Microsoft drops controversial tool

The international ICT market was quiet last week, with a handful of small acquisitions, including some from the 'big boys'.

At home, the complete shake-up of ConvergeNet Holdings stole much of the local media ICT space.

* Satisfactory year-end figures from CompuClearing, with revenue up 7.8% and profit up 24.4%.
* Aqua, a full service digital agency, acquired Applogix, a marketing and e-commerce technology company.
* Tellumat bought ConvergeNet Holdings' stake in Contract Knitting (R95.1 million) and SCS (R5 million).
* Vox Telecom purchased Dynamic IT, a managed IT provider.
* ConvergeNet Holdings made a R109.23 million (17.64%) investment in Digicore.
* ConvergeNet Holdings made a 30% investment in Tellumat.
* ConvergeNet Holdings intends to change its name to CQ Capital, transfer its listing to the Investment Companies sub-sector - a move that better reflects its new role as an investment company - and invest further in various other non-ICT companies.
* Flexenclosure, a Swedish designer and manufacturer of prefabricated data centre buildings and intelligent power systems for the ICT industry, has opened an office in Johannesburg. This complements its other African offices that are based in Kenya, Mozambique and Nigeria.
* A withdrawn JSE cautionary by ConvergeNet Holdings.
* The appointment of Dries Mellet as COO of Poynting Holdings.

* Eaton Towers acquired over 3 500 Africa-based mobile towers, owned by Bharti Airtel, in six countries. The former already owns and operates towers in Ghana, SA and Uganda, and this deal expands the situation to over 5 000 towers in seven countries.
* Millicom joined forces with Kalixa to launch a payments service provider that will operate in Africa and Latin America.
* Facebook hit the 100 million user mark in Africa, with 80% of users accessing the social network site via mobile phones.

* BlackBerry acquired Movirtu, a provider of virtual identity solutions for mobile operators.
* CenturyLink bought Rackspace Hosting in a move designed to enhance the former's cloud business.
* Global Cash Access Holdings, a provider of cash services to casinos, purchased Multimedia Games Holding, a slot machine maker, for $1.2 billion.
* Google acquired Lift Labs, a maker of a hi-tech tremor cancellation spoon.
* HP bought Eucalyptus Software, a cloud software start-up.
* Intel purchased 1 400 Powerwave Technologies-owned telecoms patents.
* Microsemi acquired Centellax, a provider of high-speed semiconductor products.
* Microsoft bought Mojang, the Swedish games company behind the Minecraft video game.
* Rakuten, a Japanese e-commerce group, purchased US Ebates, a US-based cash-back shopping site, for $1 billion.
* Sabre acquired Genares, a hospitality technology company.
* Top Image Systems settled its pending patent infringement litigation with Mitek Systems.
* A US court revived Paul Allen's patent suit against AOL, Apple, Google and Yahoo.
* The EU rejected a third anti-trust peace settlement proposed by Google.
* JDS Uniphase is to split the company into two publicly-traded firms that will separate its optical components business from its networking operations.
* Microsoft dropped its controversial image tool following a copyright lawsuit last week by Getty Images.
* Toshiba will maintain an annual investment of about $1.9 billion into its chip business beyond the current business year.
* HP has been fined $58.8 million for bribing Russian government officials.
* Good quarterly numbers from Webroot, the largest privately held US-based Internet security company.
* Quarterly losses from Palo Alto Networks and Volt Information Sciences.
* The appointments of Warren Harris as CEO and MD of Tata Technologies; and Jorgen Lantto as CEO of Fingerprint Cards.
* The retirement of Patrick McGoldrick, CEO and MD of Tata Technologies.
* The departure of Johan Carlstrom, CEO of Fingerprint Cards (suspected of insider crime).
* A planned IPO later this year in Dublin from Eircom, Ireland's largest telecommunications group.
* A planned IPO in Germany by Rocket Internet, and a planned IPO by U Mobile, a Malaysian telecoms company.

