Amazing as it may sound the editor of Computer Telephony Magazine was trying to purchase Dialogic from Intel and was unsuccessful. Here is the story:

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There is only one reason for this abysmal performance. Intel has awful management. It remains the world's largest one product company -- namely the chip for the IBM (and now Apple) PC. Everything else it has tried has failed -- from video conferencing to telecommunications and in between.

All this is known. What you're about to read is not known.

Many years ago, I published a magazine called Computer Telephony. As editor, I was very close to the pre-eminentsupplier in that industry -- a company called Dialogic Corporation. In 1999 computer telephony was hot. And Intel bought Dialogic in 1999 for close to $1 billion. It proceeded to bury the company within the gigantic Intel bureaucracy. Most of Dialogic's senior management quickly left.

By the Spring of this year, I was reading in the trade press that Intel was cleaning house and divesting itself of various businesses it had bought over the years and turned into drek -- also called Reverse Midas Touch. On June 27, 2006 Intel announced it was selling its communications and application processor business to Marvell Technology Group for $600 million. I knew that didn't include Dialogic. I got to thinking. Maybe I could buy Dialogic? I contacted two of Dialogic's original founders, who were now rich, semi-retired and bored, and said "Let's buy Dialogic back." They loved the idea.

Where to start? Intel has over 100,000 employees. I started at Andy Bryant's office. He is Intel's CFO. I never got to speak to him, nor his administrative assistant, Debbie Ulmer, despite many attempts. The closest I got to talk to anyone in Bryant's office was a secretary called Sheri Wysocki, who said "Send an email and I'll pass it on." She received this email from me on July 5, 2006 (note the date).

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For those of you who know Harry, you understand why this is an interesting story. To all others – you had to be there. For more go to Harry’s site and look up October 6, 2006. there is no permalink btw so I can’t link to the story directly. and look up October 6, 2006. there is no permalink btw so I can’t link to the story directly.

Here is the link to Harry's comments.