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Google in Tatters

The Internet giant buys Tatter and Company, a Korean-based blogging software firm.
Paul Booth
By Paul Booth
Johannesburg, 15 Sept 2008

IBM's information infrastructure launch dominated the international world of ICT last week. At home, the move by Datatec into India stole much of the local headline ICT space.

Key local news

* Good year-end figures from Faritec, with revenue up 21% and profit more than double.
* Faritec acquired Ubushu, a supplier of Novell identity and access management solutions. The deal also includes the latter's 30% stake in Linux Systems Dynamics.
* Datatec made a 50.01% investment in India's Inflow Technologies, an ICT business that focuses on technology enablement and distribution of security, storage and networking products, services and solutions.
* Convergence Partners Investments, a venture capital firm in which Andile Ngcaba is involved, made a 25.55% investment in SkillPod Media, an online casual gaming company.
* ICASA announced it would not appeal against the High Court ruling regarding self-provisioning.

Key African news

* The possible link-up of Orascom (Egypt) and Telekom Austria.

Key international news

Worldwide smartphone sales rose 15.7% in Q208 and reached 32.2 million units, according to Gartner.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* Google purchased Tatter and Company, a Korean-based blogging software company.
* Symantec acquired Swapdrive, a Web-based storage company that provides software for online backup and storage and features automatic backups and data recovery applications, for $124 million.
* Microsoft announced it has sold its Greenfield Online unit to an affiliate of ZM Capital.

Look out for

* A possible investment by NTT DoCoMo in Tata's cellular towers business.

Research results and predictions

* The storage software market rose 14.2% in Q208 to reach $3.1 billion, with the top three places remaining the same: EMC, Symantec and IBM, according to IDC.
* Worldwide smartphone sales rose 15.7% in Q208 and reached 32.2 million units, according to Gartner.
* Indian IT spending will reach $110 billion in 2012, a CAGR of 14.8%, according to Gartner.

Stock market changes

* JSE All share index: Up 2.9%
* Nasdaq: Up 0.2%
* Top SA share movements: Celcom (-13.9%), Faritec (+9.8%), Ideco (+50%), Ifca Technologies (+25%), Metrofile (+11.8%), MICROmega (-10.9%), Mustek (+14.6%), Poynting (-10%), Spescom (+38.5%) and TeleMasters (+11.8%)

Final word

Forbes magazine has published its listing of The 100 Most Powerful Women. From a technology perspective, Anne Mulcahy, CEO of Xerox, is at number 10; Safra Catz, president of Oracle, is at number 15; Ann Livermore, executive VP of HP, is at 33; and Susan Decker, president of Yahoo, is at 50.

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