Alibaba flies high

Larry Ellison's resignation as CEO of Oracle, and the record IPO from Alibaba dominated the international ICT market last week.

At home, the results from EOH topped the list of local stories.

* Very good year-end figures from EOH, with revenue up 42% and profit up 48.5%.
* Good year-end numbers from FoneWorx, with revenue up 10.1% and profit up 10.4%.
* Satisfactory year-end numbers from Silverbridge Holdings, with revenue up 1.9%, although profit up 154.9%.
* Very poor year-end figures from Jasco, with revenue down 9.4%, although back in the black.
* A mixed trading update from Digicore.
* Pinnacle Holdings said the Financial Services Board investigation has been closed with no enforcement action.
* The appointments of Deon Fredericks as CFO of Telkom SA; Clinton Holroyd as acting CEO of Wireless Business Solutions; and Brendan Mc Aravey as SA country manager for Citrix Systems.
* The resignation of Thami Mtshali, CEO of Wireless Business Solutions (parent of iBurst).

* Interswitch Transnational Holding, a pan-African integrated payments company, acquired a majority stake in Paynet Group, East Africa's multi-institutional payments provider.
* The Botswana Telecommunications shares will be floated in November.
* Oi, the Brazilian telecoms group, is looking for a buyer for its 75% stake in Africatel Holdings, which owns several African telecoms companies, including Unitel (Angola).

* Cisco acquired Metacloud, a company that helps set up cloud services for other companies.
* Cognizant Technology Solutions bought TriZetto, a healthcare IT services provider, for $2.7 billion.
* Globalive Capital, owned by the founder and CEO of Wind Mobile, purchased VimpelCom and its subsidiary Global Telecom Holding's stake in Wind Mobile. The deal was worth C$135 million.
* KKR, one of the largest private equity companies, acquired Pioneer's DJ equipment unit for $550 million.
* Microsoft bought Minecraft, the developer of the Mojang video game, for $2.5 billion.
* MegaChips purchased certain smart connectivity products based on DisplayPort Technology from STMicroelectronics.
* Oracle acquired Front Porch Digital, a provider of content management solutions.
* Orange bought Jazztel, the Spanish telecoms operator, for $4.4 billion.
* Red Hat purchased FeedHenry (Ireland) in a deal that expands the former's capabilities in cloud-based applications for big businesses. The deal was worth $81.8 million.
* SAP acquired Concur, an expense management software maker, in SAP's largest acquisition deal. It was worth $8.3 billion.
* Stratasys bought GrabCAD, a leading 3D CAD collaboration platform.
* Telefonica purchased GVT, Vivendi's Brazilian telecoms business, for EUR4.2 billion. In addition, Vivendi will obtain Telefonica's 7.4% stake in Telefonica Brasil and its 5.7% stake in Telecom Italia.
* An appeal court has thrown out a jury order whereby Apple was to pay VirnetX $368.2 million in damages for four patent infringements.
* A federal judge has ruled in favour of Sony in a long-running case against L-3 Communications.
* Russia's mail.ru has ended its VKontakte dispute, with a $1.5 billion buyout of one of its co-investors.
* NII Holdings has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the US.
* Ericsson is exiting the modem business.
* Good quarterly numbers from Infor (only revenue figures available) and Red Hat.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Adobe, with revenue up (just) but profit down; and Oracle, with revenue up but profit down.
* Very poor quarterly figures from Tibco Software.
* Quarterly losses from Ixia.
* The appointments of Safra Catz as co-CEO of Oracle; Doug Hurd as co-CEO of Oracle; Doug Hutcheson as chairman of InterDigital (as of June 2015); and Taylor Rhodes as CEO of Rackspace Hosting.
* Larry Ellison has resigned as CEO of Oracle (he stays on as chairman and president).
* The retirement of Steven Clontz, chairman of InterDigital (as of June 2015).
* An excellent IPO on the NYSE by Alibaba, with shares rising more than 35% over its offer price and making it one of the largest IPOs. This is already the largest technology IPO, and if the overallotment option is exercised in the next week or so, it will become the largest IPO in history.

South Africa:
* SA's entertainment and media market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 10.2% through 2018 to R190.4 billion, according to a PwC report.

EMEA/Africa:
* The combined revenue of the cloud computing markets of Kenya and SA will more than double to $288 million by 2018, according to Frost & Sullivan.
* Middle East and North Africa spend on information security will reach $1 billion in 2014, an increase of 8% over 2013, according to Gartner.
* IT spending by financial institutions in the four big markets of the MEA region is set for a growth of 10.8% in 2014, according to IDC.

Larry Ellison has resigned as CEO of Oracle.

Worldwide:
* More than 75% of mobile applications will fail basic security tests through 2015, according to Gartner.
* Gartner's latest survey reveals 73% of organisations have invested in or plan to invest in big data in the next two years.
* By 2016, 40% of consumer wrist-worn devices will be smart watches, according to Gartner.
* The big data technology and services market will grow at a CAGR of 26.4% compound through 2018 to reach $41.5 billion, according to IDC.
* Worldwide monitor shipments declined 2.9% in Q2 to 32.5 million units, according to IDC.
* Worldwide thin client and terminal device shipments grew 10.8% in Q2 to 1.4 million units, according to IDC.
* Global spending on telecoms managed services is expected to grow at a CAGR of almost 12% over the next five years, according to Insight Research.
* The global semiconductor market expects a growth of over 3% in 2015, according to Taiwan's MIC.

* JSE All share index: Up 0.4%
* Nasdaq: Up 0.2% (hit a 2014 high of over 4600 during the week)
* NYSE (Dow): Up 1.7% (highest-ever weekend close)
* S&P 500: Up 1.3% (highest-ever weekend close)
* FTSE100: Up 0.5%
* Top SA share movements: Gijima (-7.4%), Huge Group (+25.9%), Jasco (-7.9%), MiX Telematics (+8.3%), Morvest Business Group (-7.4%), Pinnacle Holdings (-7.3%), Telemasters (-25.2%) and Telkom SA (-10.3%)

International:
* The fate of the UK's Phones 4U company that is currently under administration.

South Africa:
* Further developments regarding Vodacom/Neotel and Telkom's deals regarding BCX and MTN.

Fortune magazine has published its 2014 list of its '100 Fastest Growing Companies'. From a technology perspective, the following are included:
* 10: Calamp, a maker of equipment for wireless communications and satellites;
* 25: Universal Display, a maker of organic LED screens used in Samsung Galaxy phones, among others;
* 27: PDF Solutions, a provider of technologies that improve the lifespan of ICs;
* 32: Aspen Technology, a provider of software and services for the gas and chemical processing industries;
* 40: Ultimate Software Group, a seller of cloud-based software for payroll, benefits and HR;
* 46: Baidu, China's equivalent of Google;
* 49: SS&C Technologies Holdings, a provider of software to the financial services firms and asset managers;
* 51: IGate, an IT services and outsourcing company;
* 59: Silicom, a provider of services that helps data centre servers work together; and
* 65: Yandex, Russia's Internet search tool.