Gates Stars in Scrutiny on the Bounty

Aiming to recharge his batteries, which were depleted by too much travel, Spence indulged in a tried-and-true form of recreation: channel surfing.

There! Spence clicked on his favorite spaghetti western, then reclined in his favorite beanbag chair with a glass of homemade wine to ponder whether he could pin the SoBig or Blaster virus on one of his geeky pals and collect one of Microsofts $250,000 bounties. Through the rumormongers addled brain coursed a vision of a grizzled, steely-eyed Bill Gates, chewing a cheroot, riding through the Redmond campus wearing a poncho concealing a fistful of dollars.

El Gato checked his e-mail to find a Katt cronys note that claimed Akamai is looking to get into the obscure, but important, niche market of IP route analytics. Some small companies are addressing that issue, which most service providers agree is a black hole. Traditional monitoring tools cant always see what routes traffic takes in an IP network as routers send traffic dancing around failed links. Its believed that as much as 90 percent of IP network problems can be attributed to IP layer issues.

The phone broke the cinephiles reverie, producing an invitation to check out Plum Crazy, a New Hampshire nightclub. Its the latest venture of a once-infamous spammer, Sanford Wallace, whose prior business ventures include Cyber Promotions and SmartBot. “Maybe theres time to pop in my old Darrens Dance Grooves DVD and brush up on my moves,” thought the popping and locking Puss.

The funky fresh Furball ventured into the night, heading north in a Mini Cooper with his compadres. One fellow traveler told him IBM is “evaluating” whether to add a hosted e-meeting offering to its growing Lotus Workplace platform. “Could this lead IBM to try to buy an e-meeting service provider like WebEx?” Spence speculated.

Another friend of the feline, just back from Cali, piped in that rumors are buzzing around Silicon Valley that increasingly tighter bonds between Siebel and IBM could lead Siebel to turn over development of its UAN (Universal Application Network) to IBM. Last year, Big Blue swallowed up business process integration software developer CrossWorlds and may be eager to merge UAN with the newly acquired technology. Siebel officials have dismissed the rumors, claimed the pal, as such plans would probably ruffle feathers among Siebels UAN partners—and IBM middleware rivals—like BEA, TIBCO, WebMethods and Microsoft.

The treasonous Tabby gazed at his friends, thinking he certainly could convince Redmond that one was a virus writer—at least until the check cleared.