EMEA/Africa:
* The MEA region tablet market declined 2% in Q2 to 3.95 million units, but still remains the world's fastest growing region, according to IDC.
* The MEA PC market grew 2.2% in Q2 to 4.5 million units, according to IDC.

Facebook has hit the 100 million user mark in Africa.

Worldwide:
* Global tablet shipments will reach 68.51 million units in Q3, up 9.1% from the same period last year, according to Digitimes Research.
* The data centre market will undergo dramatic changes by the end of 2016 because of four disruptive factors, says Gartner.
* By the end of 2017, over 20% of enterprises will have digital security services devoted to protecting business initiatives using the Internet of things, according to Gartner.
* Less than half of European enterprises are ready for cloud, according to IDC.
* The worldwide software storage market increased 6.3% in Q2, says IDC.
* Worldwide business analytics services will reach $89.6 billion by 2018, from $51.6 billion this year, predicts IDC.
* Security appliance growth was 7.3% in Q2 and reached $2.2 billion, according to IDC.

* JSE All share index: Down 1%
* Nasdaq: Down 0.3%
* NYSE (Dow): Down 0.9%
* S&P 500: Down 1.1%
* FTSE100: Down 0.7%
* Top SA share movements: ConvergeNet Holdings (+52.4%), Ellies (-10%), Gijima (+10.2%), Huge Group (+15.8%), Jasco (+7.4%), Morvest Business Group (+8%), Net 1 UEPS Technologies (+9.4%) and Pinnacle Holdings (+9.2%)

International:
* The winner of the bid for Telecom Italia's Brazilian operations, with Am'erica M'ovil possibly entering the fray with Oi, a local telecoms group.
* HP selling off its Snapfish photo sharing service.

Africa:
* A possible IPO in Egypt by Etisalat's Egyptian unit.

South Africa:
* The possible sale by Naspers of its stake in Ricardo.ch, a Swiss retailer.

At last week's Gartner Symposium, David Cappuccio, a Gartner analyst, highlighted the top 10 emerging trends and their impact on infrastructures and operations.

As an introduction, Cappuccio threw a few statistics into the pot as background:
* Ninety percent of messages are read in three minutes;
* There are 60 billion e-mails daily, of which 97% are spam;
* The average device per person is 2.9;
* There are 3.3 billion Google searches per day;
* Researchers have successfully pushed 14 trillion bits per second down a single strand of fibre;
* Daily text message traffic exceeds the total population of the planet; and
* Today's employees can access 14.4 billion Web pages, over one million apps for iPhone or Android devices, and four different device types per user.

The top 10 trends are:
* Software-defined infrastructures; a new way to operate, orchestrate and automate that allows configuration from one place and enhances workload and traffic flow.
* IT continuity services that use location and networking options to implement entirely new application topologies.
* Integrated systems that may include one or many vendor products and competes with general purpose designs.
* Disaggregated systems that will facilitate upgrades at the component level.
* Bimodal IT, the concept where two distinct IT methodologies exist in the same company, sometimes in two separate teams. The Agile IT team handles the growing needs of the business, while traditional IT continues doing the day-to-day work of ensuring the business technology functions appropriately and securely.
* Internet of things: not a single technology, but a concept that needs to handle the growth of Internet devices from 12 billion in 2012 to over 50 billion by 2020.
* Hyperconnectivity, in which all things that can or should communicate through the network will communicate through the network. This encompasses person-to-person, person-to-machine and machine-to-machine communication. The trend is fuelling large increases in bandwidth demand and changes in communications because of the complexity, diversity and integration of new applications and devices using the network.
* Micro data centres, where resource location becomes irrelevant.
* Non-stop demand that embraces server workloads growing at an annual average growth rate (AAGR) of 10%, network bandwidth at a 35% AAGR, storage capacity at a 50% AAGR, and power costs at a 20% AAGR.
* Scarcity of new infrastructure and operations skills.