Yahoo on a roll

The resignation of Juniper's CEO and a major acquisition by Yahoo were the main international ICT events last week.

At home, the departure of Cisco's local MD, and Nutanix opening a Johannesburg office were the main stories.

* Mixed interim numbers from Vodacom, with revenue up 2.3% but profit down 5%.
* Positive trading updates from Business Connexion and Naspers.
* Bytes Technology Group (Bytes People Solutions) acquired Inter-Active Technologies, a services-oriented company.
* MB Technologies Group bought Yeahpoint, a software development company that focuses on digital media and interactive technologies.
* Principa Decisions, a software, data analytics and consulting company, purchased Relate Technologies, a software development company.
* Adapt IT made a 49% investment in Uyandiswa Project Management Services, a 100% black-owned project management consultancy.
* Nutanix has opened an office in SA.
* Orange plans to launch a light franchise model for independent businesses in SA.
* Smart Mobile, which specialises in providing cellular services and handsets to the emerging post-paid market, will launch an MVNO through MVN-X, the same company providing services to Mr Price for MRP Mobile.
* SA's installation rate of unlicensed software was 34% in 2013, with a commercial value of $385 million.
* Johannesburg was placed 29th out of 40 cities in a new ranking on ICT maturity.
* Renewed JSE cautionaries by Blue Label Telecoms and Gijima.
* The appointment of Alpheus Mangale as chief enterprise officer at MTN.
* The resignation of Alpheus Mangale, MD of Cisco SA.

* The installation of unlicensed or pirated software in Egypt was 62%, Nigeria 81%, and Zimbabwe 91%.
* Angola Cables intends to build the world's first submarine cable network to link South America and Africa.
* Cairo was placed 35th and Lagos 38th out of 40 cities in a new ranking on ICT maturity.
* Liquid Telecom will launch FTTH on a wholesale basis in Kenya, Rwanda and two other African countries next year.
* The appointment of Jimmy Eisenstein as non-executive chairman of Eaton Towers.
* The resignation of Sanjiv Ahuja, co-founder and chairman of Eaton Towers (stays on as a director).

* Cognizant Technology Solutions purchased Odecee, a digital solutions provider.
* Electro Scientific acquired Wuhan Topwin Optoelectronics Technology, an innovative laser design and manufacturing systems company.
* Fullscreen, a media company, bought Rooster Teeth, an online production studio.
* Mail.ru purchased MAPS.ME, a maps and navigation service for mobile devices.
* Microsoft acquired Israel-based Aorato, a cyber security start-up.
* Yahoo bought BrightRoll, a provider of an automated advertising service, for $640 million.
* Xiaomi invested in Youku Tudou, a video streaming site.
* Telefonica sold off half (5%) its stake in China Unicom for EUR687 million.
* Samsung has filed a patent lawsuit against Nvidia.
* Oracle and SAP have settled their TomorrowNow lawsuit for $356.7 million in favour of the former.
* Very good quarterly figures from Tencent Holdings.
* Good quarterly numbers from ChipMOS Technologies, CyberArk Software, Hon Hai Precision Industry, Rackspace Hosting.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Avid, Cisco, Quanta Computer, Sabre, Sina and Trend Micro.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Applied Materials, NetApp and Wistron.
* Mediocre half-year figures from Aveva.
* Mixed quarterly figures from 3D Systems, with revenue up but profit down; CDK Global, with revenue up but profit down; Himax Technologies, with revenue up but profit down; Magic Software, with revenue up but profit down; and Telefonica, with revenue up but profit down.
* Mixed half-year figures from Vodafone, with revenue up but profit down.
* Very poor quarterly figures from Brooks Automation.
* Quarterly losses from Gogo, Overland Storage, Tower Semiconductor and Weibo.
* A half-year loss from Blinkx.
* The resignation of Shaygan Kheradpir, CEO of Juniper Networks.
* An IPO filing from New Relic, a company whose software helps Web sites or app owners track the performance of their services.
* An excellent IPO in South Korea by Samsung SDS, the Samsung Group's IT services arm.

