AFTER WAITING ON Amber hand and foot, I needed to head down to the pub for a break. I ran into one of my friends down there.
"That woman has you wrapped around her finger, doesn't she?" my friend grilled me.
One little letter
What is the difference between EMC and BMC? One little letter, perhaps, but not for long, according to my spies. Despite
my formidable and energetic colleague Dan Neel breaking a story about EMC's hunger to swallow up BMC, the two companies remain
mum, but only in public. According to one of my spies, some of the BMC folks have even moved out of Texas and up to Hopkinton,
Mass., to begin the merger.
Also on the acquisition front, it appears that Navision, the ERP vendor that Microsoft is in the process of acquiring, has
been brainwashed already. Indeed, a spy tells me that Navision is expected to roll out its own Web services strategy and support
in advance of the acquisition.
Another empire of sorts
A spy reported that Cisco has been making quiet overtures to telco management to run portions of the telephone companies'
networks. Cisco has found a cheap technical work force, which it used to replace expensive U.S.-based engineers. Chambers
and Co. want to leverage that into its accounts. Problem: The cheap work force is in India. Can you say, Security problem?
Cisco is hoping the laws governing telco operations will change shortly, my spy said.
Amazon.com may finally have found a way to make a buck, or actually millions of dollars: overcharging for sales tax. That's
right, one of my friends reported the online megastore charged him more than $3 million in California sales tax. And that
on a bill that was less than $50.
Out on the street
Another spy reported that IBM's treatment of the developers acquired from AT&T is worse than I originally reported. It appears
these developers were told they are free to find jobs within IBM, although no relocation benefits are offered, even if they
are moving to another country. The alternative to finding another job with Big Blue is the exit door. What's more, some of
the folks let go had been with AT&T for as long as 20 years but were given only two-month severance packages because they
were credited with working at IBM only for a short time. Back to the trenches, as my spy says.
FOR SOME REASON, I stuck around to close the bar that night. Boy, Amber was mad at me for coming home late. "I just thought
you could have called," she said. Geez, how quickly she forgets.
E-mail
Printer Friendly
Reprints
(InfoWorld) - In the litigious world we live in, deploying a unified communications platform in your enterprise could...
