SAI Process Defies Time Barrier, Runs Backwards

For Immediate Release

6/6/2001, Thousand Oaks, California

In what was once considered impossible, employees at Software Associates International have discovered the first computer process to move backwards through time. At their Thousand Oaks, California installation, SAI's Nucleus Pharma Match process, a process that was already reputed to be slow, was seen to decrease its match rate to a complete halt, and then, violating all laws of physics, reverse direction.

"This is the first time we've ever seen Match have a negative rate," said Dave Escalante, Senior Project Manager for the Thousand Oaks installation at Amgen, the biotechnology company that sponsored the project. "Sure, it's considered impossible to have a computer program move backward through time using current theories. But if I had to pick one process that disrupted every modern tenet of physics, it would be Match."

The technological anomaly was discovered late Tuesday afternoon when the process was found to proceed at unbelievably slow rates. Marc Share, the on-site project manager explains, "This morning it was resolving about 8,000 profiles per hour. With 60,000 profiles left to resolve, we were sure that it would complete in the early evening. But somewhere around 1PM the resolution rate decreased to 1,000 per hour, and by 3 [PM] it was moving so slow that we weren't sure if it would complete by [Friday]." It was the next morning when they found that the process was resolving at rates between negative 500 profiles per hour to negative 3,000 profiles per hour. "Right now it's back to 84,000 profiles and just purring along", said Share. "You look at it, and it looks and acts like a normal computer program, but you know there's something that's fundamentally wrong. It's like that cloned sheep."

Robert Konigsberg, the project's technical lead explains the mood, "I just put my head in my hands. I mean, we couldn't believe it. At the rates we've been seeing, nobody can guess when it's going to end. Sure, it's some great science-thing, but really I don't care. I'm just glad I'm not the one that has to tell the client."

He then defended his position as a contributor to an early incarnation of Match "Yeah, I wrote the inference engine parser, but let me be clear. I didn't do this. I don't know why it happens, it's not my fault and I don't know how to fix it. Go ask Babu. He's the only one who understands it anyway." By "Babu" he is referring to Raghu Gopalakrishnan, SAI's chief architect for Match. His comments were particularly sparse, "Look, it's not my problem anymore. If people don't want to understand what they're changing then when the bloody thing goes back in time, don't come crying to me."

To understand the significance of this event, it can be compared to attempts in physics to break the light speed barrier. Repeated attempts using conventional engineering have provided human-made particles that accelerate and approach the speed of light, but none have actually surpassed the barrier. Likewise, many processes have "slowed to a crawl" but none have ever stopped and reversed -- that is -- until today. Past attempts at engineering such an effort have been admirable, to be sure. Processes such as Transaction Tracking and Customer Resolution have certainly come close, as do many other projects in the Healthcare Sales Force Management industry. In fact, SAI's two founders, Sheli Gupta and Derek Evans, are no strangers to anomalies in the Healthcare and Sales Force Management industry. Both served at Dendrite International, another leader of Healthcare Sales Force Automation tools, and another leading producer of extremely slow-moving processes.

Said John Bailye, President and CEO of Dendrite International, "Though we admire SAI's accomplishments, we are looking into the possibility that Dendrite had this technology available when [Evans and Gupta] were here. This could be a significant lawsuit." When asked if he suspects that Konigsberg might have leaked some of the information from his days at Dendrite, Bailye replied, "Who's Robert Konigsberg?"

"We're very excited about the prospect of providing an entire suite of products that move backward in time," said SAI CEO Richard Lutzy. "The potential synergies with our existing products are limitless. This is truly groundbreaking. Once we conquer this technology we're going try to make a toilet seat that doesn't stay up at night."

# # #