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News Release

July 7, 1997

Establishing Distributed Object Promotion Group

Fujitsu Limited, Hitachi, Ltd., NEC Corporation, and Nihon Unisys, Ltd. have agreed to establish the Distributed Object Promotion Group in September of this year. The main objective of the Group will be to promote distributed object technology and to verify the interconnectivity of the four companies' products in this area.

The companies share the view that distributed object technology will be a key future technology for mission-critical systems. They therefore hope to promote the development and dissemination of distributed object technology on the Japanese market. Additional members are being sought primarily from computer and software vendors offering distributed object-oriented products.

Transaction systems using distributed object technology are expected to be a pivotal product for enterprise systems. The specifications for interconnection between heterogeneous systems, known as CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture), are set by the OMG (Object Management Group). Products conforming to these specifications are offered by vendors both in Japan and abroad.

The Group aims to attain greater penetration of distributed object technology as a basis for corporate information systems. It also hopes to contribute to the development of Japanese information systems by verifying the interconnectivity among CORBA-compliant products and by ensuring the portability of application programs.

The Group will initially provide verification services to ensure interconnectivity for IIOP (Internet Inter-ORB Protocol) and interoperability for CORBA transaction service between heterogeneous systems. The scope of services offered will be extended in the future.

The Group plans to supply software vendors and users with information on verification results through technical seminars and exhibitions and also to contribute to OMG activities.

Fujitsu Limited
"Founded in 1935, Fujitsu Limited is an international leader in information technology, telecommunications, semiconductors and other electronic devices. The Fujitsu Group of over 400 technology, software and service companies posted global revenues of more than 36 billion dollar in the fiscal year ended March 31, 1997."

NEC Corporation
NEC Corporation, founded in 1899, is headquarted in Tokyo, Japan and had net sales of 4.9 trillion yen (US 39.9 billion dollar) in the 1996-7 fiscal year. NEC manufactures and markets a broad range of products, including computer systems, communications systems, which extends from switching systems to cellular phones, and electronic devices, which extends from microprocessors to memory chips.

Nihon Unisys, Ltd.
Nihon Unisys, Ltd., headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, founded in 1958 is the joint venture of Mitsui & Co., Ltd. and Unisys Corp. with fiscal year 1996 consolidated sales (ending March 31, 1997) of 2.6 billion dollar. The company provides products and services, including mainframe computers, personal computers, software, system related and network related services.


WRITTEN BY Secretary's Office
All Rights Reserved, Copyright (C) 1997, Hitachi, Ltd.