TOKYO -- Hitachi, Ltd. (Hitachi) and NEC Corporation (NEC) today announced the establishment of a new joint venture company, ALAXALA Networks Corporation (ALAXALA), which specializes in the business of backbone routers/switches for networks of telecommunications carriers, government/public sectors and large corporations based on the agreement signed on June 25th 2004. The business of ALAXALA covers from development, design, manufacturing, sales/marketing to maintenance and services.

Under the recent expansion of the broadband network market, there are emerging business opportunities in establishing new Internet Protocol network service infrastructure among telecom operators and service providers. The trend is also seen on a global scale. IP network is becoming one of the most important social infrastructures as well as the indispensable business infrastructure for corporate/business activities in the information society. ALAXALA has established its corporate philosophy as “Offering safe and secure network to people in the world and contributing to the realization of rich and abundant information society.” ALAXALA advocates “guaranteed network” as a concept to fully support information life-lines, and under the concept, the company design, manufacture, sell, and offer maintenance services of backbone routers/switches for the networks. ALAXALA inherits state-of-the-art technologies of Hitachi and NEC as core competence and plans to introduce competitive and unique products to the market in a timely manner.

Today, ALAXALA starts sales of its backbone router/switch “AX series” to its business partners. Hitachi and NEC will strongly promote system integration offerings of ALAXALA products with necessary networking equipment and servers.

Hitachi Ltd.

NEC Corp.