IBM bags Cognos

The international world of ICT was dominated last week by IBM`s acquisition of Cognos, the largest deal done by the former. At home, the listing of Blue Label Telecoms, and Microsoft`s 10% investment in it, stole much of the local ICT media space.

* Excellent year-end figures from Vox Telecom, with revenue and profit both up about five times.
* Excellent interim numbers from African Cellular Towers.
* Very good year-end figures from Paracon Holdings.
* Good year-end figures from Dimension Data, with revenue up 23% and profit more than double.
* Positive trading updates from Naspers and UCS.
* A negative trading update from Telkom SA.
* Vox Telecom acquired AmVia, a fax services provider.
* Netherlands-based digital mapping company Tele Atlas bought Georigin, its African rival, which also owns 49% of MapIT, a company that owns the right to a map database of Nigeria and SA. Tele Atlas is being acquired by TomTom.
* Blue Label Telecoms listed on the JSE. The company offers a wide variety of prepaid secure electronic tokens of value and provides transactional services.
* TeliMatrix listed on the JSE. TeliMatrix is focused on all levels of vehicle telematics, including fleet management products and services.
* A joint venture, ITQ Business Solutions, was created between Simeka BSG (50.1%) and Mindkey (49.1%), a bespoke outsource development company.
* Vodafone is likely to float Vodacom on the JSE following its acquisition of a major shareholding in the latter.
* South African investors have taken a 50% stake in the Seacom undersea cable off the east coast of Africa. The investors are Convergence Partners (12.5%), Neotel, Shanduka (12.5%) and VenFin (25%).
* Mustek was appointed distributor for Fujitsu Europe`s document scanners.
* Perry Hutton was appointed sub-Saharan Africa country manager for Fortinet, a provider of security appliances.

* Kenyan authorities announced that four bids had been received for the 51% stake in Telkom Kenya. The bids were from France Telecom, Libya Africa Investment Portfolio, Reliance Communications (India) and Telkom SA, with France Telecom the successful bidder.
* Gulf-based Etisalat is eying Africa as part of its expansion programme.
* Portugal Telecom will sell more of its stake in Africa Holding, although still keep a majority shareholding.

Worldwide telecommunications industry services revenue will reach $1.7 trillion by the end of 2008.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* Accenture purchased Maxim Systems, a defence consultancy business.
* AOL acquired Yedda, a leading semantic social search Q&A service.
* Dell bought Everdream, a provider of SaaS solutions for remote-service management.
* Deloitte purchased the identity and access management business of Iditarod Systems, a US consulting firm.
* EDS acquired Saber Holdings, a provider of software and services to US state governments, for $420 million.
* HP bought EYP Mission Critical Facilities, a consulting company specialising in strategic technology planning, design and operations support for large-scale data centres.
* IBM bought Cognos, the world`s second largest independent business intelligence company, behind SAS. The $5 billion deal is the largest by value that IBM has done.
* Microsoft acquired Musiwave SA, a provider of mobile music entertainment services.
* Qualcomm purchased Firethorn Holdings, a mobile banking services provider, for $210 million.
* Vodafone bought Perlico, an Irish provider of fixed-line voice and broadband services.
* The Abu Dhabi government invested $622 million (8.1%) in AMD.
* Trend Micro will move its R&D centre from Japan to Taiwan, which is where the company is headquartered.
* VeriSign will focus on its core businesses, which include an Internet registry business and identity-protection services; and dispose of its remaining businesses that only account for 40% of its total revenue.
* Shantanu Narayen was appointed CEO of Adobe as Bruce Chizen resigned.
* An IPO filing on the NYSE from MagnaChip Semiconductor in a move that could raise over $550 million.

* Japan`s NTT DoCoMo is willing to spend between $5 billion and $8 billion to acquire minority stakes in telecommunications operators in emerging markets.

* Handheld devices are down over 43% in Q307 as compared to Q306, with nearly 730 000 devices shipped, according to IDC.
* Worldwide telecommunications industry services revenue will reach $1.7 trillion by the end of 2008, according to the Insight Research Corporation.

* JSE All share index: Down 3.4%
* Nasdaq: Up 0.4%
* Top SA share movements: Ansys (-10%), Beget Holdings (-20%), Ideco (+9.1%), Labat Africa (-9.5%), MICROmega (-13.8%), SAB&T Ubuntu (+17.6%) and Zaptronix (+20%)

According to Robert Half Technology, the top 10 paying jobs for 2008 will be the following, in descending order of pay: CIO, VP of IT, CTO, chief security officer, consulting/systems integration director, consulting/systems integration practice manager, database manager, IT manager, data warehouse manager, and applications architect.