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A tabby tattler told the tawny titan that a deal may be brewing between e-marketplace maven Commerce One and SeeBeyond, an e-business integration company. Apparently, the companies are supposed to announce a partnership in which Commerce One will embed SeeBeyonds EAI capabilities into its software. Whether the deal also involves Commerce One and SAPs MarketSet platform upgrade, an Internet exchange solution that could provide e-procurement services and analytic capabilities for the public and private sectors, the tipster couldnt say.
El Gato was more amused to see that Nabiscos celebration of the 100th anniversary of its Barnums Animal Crackers will be capped by an online vote to add a new animal to the cookie line. Visitors to nabiscoworld.com can vote for a walrus-, cobra-, koala bear- or penguin-shaped cracker. This has prompted the Linux crowd to try to stack the deck in favor of the penguin shape in pretty much the same way Howard Stern devotees tried to tip People Magazines 1998 online vote for its Most Beautiful Person award in favor of Hank, the Angry, Drunken Dwarf. If the penguin wins, maybe Nabisco will discover it has a new target market and start an exclusive line of cookies for geeks. “How about a glass of milk and some Microsoft Ballmer-Os?” cackled the Kitty, “Even Ozzy Osborne might think twice about biting the head off one of those.”
His Hirsuteness soon started thinking about another Oz—Ray Ozzie of Lotus Notes fame. A friend of the Furball asked Spence if hed ever wondered why Microsoft bought a stake in Ozzies latest venture, Groove Networks, last October. The tipster claims that Microsoft head honcho Steve Ballmer “wanted to make an internal statement” with the investment to tell Microsofties theyd better meld with Groove at the hip. An odd move, claims the tattler, since Groove already had about a dozen discussions going with various parts of Microsoft about the integration of its peer-to-peer collaboration technology with Redmonds products—before Microsofts investment. “Does that mean Ballmer was just making a $51 million internal statement?” laughed the Lynx. “My boss just tells me what to do.”
An old Katt crony called up with another sign that the bad blood between Microsoft and SAP may not just be the stuff of rumor. The crony claimed SAP is so sick of Microsoft moving toward positioning itself as an enterprise app vendor (with MSCRM and such) that SAP decided to sever its relationship with its PR agency, Waggener Edstrom, which also happens to be Microsofts longtime agency. Wag-ed is apparently trying to keep the loss of its only other big client very quiet. But the Tabby tattler said that an insider at Wag-ed claims its a done deal. “Oracle just fired Applied Communications,” mused the Mouser. “Maybe SAP should hire them.”
Spencer Katt can be reached at spencer_katt@ziffdavis.com.