EMEA/Africa:
* According to Frost & Sullivan, the following top ICT trends we can expect to see in Africa next year are:
Multiple African governments will drive the provision of Internet access;
Extensive innovation in new business ecosystems; and
OTT players will expand their influence across the continent.
* Software spending for the MENA region's banking and securities firms will grow 2.4% this year to $13.1 billion, according to Gartner.
* Seventy-six percent of EMEA CIOs need to change their leadership style to succeed as digital leaders, according to Gartner.
* Governments in the MENA region will spend $12.2 billion on IT in 2014, according to Gartner.

Worldwide:
* Worldwide tablet shipments in Q4 are estimated at 74.5 million units, 10.1% down year-on-year, according to Digitimes Research.
* According to Gartner, 4.9 billion connected things will be in use in 2015, up 30% from this year, and will reach 25 billion by 2020.
* The worldwide personal and entry-level storage market was up 4.8% in Q3, with 19 million units shipped, according to IDC.
* Smartphone shipments reached 316.6 million in Q3, up 13.3% on last year, with Lenovo taking the number three slot, according to Juniper Research.

* JSE All share index: Up 1%
* Nasdaq: Up 1.2% (highest weekend close this year)
* NYSE (Dow): Up 0.3% (highest-ever weekend close)
* S&P 500: Up 0.4% (highest-ever weekend close)
* FTSE100: Up 1.3%
* Top SA share movements: Adapt IT (+8%), CompuClearing (+16.3%), MICROmega Holdings (+9.3%), Naspers (+12%), Silverbridge Holdings (-12.5%) and Telemasters (-22.7%)

International:
* A possible acquisition by AT&T of Mexico's Nextel.
* The purchase by Bharti Infratel of Idea Cellular and Vodafone towers in seven Indian cities.
* A winner in the battle for Portugal Telecom. Apax Partners and Bain Capital seem to be vying with a bid by France's Altice.

South Africa:
* Further developments regarding the outstanding mergers of Vodacom and Neotel; and Telkom and BCX.

The predictions from the IDC FutureScape for Worldwide Retail are:
1. By 2017, three times as many retailers as now will succeed to explicitly pin their customer and operations strategies on third-platform technologies;
2. In 2015, CIOs will invest in omni-channel integration technologies as a top priority to support growth in the omni-channel shopper sales premium of 30%;
3. Over the next three years, half of CIOs across the top 250 retailers will adopt omni-channel IT governance fit for a third-platform era to combat shadow-IT;
4. By 2016, the top 150 retailers will improve ROI on hyper-personal loyalty based on unified customer engagement;
5. By 2018, 60% of omni-channel retailers will have launched customer mobile payment initiatives to enhance existing ecommerce, loyalty and store MPOS investments;
6. As cyber attacks increase, by the end of 2016, 50% of the top 250 retailers will have reduced exposure and loss by more than 50%, with intelligent sense-and-respond security strategies;
7. By end 2016, product intelligence will inform 80% of the top 10 e-commerce retailers' pricing decisions and drive mainstream adoption of high-velocity pricing;
8. By 2018, on-demand socially networked delivery services (including Uber, eBay Now, Shutl, Deliv, Postmates, Instacart, Amazon and Alibaba) will perform 90% of all intra-day direct to consumer deliveries;
9. By end 2015, at least 25 retailers with location-based services will increase LBS-impacted same shopper sales by 5% via analytics-driven agile engagement and operations; and
10. By 2016, even as private brand growth flattens in the US, consumer-driven private brand product innovation will drive a 10% improvement in customer visit frequency.

Johannesburg was placed 29th out of 40 cities in a new ranking on ICT maturity.

"Relentless technology innovation underpins consumers' participatory behaviour and expectations. The most successful retailers will find opportunities by putting mobility, analytics, cloud, and social to work in their customer and operations strategies, adopting omni-channel integration technologies and IT governance, unifying customer engagement for hyper-personalised loyalty, adopting product intelligence for marketing and competitive insight, employing location-based services via analytics-driven agile engagement and operations, utilise socially networked on-demand delivery services, and gain share with private label merchandise," commented Leslie Hand, VP of IDC Retail Insights.