Standard & Poor’s Corp, the big New York credit rating agency has a Trading Systems arm that delivers financial information systems electronically, and the unit has signed an independent software vendor agreement with Data General Corp. The two companies will co-operate in the marketing of S&P StockMate on Data General hardware: S&P StockMate is a real-time market quotation and information system for retail brokers. It provides firms the opportunity to own, rather than lease, their stock quotation delivery systems, and the partners reckon that an S&P StockMate/Data General system can offer immediate cost savings of up to 50% over the leased on-line services. In a glowing tribute, S&P’s senior director of business development says that Standard & Poor’s considers this more than just an independent software vendor agreement. We consider it a full-blown strategic alliance involving joint marketing, joint sales and training activities. We are taking the position that Data General has specific skills and Standard & Poor’s has specific skills. Ergo, one plus one equals three, and by combining the excellent skills of each, we are providing our customers with superior price/performance. He also says Data General minis came out of Meltdown Monday rather well.