several more years: centre stage was the Information Technology Promotion Agency which is responsible for the Sigma Project to create a standard environment and set of tools for software development; most of the larger software houses also had stands, including Ashisuto, Nisshin Products, Core Group, Software Research Associates, Nippon Timeshare, Century Research Centre, mostly promoting the still relatively new concept of packaged software; foreigners prominent include Software AG, McCormack & Dodge and AT&T Unix Pacific, and the Japanese hardware manufacturers turned out in force through their software subsidiaries – Oki Electric, Fujitsu, Toshiba, Hitachi and NEC.