DiData buys out Datacraft Asia

The international world of ICT was dominated last week by the flurry of quarterly results; while at home the buy-out of the rest of Datacraft Asia by Dimension Data stole much of the local ICT headline space.

* The R5,725m acquisition by Celcom of Vodashop Hatfield.
* The proposed $276m acquisition by Dimension Data of the remaining shares (44,9%) in Singapore-listed Datacraft Asia that it doesn't already own. The deal will be funded by the issuing of new shares and orchestrated through a scheme of arrangement under Singapore law. On closure of the transaction Datacraft Asia is expected to be de-listed from the Singapore Stock Exchange. As the deal makes economic sense, I'm surprised it wasn't done sooner.
* The acquisition by TeliMatrix of the Safe Drive International Group of companies, an organisation focused on land transport safety solutions
* The announcement by Amabubesi Capital, the investment arm of Amabubesi that it intends to build a large ICT company similar to BCX, Dimension Data and GijimaAST.
* The announcement by ON DIGITAL Media (ODM) that it had received a pay-TV licence from ICASA
* The appointment of Hansie Fourie as CEO of Ingram Micro SA
* The resignation of Peter Ibbotson, CEO of Ingram Micro SA

* Good half-year figures from Maroc Telecom, 53% owned by France's Vivendi SA
* The announcement by the Nigerian Government that it is to merge its two regulatory bodies, the National Communications Commission and the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission
* The announcement by the Rwandan government that it is seeking a third national operator and would welcome appropriate submissions
* The announcement by Orascom Telecom (Egypt) that it is involved in a consortium to deliver a new Canadian wireless operator
* The appointments of Kevin Caruso as CEO of NITEL; James Munn as Qualcomm's VP for business development in sub-Saharan Africa; Jay Srage as Qualcomm's VP for business development in the Middle East and North Africa; and, Derek Wiggill as 3Com's Regional Sales Director for Africa, based in Johannesburg

Lenovo and Oracle have entered the Fortune Global 500 list for the first time.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* The $3bn (approx. 1.5 times market capitalisation) acquisition by Brocade of Foundry Networks to create a major provider of enterprise and service provider networking solutions. Brocade is a provider of data centre networking solutions and Foundry Networks provides high-performance enterprise and service provider switching, routing, security and Web traffic management solutions. Brocade with annual revenues of approximately 1,37bn is about twice the size of Foundry Networks.
* The EUR255m acquisition by Capgemini of the PinkRoccade, a business application unit of KPN's Getronics subsidiary
* The $120m acquisition by Cisco of Pure Networks, a home networking management software company. This is confirmation that Cisco is aiming to be a large consumer player as well as an enterprise giant
* The acquisition by Microsoft of DATAllegro, a provider of advanced data warehouse applications that will extend the former's capabilities in providing mission-critical data platforms.
* The announcement by Microsoft that it had agreed an online search alliance with Facebook
* The announcement by SAP that it has wound down its TomorrowNow subsidiary, a unit that provided third party maintenance and support for enterprise software. TomorrowNow was at the centre of a legal row with Oracle involving illegal downloads.
* The appointments of Kevin Johnson, the ex Microsoft President, as CEO of Juniper Networks and Frederic Rose, an ex Alcatel-Lucent executive, as CEO of Thomson SA, the French technology and media services company
* The retirement of Jay Bertelli, Founder and Executive Chairman of Mercury Computer Systems
* A planned IPO this month in Bangladesh from Grameenphone, Bangladesh's largest mobile phone company. Grameenphone is 62% owned by Telenor (Norway) and 38% by Grameen Telecom.
* A planned $10bn IPO by India's BSNL, the largest telecommunications operator in that country by both revenue and subscriber numbers

* According to Gartner, worldwide IT services market is forecast to grow 9,5% in 2008 to $819bn

* JSE All share index: Down 2,2%
* Nasdaq: Up 1,2%
* Top SA share movements: Ansys (-12,3%), Beget Holdings (-25%), Datacentrix (+12,1%), Digicor (+20,7%), DVT (+13,3%), GijimaAST (+10,1%), Ideco (-22,5%), Ifca Technologies (-29,4%), Poynting Antennas (-18,6%), SecureData (-10,1%), Simeka (+17%), TCS (+12,5%) and Zaptronix (+33,3%)

The Global 500 list published has just been published by Fortune magazine. Lenovo and Oracle have entered the list for the first time; Quanta Computer (Taiwan) was the largest climber and Motorola had the largest fall.