If any of the traditional minicomputer companies that lined up behind DEC and Hewlett-Packard Co through the 1970s and 1980s manage to get back onto a convincing profitable growth tack again, the one that is showing the most tenacity and determination in the effort to migrate successfully from proprietary to open systems is Data General Corp, but nothing seems to be going the company’s way at the moment. The Westboro minimaker has been hit by two new setbacks: Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp is re-evaluating Data General’s white hope, the Eclipse MV-based communications switch code-named Asparagus, and the future of its $127m contract with the US Department of the Interior is up in the air again. On Asparagus – MV minis linked to switching processors with packet and line switching capabilities for telephony, ISDN, Open Systems Interconnection and IBM’s SNA, Electronic News reports that the finished version of the thing was delivered to Nippon Telephone only in August and that the Japanese phone company is now re-evaluating the product and may never market it in its present form. Data General has been showing the thing off to other phone companies around the world, but none is expected to buy unless and until the thing has been marketed successfully by NTT. Data General’s one consolation is that Nippon Telegraph funded most of the development work. On the Department of the Interior contract, which last week looked as if it was signed and sealed (CI No 1,531), a Congressional subcommittee is looking into it again to examine alleged impropriety in the bidding process. SMS Products Group was the low bidder on the contract, and was eliminated on non-conformance grounds where it is now alleged that Data General did not conform either; Data General has admitted to offering to compensate SMS if it withdrew its bid. On the operations front, Data General has appointed senior vice-president Tom West to head a new Advanced Systems Development group of developers with a mission to determine and evaluate technologies for implementation in future generations of Data General products, and to hire three new vice-presidents with broad computer industry experience – Allan Jennings for the AViiON Development Group; Peter Gyenes, to be general manager, International; and William Zastrow, division vice-president, Open Systems Marketing.
