CISCO SIGNS DEAL TO ACQUIRE NASHOBA NETWORKS

  San Jose, Calif. -- Cisco Systems Monday announced that it has signed a
definitive deal to acquire Nashoba Networks Inc. and the company's Token Ring
network switching technologies in a $100 million stock swap. Cisco said the
transaction is expected to be completed by mid-September 1996 and is subject
to various closing conditions, including shareholder votes. Nashoba Networks
was founded in 1993 and is based in Littleton, Mass. The privately held,
bootstrap-financed company had estimated revenues of around $3.5 million,
according to industry sources. Cisco said the deal gives it access to
products and technology comprising a complete Token Ring product line. Cisco
said the acquisition will enhance Cisco's product offerings in the
fast-growing Token Ring switching arena by adding a highly functional
workgroup/backbone switch that integrates with existing switch and router
products.

TANDEM AND BEA TEAM TO EXTEND BEA TUXEDO TO NT SYSTEM-BASED CLUSTERS

  Cupertino, Calif. -- Tandem Computers and BEA Systems this week announced
a licensing agreement designed to extend Tandems open systems strategy for
online transaction processing (OLTP). Under the agreement, Tandem will use
BEA TUXEDO transaction monitor middleware as part of forthcoming Microsoft
Windows NT system-based cluster servers. According to a press release from
Tandem, the partnership will enable customers seeking to benefit from the
price/performance advantages of the Windows NT system based platform to run
extremely scalable and reliable BEA TUXEDO applications on Tandem's Windows 
NT-based clustered servers when they are available early next year, as well
as on Windows NT-based servers from other vendors. The two companies also
announced that BEA TUXEDO will be  implemented on Tandem's Himalaya family of
massively parallel processing (MPP) servers. Under the new agreement, Tandem
will build on BEA TUXEDO to deliver an environment called ServerWare TUXEDO
for Windows NT system-based servers, as well as Release 2 of its NonStop
TUXEDO for Himalaya servers. NonStop TUXEDO Release 2 software and
ServerWare TUXEDO software are slated to ship in the second half of 1997. 

AMI NAMED FACTORYLINK ENTERPRISE DISTRIBUTOR FOR MEXICO REGION

  Richardson, Texas -- USDATA Corp. this week announced that Automatizacion
y Modernizacion Industrial S.A. de C.V. (AMI) has been named the regional
distributor of FactoryLink Enterprise Control System (ECS) in Mexico. Under
terms of the agreement, AMI will establish OEM and reseller operations,
engineering consulting, marketing and sales and customer service and support
for the FactoryLink product line throughout Mexico. USDATA's FactoryLink ECS
is a powerful real-time development toolset and is used to develop MMI,
SCADA and MES applications. It combines advanced ease-of-use, including
single-step tag configuration, with platform independence and almost
limitless scaleability.

PRICE WATERHOUSE & KENAN SYSTEM PARTNERSHIP TARGETS COMMUNICATIONS BILLING

  New York, NY -- Price Waterhouse and Kenan Systems recently announced a
worldwide partnership targeting billing and customer care applications for
the communications industry. According to a press release from Price
Waterhouse, the alliance will be managed by PW's Entertainment, Media and
Communications (EMC) Group. The focus of the agreement is to enable Price
Waterhouse LLC and Kenan Systems to deploy Arbor/BP, Kenan's billing,
customer care, and business analysis software platform at companies competing
in the rapidly converging communications market. Arbor/BP is the premier
UNIX-based billing and customer care solution for the converging
telecommunications, on-line services and cable TV industries. Under the terms
of the agreement, both Kenan and Price Waterhouse will be dedicating 40
staff to the partnership to collaboratively develop advanced billing and
customer care solutions for customers worldwide. The strategic relationship
will establish dedicated consulting and application customization teams at
Price Waterhouse.

