Who is pushing for NT? From Red Herring..
SCOOP OF THE WEEK
You all know why the Red Herring is named after a "red
herring," right? In the 1920s, that's what investment
bankers dubbed the red-covered preliminary prospectuses that
companies handed around before the official ones.
Inktomi, the search engine and traffic-caching company, had
a few eyebrow-raisers in its recent filing for an IPO with
the Securities and Exchange Commission. Some
industry-watchers have whispered about Microsoft's push to
get all of its partners running on Windows NT -- but when
you dig down, it turns out that Intel, which has invested in
Inktomi, is the one pushing the NT deal here.
Also, Microsoft has loaned Inktomi money to expand its
hosting operations for the Inktomi Search service it will
provide Microsoft's "Start" portal; Inktomi will pay off
that loan through its hosting service. As part of the deal,
Microsoft has an observer's seat on Inktomi's board.
Intel, which is an investor in Inktomi, also has an
observer's seat; it's working with Inktomi to port its
Traffic Server product to the Intel architecture running
Windows NT.
So: Microsoft is a customer, and a creditor; Intel is an
investor, and a technology partner. While the deal is
complicated, expect Inktomi CEO David Peterschmidt, a Sybase
executive who's tangled with Microsoft before, to navigate
these rapids -- and watch for Inktomi's IPO soon. |
