Ascii Corp, which was the lead investor in the nbuyout of the HyperDesk project from Data General Corp – it took 70% with employees taking 30% – has been discussing its plans for the company: staff will be increased to 50 from 21 this year, and looks for sales of $4m in 1992, $10m in 1993; HyperDesk is said to resemble Hewlett-Packard Co’s NewWave product, but to have some advantages over NewWave in the field of true distributed object management; a date for launch of the product in Japan has not been set although sales through distributors are due to start in the US at the end of this year – Japan is said not yet to have the required infrastructure, meaning that graphical user interfaces such as Windows have only just started to be installed and used by Japanese customers.
