Green IT heads hype cycle

It was another quiet week from both a local and international perspective. Globally there were a handful of small acquisitions, while locally Vodacom's run-in with ICASA stole much of the ICT headline space.

* Positive trading updates from FoneWorx and MICROmega.
* The Kelly Group's R37.85 million acquisition of Torque IT, which runs the largest ICT skills factory in sub-Saharan Africa.
* The ProScan Group bought BCA Bar Code Alliance, a label and print solutions provider of over 20 years' standing. The ProScan Group is a specialist in supply chain, automated data collection and mobile computing technologies in Southern Africa.
* The appointment of Mustek as Toshiba's sole distributor for SA.
* The appointments of Albert Fayard as GM for Epson Southern Africa and Zellah Fuphe as CEO of Plessey SA, a subsidiary of Dimension Data.
* The resignation of Hans Drummer as Epson's GM for Southern Africa, following his move to Epson's London office.

* Satisfactory quarterly figures from Telecom Egypt, with revenue marginally up but profit up 65%.
* Mediocre quarterly figures from Mobinil (Egypt), although subscriber numbers up 47% from last year.
* The Nigerian government will transfer 15% of its shares in Nitel to the Nigerian Communications Satellite Company.
* Seacom, the venture capital cable company laying the Africa East Coast cable, is on schedule for its go live date of June 2009.
* 3Com appointed NetEra in Mauritius as its distributor for the Indian Ocean Islands.

Seacom, the venture capital cable company laying the Africa East Coast cable, is on schedule for its go live date of June 2009

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* HP purchased Colubris Networks, a provider of intelligent wireless networks for enterprise and service providers. The newly acquired product line will be integrated into HP's ProCurve Networking portfolio. Analysts view the move as possibly encroaching upon Cisco's playing field.
* JDA Software's $346 million acquisition of i2 Technologies in a deal that combines two supply chain software companies, creating an entity with a global footprint and combined annual revenue of over $600 million.
* Logitech's $34 million purchase of Ultimate Ears, a provider of custom ear-monitors.
* Nortel Networks acquired Pingtel, a subsidiary of Bluesocket, and a provider of open source enterprise unified communications solutions. Bluesocket is a leader in open standards-based enterprise mobility solutions and was the first to deliver a solution that unifies secure wireless LAN, SIP-based enterprise VOIP and fixed mobile convergence.
* Chipmaker Vishay Intertechnology's $1.6 billion acquisition of International Rectifier (IR), a power management company. Vishay bought IR's power control systems business in April 2007. Vishay has annual revenue of about $3 billion and IR annual revenue of about $1 billion.
* Iran has started to sell a small stake in its state-owned telecommunications company, through the Tehran stock exchange.
* Excellent quarterly results from Tencent Holdings, in which Naspers has a 35.5% stake (revenue up 84% and profit up 93%).
* Good quarterly numbers from Brocade (profit up about 90%).
* Satisfactory quarterly results from BearingPoint (revenue barely up but back in the black; its first quarterly profit for over three years) and Trend Micro.
* Mixed half-year numbers from Logica, with revenue up but profit down following restructuring charges.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Diebold and Telecom Italia.
* Quarterly losses from Alltel, Intelsat, Nvidia and T-Systems (revenue also down).
* A disappointing IPO by RackSpace, a Web hosting and services company and the first US IT listing for over six months.

* The purchase of hardware vendors, Norway-based Tandberg and US-based Polycom, by one of the majors such as Cisco, Ericsson and HP.
* Vodafone acquiring a further share in Polkomtel, Poland's second largest mobile operator.

* Mini-notebook shipments will surpass five million units in 2008 and eight million in 2009, says Gartner.
* Infosys, TCS and Wipro are likely to emerge as the next generation of IT service mega-vendors by 2011, according to Gartner.

* JSE All share index: Up 1.8%
* Nasdaq: Up 1.6%
* Top SA share movements: Beget Holdings (-25%), Dialogue Group (+23.1%), FoneWorx (+31.3%), GijimaAst (+13.9%), Ifca Technologies (-35.7%), ISA (-18.2%), Labat Africa (-50%), Pinnacle (+17.5%), Square One (+12.2%) and Stella Vista (+60%)

Gartner has identified 27 emerging technologies and predicts that eight of these will have a transformational business impact. It recommends they are strongly considered for adoption by technology planners in the next 10 years.

The technologies and trends that are at or around the peak of the hype cycle in 2008 and will plateau in the next two to five years are:

* Green IT
* Cloud computing
* Social computing platforms
* Video telepresence
* Microblogging