Urge to Merge Plays on Like a Dirge

A Katt crony claims that EMCs long-rumored intention of acquiring backup-and-recovery company Legato Systems may soon become a reality. But word has it that if Legato isnt pleased with the plan, it could walk away from the table at the last minute. “Ya cant just take your ball and go home when youre playing in the big leagues,” mused the Mouser.

Also on the M&A front, Spencer heard that the folks at intrusion detection provider Entercept werent even given the chance to take their ball home. According to a tipster, Entercept was in talks to be acquired by Cisco several months ago. The company had an OEM relationship with Cisco, and when the acquisition fell through, Entercept decided it would cut off the OEM deal. But before it got the chance, Cisco announced it would buy Okena—Entercepts main competitor. “Me-ouch.”

Apparently, the user backlash on big, expensive enterprise management system rollouts is still very real. A tipster told the Katt that after informing a client recently that Tivoli might have a solution for his particular problem, the client blurted out simply, “No.” A few years back, Tivoli and the other big providers had problems with complex deployments, which could take as long as a year to 18 months to accomplish. But the Katt crony claims providers have worked hard to address the issue. For its part, Tivoli spent millions of dollars to simplify installation of its software. Nowadays, all IBM Tivoli vice presidents have to be able to install Tivoli software—-themselves.

A team of techies from Cambridge University were pulled into Londons High Court as expert witnesses in a case concerning disputed mystery withdrawals from Citibank ATMs. After the cryptography team highlighted Citibanks security vulnerabilities, Citibank decided to slap a gag order on the researchers findings. Citibanks paranoia now jeopardizes previously published works by the tech scholars.

It seems to El Gato that a financial institution asking you to check its security is akin to someone asking you, “Do I look fat in this bathing suit?” In either case, the truth always seems to cause nothing but trouble.

The Library of Congress launched www.politicalweb.info, which its oddly labeled as “the first archive of born digital material.” The sites “born digital” content consists of old Web sites for political candidates. “Hard to believe this is the same organization that preserved the film Spinal Tap as a national treasure recently.”

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