HP hires heads

The top international ICT news was undoubtedly the new appointments at HP. Many analysts are questioning why Leo Apotheker was appointed, but his strength as the ex-CEO of SAP is on the software side, which is HP's weakest area. The new chairman is also software-oriented, and was at one time Larry Ellison's number two at Oracle.

We could see a flurry of acquisitions in this area, and is it possible that SAP (its market capitalisation is currently $60 billion) could be swallowed up as well?

In the local market, it was a comparatively quiet week, apart from some results and the new appointment at Google.

* Excellent year-end results from Cape Empowerment, with revenue up 86% and well back in the black.
* Good year-end figures from Poynting Antennas, with revenue up 16% and back in the black.
* Mixed interim numbers from Altech, with revenue up 1% but profit down 28%.
* Mixed year-end figures from Gijima, with revenue down 2% but profit up 39%.
* Positive trading updates from Datatec and SecureData.
* TeleTech, the US-based call centre group, has pulled out of South Africa.
* Luke McKend was appointed SA country manager for Google.

* Qualcomm has opened an office in Nigeria that will serve as a hub for the region.

* AOL acquired the TechCrunch blog; 5min Media, an online video company; and Thing Labs, a Web-based software company.
* Arrow Electronics purchased the RF, wireless and power arm of Richardson Electronics, for $210 million. This is Arrow's third acquisition in as many months.
* CA Technologies bought Hyperformix, a developer of solutions designed to deliver business insight into IT operations. This deal was CA Technologies' sixth acquisition this year.
* EarthLink acquired ITC DeltaCom, a fibre-optic network operator, for $516 million (this includes debt).
* Google acquired BlindType, a start-up focused on making typing more accurate on mobiles (Google has now made more than 20 acquisitions this year).
* IBM purchased Blade Network Technologies, a developer of networking switches and related hardware and software.
* Kohlberg Kravis Roberts bought Visma, a Nordic software group owned by HgCapital, for $1.87 billion.
* Emirates Telecommunications (Etisalat) proposed an $11.7 billion (46%) investment in Zain.
* Very good quarterly figures from Jabil Circuit.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Accenture and Lawson Software.
* A full-year loss from Mahindra Satyam.
* The appointments of Leo Apotheker (ex-CEO of SAP) as president and CEO of HP; and Ray Lane (ex-Oracle) as chairman of HP.
* James McNiel resigned as CEO of FalconStor Software.

Is it possible that SAP could be swallowed up as well?

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* International:
* The acquisition of Hypercom by VeriPhone Systems, a rival credit card machine company.
* The next acquisition by Oracle, which looks like it will be a semiconductor company.
* The winner in the bid for Kosovo's state-owned telecommunications company. The five bids received include ones by Deutsche Telekom, Orascom Telecom (Egypt), Telecom Austria and Turk Telecom.
* South Africa:
* The outcome of Datatec's bid for Comztek.

* The global telecommunications software professional services market generated $43 billion revenue in 2009, with the top six players accounting for almost 43% of the market, according to Analysys Mason. Ericsson had the highest share, followed by Alcatel-Lucent, IBM, Amdocs, Nokia Siemens Network and HP.
* Energy-related costs account for about 12% of overall data centre expenditures, according to Gartner.

* JSE All share index: Up 1.9%
* Nasdaq: Down 0.4%
* Top SA share movements: Ansys (+13.6%), Ideco (-30.6%), Labat Africa (+16.7%), MICROmega (+49%), Poynting Antennas (+46.7%), SecureData (+11.8%), Sekunjalo (-11.8%), Stella Vista (+40%), UCS (+18.2%) and Zaptronix (+50%)

The Wall Street Journal has just made its Innovation Awards winner announcements in a competition that cover 17 categories. Of particular interest were the following:

* In the computing systems category: Lightfleet, which has developed a novel way of connecting computer processors using beamed light instead of copper or fibre-optic wires.
* In the network/Internet technologies/broadband category: Vidyo, a company with technology that delivers high-quality video conferencing over the Internet or cellular networks at a fraction of the cost of dedicated telepresence systems.
* In the semiconductors category: InVisage Technologies, with its QuantumFilm, an image sensor for digital cameras that uses semiconducting nanocrystals to capture far more light than traditional sensors.
* In the software category: Unity Technologies, which has created a set of game-development tools that make it cheap and easy to create 3D interactive content.

I am in the UK on business so consequently my next column will appear on 18 October and will cover the intervening two weeks.