AT&T shells out for T-Mobile

AT&T's $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile, and the possible component production/supply problems in Japan following the recent earthquake, dominated the international ICT world over the last two weeks.

At home, the announcement of Telkom's new CEO stole much of the local ICT media space.

* Very good interim figures from EOH, with revenue up 44.8% and profit up 54.6%; and Pinnacle Technology, with revenue up 42% and profit up 61%.

* Satisfactory interim numbers from FoneWorx, with revenue up 1% and profit up 1%.

* Mixed interim figures from Jasco, with revenue up 20.4% but profit down 45.9%; and SecureData, with revenue down 9.6% but profit up 4.2%.

* A positive trading update from Cape Empowerment.

* A mixed trading update from Dialogue Group.

* Negative trading updates from Business Connexion and Poynting Antennas.

* Datatec (Logicalis) acquired Inca Software from its parent company Avisen, for £7.3 million. Inca provides a full suite of IBM business analytics products.

* Morvest (Simeka) Business Group bought R and S Consulting, a provider of conceptual solutions, marrying the corresponding technologies and providing the execution capability to businesses within the niche of mobile data. The deal was worth R60 million.

* O-Tel Telecom purchased Rheid Telecom, a provider of VOIP telephony in South Africa.

* Reunert acquired ECN Telecommunications.

* Google SA unveiled Umbono, a technology incubator based in Cape Town.

* Simeka Business Group's name change to Morvest Business Group is now in place.

* The appointments of Cheslynne Britz as MD of Rectron; Pete da Silva as CEO of Jasco; and Nombulelo (Pinky) Moholi as CEO of Telkom.

* Martin Lotz, CEO of Jasco, resigned.

* A full year loss from AccessKenya, with revenue also down.

* Intel bought Egypt's SySDSoft, a privately-held software company, a designer of IP solutions in the software stack and physical layer domain, and RF/analogue circuits embedded in mobile platforms.

* Seacom has extended its network to Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Swaziland and Zimbabwe.

* Advanced Channel Technologies has opened an office in Mozambique.

* Nigeria's Bureau of Public Enterprises has invited the reserve bidder for Nitel to enter negotiations to take up the offer.

Seacom has extended its network to Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Swaziland and Zimbabwe.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* AT&T acquired Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile for $39 billion, a move that will face several regulatory approval obstacles and may force the former to relinquish its interests in some of its subscriber bases in certain markets.

* Batelco (Bahrain) and KHC (Saudi Arabia) purchased Zain's 25% in its Saudi subsidiary, for $950 million.

* Broadcom bought Provigent, an Israeli chip developer, for $313 million.

* Facebook acquired Snaptu, a mobile applications developer that previously developed a cut-down version of the Facebook Web site for use on mobile phones.

* Google (YouTube) bought Green Parrot, a digital video technology company.

* IBM purchased Tririga Software, a provider of facility and real estate management software.

* Intel acquired Silicon Hive, a spin-off from Philips Electronics, which was incubated by Philips to commercialise parallel processing technology for semiconductor Systems-on-Chip.

* Motorola Mobility purchased Dreampark, a provider of middleware support for cable, terrestrial or IPTV.

* Netgear acquired Westell Techs' customer networking solutions division for $33.5 million.

* NetLogic Microsystems bought Optichron, a fabless semiconductor provider, for $108.5 million.

* Polycom bought Accordent Technologies, a provider of enterprise video management solutions, for $50 million.

* SAS purchased Assetlink, a provider of marketing resource management.

* Shore Capital (UK) and a consortium of investors made a 58% investment in DBD, a German telecommunications group that specialises in WiMax.

* Shutterfly, a provider of Internet-based social expression and personal publishing services, bought Tiny Prints, a provider of cards, invitations and other stationery products, for $369 million.

* Xerox (Affiliated Computer Services) purchased CredenceHealth, a clinical software developer.

* France Telecom made a $245 million (20%) investment in Iraq's Korek Telecom.

