Ellison goes Hawaii 5.0

The international ICT market was dominated last week by Microsoft's two product announcements, and Larry Ellison's purchase of a Hawaiian island.

At home, the ongoing MTN/Turkcell saga and speculation regarding a possible nationalisation of Telkom SA dominated the local ICT media space.

* WNS (Holdings), a global provider of business process solutions, acquired Fusion Outsourcing Services, a BPO provider based in SA, which is owned by UK-based BGL Group of companies. The deal was worth over £10 million.
* The appointments of Sandile Swana as CEO of ConvergeNet Holdings (was chairman) and Dumisani Tabata as chairman of ConvergeNet Holdings.

* Huawei is to set up a Global Operations Centre in Nigeria, one of only three in the world.
* Jasco has expanded into Central Africa with the formation of Jasco Congo, which in turn has signed a partnership agreement with Warid Congo to manage and maintain a carrier-neutral company-location data centre in Congo-Brazzaville.
* ZTE has officially entered the Tunisian market, with its phones being exclusively sold through Rayencom.

Look out for additional developments concerning Telkom and its possible nationalisation

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* CACI International acquired Delta Solutions and Technologies, a provider of financial management and business analysis services to US federal agencies.
* Facebook bought Face.com, an Israeli facial recognition group.
* In a deal worth $2.17 billion, Insight Venture Partners purchased Quest Software, a specialist in data management and protection coupled with server management. This prevents Dell getting its hands on the business. Dell has lost out on numerous deals over the past year or so, with this being the latest.
* Intel has acquired about 1 700 patents owned by InterDigital for $375 million.
* NCR bought three Brazilian companies in the hospitality industry.
* Qualcomm purchased Summit Micro, a developer of programmable power ICs.
* Sage (UK) acquired 75% of Folhamatic Group (Brazil), a maker of accounting and payroll software for small businesses.
* American Movil (Carlos Slim) has made an additional investment in KPN, so it now owns 20.9% of the company.
* DoCoMo invested in Cooliris, a Silicon Valley a photo-sharing start-up that recently sold one of its divisions to Singapore Telecommunications.
* Tencent made a small investment in Epic Games, a 3D games technology company.

* Microsoft said its iPad challenger, the Surface, is a tablet that will run on Windows 8 as well as its Windows phone 8 operating system.
* Larry Ellison, Oracle's CEO, has bought Hawaii's sixth-largest island, Lanai.

* Good quarterly numbers from Red Hat.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Mitel Networks and Oracle.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Adobe, with revenue up but profit down; Jabil Circuit, with revenue up but profit down; and Micro Focus, with revenue down but profit up.
* Quarterly losses from Micron Technology.
* The appointment of Michael McAndrew as president and CEO of Black Box, as of 1 April 2013.
* The retirement of Terry Blakemore, president and CEO of Black Box, as of 31 March 2013.
* A delayed IPO by MegaFon (Russia) as a result of the current turmoil on the markets.

* International:
* A private equity bid for Everything Everywhere, the UK's largest mobile operator, by a consortium being put together by its ex-CEO, Tom Alexander, and possibly involving Apax and KKR. Everything Everywhere was formed in 2010 as a merger of Orange's and T-Mobile's UK operations.
* A possible merger of MediaTek and Mstar Semiconductor, two Taiwanese chip designers, in a move that would boost their competitiveness in the market for chips that power mobile devices and new gadgets such as smart TVs.
* The sell-off by KPN of its Belgian subsidiary.

* South Africa:
* Further developments regarding the MTN/Turkcell saga.
* Additional developments concerning Telkom and its possible nationalisation.

* Worldwide spending on enterprise application software will rise 4.2% this year to total $120.4 billion, according to Gartner.

* JSE All share index: Up 0.5%
* Nasdaq: Up 0.7%
* Top SA share movements: ConvergeNet Holdings (+14.8%), Gijima (+12.2%), Ideco (-33.3%), Ifca Technologies (-14.3%), Jasco (+12.3%), Labat Africa (-36.8%), MiX Telematics (+11.4%), PBT (-13.5%), Stella Vista (+50%) and Zaptronix (+50%)

The Reputation Institute recently published its 2012 Global RepTrak 100 listing of the world's most reputable companies. From a technology perspective, the following were ranked:
2: Sony (was number six in 2011 and number two in 2010)
5: Apple (was number two in 2011)
6: Google (was one in 2010 and 2011)
7: Microsoft (was 11 in 2011)
9: Canon (was eight in 2011)
14: Panasonic
16: Intel (was nine in 2011 and 10 in 2010)
21: Samsung Electronics
24: Nokia (was seven in 2010)

It is interesting to note that the only telecommunications company included in the top 100 was Vodafone at 99, and that no dedicated IT services companies were included, such as Accenture, CSC and the Indian players. Also notable by their absence were EMC, Ingram Micro, RIM, SAP and Symantec.