Big companies make small purchases

The ICT market was quiet again last week, apart from the one acquisition by Blackstone Group. Internationally, there were also smallish acquisitions by Microsoft, Motorola, Oracle and SAP, but the local market news was generally focused on the results that were published, and UCS's new software unit.

* Private equity firm, Blackstone Group, acquired credit card service provider, Alliance Data Systems, for $7.8 billion. This deal comes close on the heels of First Data falling into the hands of another private equity company, KKR.

Look out for Vodacom's acquisition of Ya.com, the Spanish Internet subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* Very good interim numbers from UCS, with revenue up over 40% and profit up over 100%.
* Good year-end figures from Datatec, with revenue up 17% and profit up over 50%; and Eureka with revenue up over 20% and profit up over 100%.
* Very good interim numbers from Spescom, with revenue up 45% and back in the black.
* An interim loss from Reunert, although revenue was up 19%.
* A share issue by Beget Holdings.
* A share buy-back by Net-1 UEPS.
* Gateway Communications bought UK-based GS Telecom for $37.5 million.
* Black-owned Sphere Private Equity invested 35.75% in Barone, Budge & Dominick, a software development company.
* UCS proposed the establishment of a London-based software product subsidiary that would focus on selected verticals within the retail sector.
* The Department of Public Enterprises released its draft Infraco Bill, which, when in law, will govern the state's new broadband supplier.
* Dimension Data increased its shareholding in Paracon to about 32%.
* The appointments of Tim Lowry as MD of MTN South Africa; Tony Parry as executive director of the CSSA; Peter Pedlar as acting CEO of SITA; and Deon van Heerden as country manager for Clickatell.

* Good year-end numbers from Maroc Telecom.
* The IPO by AccessKenya, an ISP, on the Nairobi Stock Market.
* Econet Wireless Zimbabwe's intention to float 10% of its shares to overseas investors.
* Vodacom's possible $480 million acquisition of Nigeria's MTEL, the mobile arm of Nitel.
* The Nigerian Communications Satellite (NigComSat-1) was launched last week to provide services in telecommunications and broadcasting, as well as to facilitate navigation activities.

* Microsoft's $6 billion purchase of aQuantive, a digital marketing company, the former's largest-ever acquisition.
* Motorola acquired Modulus Video, an innovator in MPEG-4 Advanced Video Coding compression systems.
* Oracle's $495 million acquisition of Agile Software, a life cycle management solutions provider, and its investment in Sophoi, a provider of enterprise IP management software.
* SAP acquired MaXware and Wicom. The former provides identity management software while the latter is in the CRM space.
* UK-listed Informa acquired UK-listed Datamonitor, the parent company of Computergram and Computer Business Review. Informa owns IIR and is the company-organiser of the 3GSM World Congress.
* Philips Electronics sold off a 4.6% stake in TSMC for $2.6 billion.
* IPO filings from Genpact, an Indian outsourcing company; and Uptek, a provider of security products and solutions.

* Vodacom's acquisition of Ya.com, the Spanish Internet subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom.
* Virgin entering the Indian mobile space through a deal with Tata.

* According to the Business Software alliance, a third of all software in use was pirated, and losses from illegal software rose 15% to nearly $40 billion in 2006.
* Worldwide IT services revenue grew 6.4% in 2006 to $672.3 billion, says Gartner.

* JSE All share index: Down 1.2%
* Nasdaq: Down 0.1%
* Top SA share movements: Beget Holdings (+50%), Cyberhost (+66.7%), Dialogue Group (-10.2%), Sekunjalo (-10.5%), Silverbridge (+17.6%), Spescom (+10.7%), Stella Vista (+30%) and Zaptronix (-12.5%).
* Top international share movements: Alliance Data Systems (+24.6%), Aviza Technology (-19.8%), Cicero (-44.6%), Monolithic Power Systems (+26.6%), On2 Technologies (+31%), Proxim (-50%), Sapiens (+29%) and STEC (-30.4%).

Now that the relationship between IDC and BMI-TechKnowledge is over, does that mean SA will see IDC establish its own direct presence in this country, in the same way that Forrester and Frost & Sullivan have over the past months? Only a few years ago, none of the research and consultancy groups had a direct presence; however, now all are here or are looking to come here, which must be good for our industry, and hopefully indicates their growing interest in Africa.