HP stuns Wall Street

In the international headlines last week, HP made an $8.8 billion write-down related to its Autonomy acquisition, and Intel CEO Paul Ottelini announced his retirement.

At home, the debate regarding Telkom's future following the release of its interim financials stole much of the local ICT headline space.

* Mixed year-end figures from Reunert, with revenue up 6.8% but profit down 20%.
* Mediocre interim numbers from Telkom SA, with revenue down 1.5% and profit down 4.7%.
* A full-year loss from ConvergeNet Holdings, with revenue down 1.2%.
* Positive trading updates from Huge Group and TCS (but still forecasting a loss).
* ConvergeNet Holdings acquired the minority interests of two subsidiaries, Andrews Kit and Sizwe IT Africa, for R65 million.
* UniForum SA has become the official ZA central registry for the .za domain.
* Westcon SA was appointed a VAR for Citrix Systems.
* Mario Pereira was named divisional MD of LaserCom; and Derek Wiggill was appointed CEO of Argility, a developer of specialist software solutions for several vertical sectors.

* Huawei Technologies has opened a new network centre in Egypt.
* Kenya will land a fifth underwater fibre-optic cable that will have a capacity greater than the combination of the other four together.
* Sage Accpac has opened an office in Kenya.
* Smile Telecom has rolled out, with Alcatel-Lucent, the first all-LTE network in Africa. Smile operates in the DRC, Tanzania and Uganda.
* Zimbabwe's finance minister says the country plans to focus on five major areas of ICT: fibre-optics, global tele-density, broadcasting equipment, ICT for education, and e-governance.
* Weather, the investment company chaired by Naguib Sawiris, the Egyptian telecommunications magnate, will seek $5 billion in damages from the Algerian government for alleged harassment and interference in Orascom Telecom Algerie, the Algerian telecoms group that operates Djezzy, in which Weather has a stake.

The number of mobile phone subscriptions will overtake the world's population in 2013, according to Ericsson.

* China Unicom bought its parent's fixed-line assets for $1.9 billion.
* Hewlett-Packard stunned Wall Street by alleging a massive accounting scandal at its British software unit Autonomy, and taking an $8.8 billion write-down.
* Cisco purchased Meraki, a cloud networking company, for $1.2 billion.
* In a deal worth $50 million, Intel will license patents and purchase assets from Creative Technology's subsidiary, Ziilabs.
* Very good quarterly figures from Nuance Communications (back in the black).
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Brocade Communications Systems (back in the black).
* Mixed quarterly figures from QAD, with revenue up but profit down.
* Quarterly losses from HP (revenue also down), as it took an $8.8 billion charge related to its acquisition of software firm Autonomy, citing "serious accounting improprieties"; and Salesforce.com.
* Paul Ottelini has retired as CEO of Intel (as of May 2013).
* A planned IPO by the end of the year by Bharti Infratel.
* A good IPO on Nasdaq by YY, one of China's social media platforms.

International:
* The outcome of the Microsoft vs Google patents trial that has just finished.
* The possible listing by SAP in Shanghai.

Africa:
* Completion of the preparations for the privatisation of Benin's Libercom, the smallest of the mobile operators in that country.
* The launch by Yahsat (UAE) of a satellite that will provide broadband in South Sudan.

South Africa:
* More developments regarding Telkom SA's future.

* Global mobile data roaming revenue will grow to $35 billion by 2017, a CAGR of 21%, according to Juniper Research.
* Global tablet shipments in 2013 (210 million units) will surpass that of notebooks, according to Digitimes research.
* The number of mobile phone subscriptions will overtake the world's population in 2013, according to Ericsson.
* Worldwide PaaS revenue is likely to reach $1.2 billion this year, up 33.3% from 2011, according to Gartner.

* JSE All share index: Up 2.8% (highest-ever weekend close at almost 38 000)
* Nasdaq: Up 4%
* Top SA share movements: AdaptIT (-10.1%), ConvergeNet Holdings (-10%), Gijima (-22.6%), Huge Group (+11.9%), Muvoni (-9.1%), Silverbridge (-18.7%), Stella Vista (-33.3%) and Zaptronix (-50%)

CRN magazine has published its 'Emerging Vendors' list for 2012. From a technology perspective, the following were included (part three of three):

* Nimbula: a provider of infrastructure as a service software.
* NopSec: a company that helps organisations assess IT security risks and deploys security solutions based on commercially viable open architecture/open source solutions.
* OS33: a provider of an IT as a service delivery platform for MSPs.
* Pure Storage: a company that provides products that accelerate random I/O-intensive applications, such as server virtualisation, desktop virtualisation, database and cloud computing.
* Revolution Analytics: a company that provides the power of predictive analytics to customers of any budget.
* SmartDeploy: a company that provides IT systems management solutions that reduce the time, cost and complexity of managing Windows clients and servers.
* Tidemark Systems: a company that specialises in enterprise performance management applications.
* VDIworks: a company that provides virtual desktop enablement and management software.
* VKernel: the provider of the VKernel vOperations Suite, an enterprise-class performance and capacity management solution, uses predictive and real-time analysis to simplify monitoring, capacity planning, reporting and chargeback.
* Zettaset: a company that delivers a fault-tolerant and highly available solution for massive data aggregation built on Hadoop.