HP, Alcatel-Lucent team up

The ICT world was quiet on both the international and local fronts last week. The HP/Alcatel-Lucent alliance was the main overseas story, while Sekunjalo's sell-off of its Synergy unit seemed to be the main talking point locally.

* Very good year-end figures from Alliance Mining, with revenue and profit both up over 50%.
* A mixed trading update from Naspers.
* Kovacs Investments 901, a BEE investor, bought Synergy Business Intelligence, a subsidiary of Sekunjalo Investments, for R27.4 million.
* The France Telecom-instigated Africa Coast to Europe submarine cable system will now be extended from Gabon to South Africa, connecting all the countries along the west coast of Africa from Morocco southwards. The cable was originally planned to be from France to Gabon only.
* Deltalink Consulting was appointed the southern Africa distributor for PSIGEN Software.
* Ian Halliday was named MD of iBurst South Africa; and Jannie van Zyl was appointed group CEO of iBurst.

* The Mozambique government will sell a small stake (initially 5%) in mCel, the state-owned cellular provider.

The worldwide server market will decline 29.6% in Q209 to $10.6 billion, according to IDC.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* Amazon.com acquired SnapTell, a visual product search company.
* Oracle purchased the assets of Conformia Software, a provider of product and process life cycle management software. Conformia was once backed by a venture capital fund operated by SAP.
* HP and Alcatel-Lucent intend to sign a 10-year global alliance that will help customers leverage the convergence of telecommunications and IT.
* Very good quarterly figures from Research In Motion.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Adobe and Progress Software.
* A EUR430 million rights issue by TomTom.

* International: A possible 10% investment in Elpida Memory by the Taiwan Memory Company.
* South Africa: Telkom SA's annual results.

* The worldwide application development software market grew 4.2% in 2008 to $7.3 billion, reported Gartner.
* The worldwide server market will decline 29.6% in Q209 to $10.6 billion, according to IDC.

US-based Computerworld has published its '100 Best Places to work in IT 2009' list. From a technology vendor perspective, Verizon Wireless was at number seven, Sun Microsystems at number 13 and SAS Institute at 19. Very few other technology companies made it into the top 50.

I am overseas on business; therefore my next column will only appear on 5 July, but will cover the full intervening period.