Peregrine Turns to Self-Healing Remedies

His Hirsuteness doesnt expect youll hear the hypnotic "It Was a Very Good Year" by Sinatra in the halls of Peregrine Systems San Diego digs any time soon. The company has faced $100 million in accounting improprieties; the loss of its CEO, CFO and chairman; numerous shareholder lawsuits; a delisting from Nasdaq; and the sale of two acquisitions (Remedy and Harbinger/Extricity) to pay bills.

But just as Old Blue Eyes himself had career pitfalls, a Katt crony claims that while Peregrine may be down, it aint out, baby. The company is rumored to be developing for release next year self-managing, self-healing software to automate asset service management systems. The effort will complement autonomic work being done by Peregrine partner IBM. The company is also planning to develop Web access for its apps and is looking to embrace Web services as a means of integrating its products with technologies such as ERP by adding support for industry standards such as SOAP.

After fighting his way through Beantown traffic to hear James Gosling, the godfather of Java, give a speech recently at the Software Development Conference, Spencer had to then fight off sleep. Gosling seemed barely awake during his rambling talk, until a worker at the Hynes Convention Center began rolling a loud trolley of equipment along the space behind the stage. Gosling, then seemingly wide awake, paused for a moment and remarked about how loud the person was being. The unknown worker then let out peals of laughter, which caused the now visibly grouchy Gosling to recruit the audiences aid by yelling, "OK, on 3, everybody say, shut up. 1-2-3, shut up!" From that point forward, the suddenly self-aware Java genius kept asking the audience members if theyd rather skip his talk entirely and go to the bar instead.

A Tabby tattler claimed that micromanagement at Computer Associates may begin in the home—Sanjay Kumars home, that is. According to the tattler, the CA chairman and CEO insists on personally beta testing almost all the companys products. Kumar and his wife apparently test the products at home and often send them back to the developers with comments and critiques.

The tattler claimed the real acid test is whether the product proves too complicated for Mrs. Kumar to use. If so, developers have to revamp it. "Sanjays also part owner of the New York Islanders hockey team," laughed the Lynx. "Hopefully, he doesnt test out the centers slap shot the same way!"