ANCOR COMMUNICATIONS JOINS GIGABIT ETHERNET ALLIANCE

  Minneapolis, Minn. -- Ancor Communications Inc., a pioneer of Fibre Channel
development, has joined the Gigabit Ethernet Alliance as a steering committee
member. The Gigabit Ethernet Alliance is a recently formed industry
organization dedicated to enabling a uniform Gigabit Ethernet networking
standard. The organization currently has more than 55 member companies,
representing leaders in computer hardware, software and networking products. 

  "We are firm believers in the promise of Gigabit Ethernet," said Stephen C.
O'Hara, Ancor's president and chief executive officer. "Because Gigabit 
Ethernet utilizes Fibre Channel base technology, Ancor is in an excellent 
position to provide Gigabit-speed Ethernet connections for local area network
applications. We look forward to working with the Alliance and its member
companies in the development of the standards and interoperability that will 
help propagate Gigabit Ethernet technology." 

STARQUEST ENTERS COMARKETING RELATIONSHIP WITH AMDAHL

  Berkeley, Calif. -- StarQuest Software has entered a co-marketing
relationship with Amdahl Corp. Under the agreement, Amdahl will recommend
that purchasers of its Envista NT enterprise servers also purchase
StarQuest's StarSQL Pro technology for access to MVS mainframe databases. 
The new EnVista server delivers a 4.8 MB throughput rate when linked to
mainframe systems, and the StarSQL driver takes advantage of this high rate
to provide PC applications with fast access to DB2 databases. Details can be
obtained from the StarQuest Web site http://www.starquest.com.

METATOOLS & ALIAS/WAVEFRONT WILL CODEVELOP APPLICATIONS 

  New Orleans, La. -- MetaTools and  Alias/Wavefront announced Tuesday an
agreement to develop and market applications which enhance  Alias/Wavefront's
UNIX programs. The first product to be released under this new agreement is 
Final Effects for Composer, a collection of professional video and  animation
special effects tools that include particle systems and  other advanced
capabilities. These new extensions empower Composer  users to create their
own custom special effects. Alias/Wavefront will be marketing Final Effects
alongside  Composer and anticipates a fourth quarter 1996 release. Pricing
and  distribution details will be announced soon. 

METATOOLS AND SUN ANNOUNCED JOINT MARKETING AGREEMENT

  New Orleans, La. -- MetaTools and Sun Microsystems on Tuesday announced a
joint marketing agreement to make MetaTools' award-winning plug-in
application, MetaTools' Convolver, available on Sun platform. Convolver for
Sun will run with Adobe Photoshop on Sun UltraSPARC and SPARC workstations. 
MetaTools' Convolver is a plug-in filter generator for use in professional
digital imaging design. Convolver provides users with the only real-time
visual way to design filter effects derived from custom convolution kernels,
which generate blurs, sharpens, embosses, tinting, color contrast, gaussian
blurs and unsharp masking. Pricing, availability and distribution will be
announced upon the release of MetaTools' Convolver for Sun.

MITSUBISHI ELECTRIC LICENSES CBA ARCHITECTURE

  Mountain View, Calif. -- The Electronic Device Group of Mitsubishi
Electronics America and its affiliate Mitsubishi Electric Corporation today
announced the licensing of a unique Cell-Based Array (CBA) architecture from
Silicon Architects of Synopsys, Inc. Mitsubishi has licensed the CBA
architecture to enhance existing cell libraries for deep sub-micron ASIC
product development. Customer applications at the 0.35 micron level require
exceedingly higher gate counts, larger pin counts, more complexity and
increased chip level timing options. With the CBA architecture, Mitsubishi
customers have flexibility and expanded cell library choices to achieve
smaller die area and higher chip complexity. The CBA architecture and tools
maximize design efforts by allowing customers to easily integrate their own
custom blocks into their designs. The CBA solution includes CBA design tools
which link CBA libraries, CBA compilers, and the CBA Design System. The CBA
architecture is optimized for use with synopsys Design Compiler, and Synopsys
DesignTime.

