Last week Oki Electric Industry Co finally got around to announcing officially the existence of Okidata Microsystems, the Framingham, Massachusetts-based division it set up months ago to handle those System V.4-based 80860 boxes it’s been working on (CI No 1,699). Previous reports had the box, now conceived of as a family called the 7300, debuting in May, then June, but any hardware is still a no-show, and its appearance has been pushed off to sometime in the autumn. Boxes, however, are being produced both in the US and Japan for delivery to software developers without whose applications any 80860 box becomes a boat anchor. The division’s marketing director Stephen Reso says that some 50 machines are out with developers. The division has also decided on its target markets, describing them as workgroup and enterprise-wide network configurations specialising in image management, publishing, geographic information systems and decision support systems. The company has 40 unidentified independent software vendors converting their software, specifically for Okidata and these vertical markets. Another 75 are said to be in negotiation. The company can also take advantage of the horizantal software being implemented at the behest of the Mass860 consortium. Some 200 applications are said to be committed. Reso said that the systems Okidata Microsystems plans to develop will take advantage of its parent company’s expertise in multimedia, imaging, facsimile and peripheral technology. The Japanese giant, currently with no American computer stronghold, is interested in developing a strong US market position. When they appear, the Okidata boxes will be able to run MS-DOS applications in emulation mode in a single desktop machine. Use of Insignia Software Inc’s SoftPC for this function is currently the Okidata strategy. The division is now at around 45 people and should reach 80 by the end of its first fiscal year, in March 1992.
