Verizon buys Yahoo Internet business

Yet another acquisition by Accenture, and the agreed revised Verizon/Yahoo deal dominated the news in the international ICT market last week.

At home, the formal announcement of Bill Venter's retirement as chairman of Altron was the main local story.

* Good interim numbers from Silverbridge Holdings, with revenue up 16.4% and profit up 21.7%.
* Mixed interim numbers from Mustek, with revenue up 5.6% but profit down 35%.
* A mixed trading update from Alaris Holdings.
* A strategic partnership between EOH Industrial Technologies and STEAG Energy Services of Germany, which the groups believe will bring expertise to the energy sector in SA.
* JMR Software has opened a UK office, which marks a move to position the company as an independent entity in the UK market. Over the past 20 years, the company has operated through strategic partnerships.
* QbTech has officially changed its name to MCI IT, which is derived from the holding company's name, Mcimbi Software Solutions.
* Shareholders have approved the name change of Pinnacle Holdings to Alviva Holdings, with effect from 8 March.
* Sekunjalo Technology Solutions is planning to change its name to Ayo Technology Solutions.
* A renewed JSE cautionary by Cognition Holdings.
* The appointment of Mike Leeming as non-executive chairman of Altron.
* The retirement of Bill Venter as non-executive chairman of Altron.

The worldwide public cloud services market is projected to grow 18% in 2017 to total $246.8 billion, up from $209.2 billion in 2016, according to Gartner.

* Accenture acquired SinnerSchrader, one of the leading digital agencies in Germany.
* Arris International bought Brocade Communications Systems' Ruckus Wireless and ICX Switch for $800 million. This portfolio will expand Arris's leadership in converged wired and wireless networking technologies beyond the home into the education, public venue, enterprise, hospitality and MDU segments.
* Bharti Airtel, India's largest telecoms network operator, is buying Norwegian Telenor's India unit, in yet another consolidation move in the South Asian nation's telecoms sector driven by upstart rival Jio's disruptive pricing.
* Capita Group, a professional services company, purchased Vodafone's beeper unit; the former is now a monopoly supplier of paging services in the UK.
* CBTS, a wholly owned subsidiary of Cincinnati Bell, acquired SunTel Services, a regional provider of network security, data connectivity and unified communications solutions.
* Sweden's EQT investment group bought US carrier and data centre company Lumos Networks for $950 million.
* Flex purchased AGM Automotive, a global supplier of automotive interior components and systems.
* Singapore Telecom's Amobee acquired Turn, a provider of a data management platform, for $310 million.
* Wix.com bought DeviantArt, one of the world's largest online communities dedicated to artists, art enthusiasts and designers.
* Ant Financial, the financial arm of Alibaba Group Holding, made a $200 million investment in the payments unit of South Korean messaging company Kakao Corporation, in a move designed to grow its global payments network.
* Private equity firm KKR made a EUR1.275 billion (40% stake) investment in Telefonica's telecom masts subsidiary Telxius.
* A strategic partnership between Alibaba Group Holding and Bailian Group, the largest retailer by store numbers; the latter joins the e-commerce giant's drive to use big data to improve and profit from brick-and-mortar sales.
* Alphabet's Waymo has sued Uber for allegedly stealing trade secrets to jump-start its own autonomous vehicle programme.
* In what amounts to one of the more major pivots in the digital sector, Shine Technologies, a company entrenched in the ongoing ad blocking debate, is to rebrand as Rainbow. It will cease its carte blanche ad blocking services to mobile operators and begin generating revenue from the media industry, as it moves to offer "a better ad experience for consumers".
* Tessera has changed its name to Xperi.
* Verizon Communications has agreed to buy the core Internet business of Yahoo for $4.48 billion, reflecting a $350 million cut to the original price.
* Excellent quarterly results from Acacia Communications, Applied Optoelectronics, Arris International, InterDigital and Stamps.com.
* Very good quarterly figures from Mobileye and Weibo.
* Good quarterly numbers from Cotivity, Iron Mountain, Quanta Services (back in the black), Rogers Corporation and Sina.
* Good year-end numbers from Atos.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from AMC Networks, Ansys, Cogent Communications, CommScope (back in the black), Garmin, HP, Iridium Communications (back in the black), Telef^onica Brasil and Wind Tre.
* Satisfactory year-end figures from Orange.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Baidu, Computer Task Group, Consolidated Communications, EchoStar, HPE, Inovalon Holdings, Interface, Ixia, Pegasystems and Proximus.
* Mediocre year-end numbers from O2 (Telefonica UK).
* Mixed quarterly figures from American Software, with revenue down but profit up; ATN International, with revenue up but profit down; BroadSoft, with revenue up but profit down; Convergys, with revenue up but profit down; Dish Networks, with revenue down but back in the black; Entercom Communications, with revenue up but profit down; Intuit, with revenue up but profit down; Magic Software, with revenue up but profit down; Telefonica, with revenue down but back in the black; Verisk Analytics, with revenue up but profit down; and Zebra Technologies, with revenue down but back in the black.
* Mixed year-end figures from Bouygues Telecom, with revenue down but profit up.
* Very poor quarterly figures from CoreLogic and Visteon.
* Quarterly losses from Brocade Communications Systems, Conduent, Daktronics, Digimarc, Fitbit, Mitel Networks, Silver Spring Networks, Sohu.com, Splunk, Square, Tessera and US Cellular.
* The appointments of Jay Gould as CEO of Interface; and Will Lansing as chairman of Shutterfly.
* The resignation of Chris Townsend, CEO of Broadband Delivery UK.