HEWLETT-PACKARD AND EMC EXPAND RESELLER AGREEMENT

  Hopkinton, Mass. -- EMC Corporation announced it has expanded its reseller
agreement with Hewlett-Packard Company, enabling HP to market and sell EMC's
Symmetrix 3000 open storage systems as the high-end storage solutions for its
popular line of HP 3000 servers. The original reseller agreement between the
companies, announced in November 1995, introduced EMC's Symmetrix 3000
systems as the preferred high-end storage platform sold with HP 9000 Business
Servers. That agreement with HP has exceeded expectations for sales by
generating more than $100 million in revenue for EMC in the first six months
of 1996. As a result of that success as well as joint engineering activities
between the two companies, EMC's Symmetrix 3000 Integrated Cached Disk Array
(ICDA) storage systems can now address the high-availability,
high-performance and high-capacity storage needs for HP 3000 servers running
on the MPE/iX operating system. HP's sales force will market and sell
Symmetrix to new and existing HP 3000 customers.

ORACLE DEVELOPING ORACLE8 ON HP 9000

  Hewlett-Packard Company this week announced that its HP 9000  enterprise
servers have been chosen as a base development platform  for Oracle
Corporation's next-generation relational databases,  including Oracle8. 

  "The implementation of HP 9000 servers will enable our  development group
to take advantage of HP's highly reliable, stable  cluster technology when
developing, integrating and testing future  generations of the Oracle
database," said Jerry Held, senior vice  president of Server Technologies at
Oracle. "It is crucial with the  development of what is sure to be the
open-systems enterprise  solution that we enlist servers with both 32-bit and
64-bit computing capabilities and the performance levels indicative of HP's 
soon-to-be-available PA-8000-based enterprise servers. Simply put,  HP
delivers the reliability and performance scalability we need."

  The announcement supports the strategic relationship among  Oracle,
HP and  EMC. The companies  plan to attach EMC's Symmetrix 3000 Integrated
Cached Disk Arrays  (ICDA) to HP 9000 enterprise servers to provide reliable,
high-end  storage that supports the development of future database products.

ESRI JOINS HEWLETT-PACKARD OPENWAREHOUSE ALLIANCE

  Hewlett-Packard Company recently announced that Environmental Systems
Research, Inc. (ESRI) is the first geographic information systems (GIS)
vendor to  join HP's OpenWarehouse Alliance Program. The program was created
to support relationships that would help satisfy y, GIS applications are
being integrated with  traditional management information systems (MIS) and
information  technology (IT) applications. GIS customers in government; 
telecommunications; transportation; utilities; petroleum; and resource 
tracking, inventory management and customer service). 

LUCENT LICENSES FLIP CHIP MODULE DESIGN TO IME, SINGAPORE

  Murray Hill, NJ -- Lucent Technologies has licensed its new "flip chip"
multichip module design and manufacturing technology to the Institute of
Microelectronics, Singapore (IME), as the first step in the latter's efforts
to establish Singapore as a center of multichip module packaging for the
global chip industry. In a separate transaction, IME also signed a memorandum
of understanding with Advanced Systems Automation PTE LTD of Singapore (ASA)
aimed at establishing a joint venture company in Singapore that would
manufacture and sell multichip modules and other advanced semiconductor
packages worldwide The Lucent multichip module technology, under development
at Bell Labs since 1990, lets designers miniaturize electronic systems by
mounting several bare chips, called die, onto different substrates, including
silicon with integrated discrete components. Designers include the finished
one-piece multichip modules -- instead of multiple individual chips -- in
electronic products designed for consumers and businesses. 

  The Lucent agreement provides for training and technology support as IME
establishes low-cost,  high-volume Bell Labs batch manufacturing processes
for ultra-miniaturization, low power consumption and high performance
electronic products in their existing facilities in Singapore. IME and ASA
will jointly pursue their venture plans following successful establishment of
the technology at IME facilities.