* Etisalat has called off its takeover talks with Zain.

* Many technology companies in Japan have been badly affected by the recent earthquake, including Canon, Freescale Semiconductor, Fujitsu, Hitachi, NEC, Nikon, Panasonic, Sony, Texas Instruments and Toshiba.

* Very good quarterly figures from Alibaba.com, Jabil Circuit, Oracle, Red Hat, RIM and Tencent (30% owned by Naspers).

* Good quarterly numbers from Accenture, Adobe and ZTE.

* Satisfactory quarterly results from China Mobile and China Telecom.

* Mixed quarterly figures from Micron Technology, with revenue up but profit down.

* Quarterly losses from CDC Software.

* The appointments of Franco Bernabe as chairman of Telecom Italia (currently CEO); and Marco Patuano as CEO of Telecom Italia.

* Rob Solomon, president and COO of Groupon, resigned.

* A planned IPO on Nasdaq by Qihoo 360, an anti-virus software provider in China.

* A good IPO on Nasdaq from ServiceSource, a cloud computing software and IT services provider.

International:

* A possible sell-off of Websense, a software maker that filters Web content.
* A possible investment by Qatar Holding in Telefonica.
* The fate of Telekom Srbija following the government's 'auction' that attracted only a EUR800 million-EUR950 million conditional bid from Telekom Austria, but a price that was below the unconditional price that had been set.

Africa:

* Further developments regarding the sale of Nitel.

South Africa:

* Further developments regarding the sell-off by Telkom of some of its Multi-Links Nigerian operation, with Starcomms seemingly the front runner.

* The EMEA external controller-based storage market revenue in 2010 reached $5.8 billion, exceeding 2008, and was up 14.9% over 2009 revenue, according to Gartner.

* Global shipments of smartphones increased 74% in 2010 to 295 million units, according to Berg Insight.

* JSE All share index: Up 1.4%
* Nasdaq: Up 1%
* Top SA share movements: AdaptIT (-17.7%), Business Connexion (-10.2%), Dialogue Group (-41.2%), Ifca Technologies (+11.1%), MICROmega (-13%), Net UEPS Technologies (-14.1%), Poynting Antennas (-30%), Stella Vista (-20%), TCS (-25%) and UCS (-9.1%)

There have been many rumours circulating regarding possible acquisition targets for HP, especially following recent statements by its new CEO, Leo Apotheker. The list includes many open source software providers or cloud-based service providers, and contains the following companies: BMC Software, CACI International, CommVault Systems, Informatica, Novell (although currently being acquired by Attachmate), Red Hat, SAIC, Symantec, Teradata and Tibco Software.

Also, at the recent IDC Directions 2011 Conference, held in the US, the final keynote address was given by Andrew McAfee of MIT, a person who has been named as one of the 100 most influential people in IT. His talk was entitled: “Enterprise 2.0, the state of an art”. In his presentation, he argued that most organisations realise that to succeed in today's turbulent world, they need to perform as an integrated whole and tap into innovations and good ideas, but find it difficult to capture the collective intelligence of their employees and customers. In essence, companies don't know what they know, but need to learn soon.

Lew Platt, a former CEO of HP, was quoted as saying: “If only HP knew what HP knows, we would be three times more productive.” In this context, McAfee says the new class of collaborative technologies, such as Facebook and Wikipedia, now enable organisations to accumulate knowledge and connect the individuals who need it to experts who have it. The deployment of such tools is making many companies more agile, productive and innovative, and those who are not embracing this situation will not succeed in the long-term.

It's a phenomenon McAfee has called 'Enterprise 2.0', and the subject of a book he wrote in 2009. His recommendations are that companies:

* Should not expect a return to 'business as usual' following the recent recession.
* Must re-examine how they tackle tough problems and make important decisions.
* Put social and technology at the centre of the company.
* Should not expect overnight transformation.
* Seek everyone's 'spark of genius'.