South Africa:
* According to SA's finance minister, Pravin Gordhan, the cost to implement Cabinet's approved ICT whitepaper policy recommendations and other ICT expenditure is expected to amount to R287.2 million over the medium term.

EMEA/Africa:
* Governments in the Middle East and North Africa are projected to spend $11.6 billion on IT products and services in 2017, according to Gartner.

Worldwide:
* The worldwide public cloud services market is projected to grow 18% in 2017 to total $246.8 billion, up from $209.2 billion in 2016, according to Gartner.
* Worldwide spending on public cloud services and infrastructure will reach $122 billion in 2017, an increase of 24.4% over 2016, according to IDC. Over the 2015-2020 forecast period, overall public cloud spending will experience a 21.5% compound annual growth rate - nearly seven times the rate of overall IT spending growth. By 2020, IDC forecasts public cloud spending will reach $203.4 billion worldwide.
* Worldwide spending on digital transformation (DX) technologies will be more than $1.2 trillion in 2017, an increase of 17.8% over 2016, according to IDC. IDC expects DX spending to maintain this pace, with a CAGR of 17% over the 2015-2020 forecast period, and reaching $2 trillion in 2020.

* JSE All share index: Down 1.2%
* FTSE100: Up 0.2%
* DAX: Up 0.4%
* NYSE (Dow): Up 1% (highest weekend close)
* S&P 500: Up 0.7% (highest weekend close)
* Nasdaq: Up 0.1% (highest weekend close)
* Nikkei225: Up 0.3%
* Hang Seng: Down 0.3%
* Shanghai: Up 0.2%

International:
* Set-top box maker Arris International acquiring Brocade Communications Systems' networking equipment business for roughly $1 billion.

South Africa:
* Telkom bidding for Cell C, despite a rejection of the former's first unsolicited offer.

CRN magazine recently published its latest list of '100 coolest cloud software vendors'. The list included as its top 20:
* Cazena
* DocuSign
* Domo
* FinancialForce
* InsideSales.com
* Intacct
* M-files
* Natero
* New Relic
* Nintex
* Pax8
* ProsperWorks
* SAP
* SAS
* Snowflake Computing
* Splunk
* Tableau Software
* Treasure Data
* Velostrata
* Workato