Avaya bags Nortel unit

The international ICT world was dominated last week by Avaya's acquisition of Nortel's Enterprise Solutions unit, and by Adobe's purchase of Omniture. At home, the Altech/Seacom partnership took pride of place in the local ICT media space.

* Very good year-end figures from EOH, with revenue up 32% and profit up almost 25%.
* Good nine-month results from TeleMasters, with revenue up 33% and profit up 21%.
* Good interim numbers from ISA, with revenue up 17% and profit up 45%.
* Satisfactory year-end numbers from Pinnacle, with revenue up 14% and profit up 5%.
* Mixed 16-month numbers from Jasco, with revenue up, but profit down (necessitated by change of year-end to 30 June 2009).
* A positive trading update from Altech.
* Negative trading updates from Altron and Faritec.
* Altech and Seacom will form a strategic partnership.
* IBM has opened an African Innovation Centre, in Cape Town.
* South Africa's low orbiting satellite, SumbandilaSat, launched into space.
* Jeff Molobela was named chairman of Telkom SA.
* Shirley Arnold, chairman of Telkom SA, retired.

* Zambia Development Agency plans to sell up to 75% of state-owned Zamtel.
* Jorg Erlemeier was appointed head of Nokia Siemens Networks' MEA operation.

Altech and Seacom will form a strategic partnership.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* The 50th anniversary (18 September) of Cobol, the computer language that today still underpins the modern world. According to Forrester Research, 32% of enterprises still use Cobol for development or maintenance.
* Adobe acquired Omniture, a provider of online business optimisation software, for $1.8 billion. Last year, Omniture had annual revenue of almost $300 million.
* Avaya purchased Nortel Networks' Enterprise Solutions division for $915 million, in an auction also contested by Siemens Enterprise Communications.
* CA bought NetQoS, a provider of network performance management and service delivery solutions, for $200 million.
* Google acquired Recaptcha, a Carnegie Mellon spin-off and a company that has developed online puzzles that protect Web sites and digitise printed text.
* Intuit purchased Mint, a developer of personal finance systems.
* Navteq, a subsidiary of Nokia, bought Acuity Mobile, a mobile location-based advertising delivery vehicle.
* Shutterfly, an Internet-based social expression and personal publishing service, purchased Tiny Pictures, a developer of applications and services for picture and video sharing.
* ST Telemedia (Singapore) bought Eircom, the Irish telecommunications group. ST Telemedia already has investments in Asia Mobile Holdings, Global Crossing, StarHub and TeleChoice.
* T-Systems acquired SAP's external hosting business.
* Thomson Reuters bought Abacus Software from Deloitte.
* NEC Electronics and Renesas have merged to create Renesas Electronics, the world's third-largest chipmaker, behind Intel and Samsung.
* NEC, Casio Computer and Hitachi are to merge their cellphone operations, in a move that creates the second-largest handset maker in Japan, after Sharp.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Adobe.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Oracle, with revenue down but profit up.
* Quarterly losses from Overland Storage and Palm.

* International:
* The buyer of Nortel's Metro Ethernet Networks operation.
* A possible bid by Deutsche Telekom for Sprint Nextel.
* Africa:
* A possible takeover of Warid Telecom (Uganda) by Essar Group (India).
* South Africa:
* The outcome of talks between Telkom SA and PCCW (Hong Kong) over the latter's plans to expand into Africa.

* The online community software market will grow from $278.4 million in 2008 to $1.3 billion in 2013, a CAGR of 41.8%, according to IDC.
* The mobile handset market in sub-Saharan Africa will rise to 400 million units by 2014, up from 139 million units shipped in 2007, according to Frost & Sullivan.

* JSE All share index: Up 0.9% (highest weekend close this year)
* Nasdaq: Up 2.5% (highest weekend close this year)
* Top SA share movements: Alliance Mining (-19.2%), Ansys (+38.5%), EOH (+18.4%), FoneWorx (+30.7%), Labat Africa (+33.3%), Spescom (+21.6%), Stella Vista (+33.3%), TeleMasters (+11.7%) and Zaptronix (-33.3%)

US-based InformationWeek has just published its 2009 '500' listing. From a technology perspective, the highest ranked company was Salesforce.com at number five. Other top 50 rankings included HP at number 12, XO Communications at 14, NetApp at 26, Google at 32, IBM at 40, CA at 43 and Accenture at 44.

As there is a public holiday later this week, the next issue of Booth's Bites will appear on Monday, 5 October, and will cover the intervening two weeks.