Harry Newton Tried to Buy Dialogic

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).

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.

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