Intel goes with the wind

The ICT world was very quiet last week, with the international scene witnessing a handful of small acquisitions, including Intel's purchase of Wind River Systems. At home it was very similar.

* Mixed year-end figures from TCS, with revenue down 12%, but profit up nearly threefold.
* AdaptIT acquired ITS Holdings, a provider of IT services to the public sector and the sugar industry, for R16 million (51%).
* Altech bought NuPay, a payments processing company, for R53.5 million (50% plus 1 share).
* The unwinding of the 2007 deal by UCS to acquire 51% of DiverseIT from its managers.
* Trevor Munday was appointed chairman of Reunert.
* Tshepo Kgage resigned as non-executive chairman of Zaptronix; and Martin Shaw resigned as chairman of Reunert.

* Nigeria's Federal Government has revoked the sale of Nitel and Mtel to Transcorp.

Look out for activities at Square One, since it seems to be in dispute with yet another IT vendor.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* Almerys, a subsidiary of Orange Business Services (part of France Telecom), bought Enora Technologies, a health monitoring software provider.
* CA purchased Cassatt, a provider of data centre automation and policy-based optimisation expertise and assets.
* Informatica acquired AddressDoctor, a provider of global address validation technology.
* Intel bought Wind River Systems, a software vendor in embedded devices, for $884 million.
* Intuit acquired PayCycle, a provider of online payroll services, for $170 million.
* Microsoft purchased certain assets of Rosetta Biosoftware, a business unit of the Merck & Company group, in a deal that strengthens the former's position in the Life Sciences industry.
* Prime View International (Taiwan) bought E Ink for $215 million. Prime View is the maker of the screens for Kindle e-book readers; while E Ink was a pioneer of the technology that allows digital books to electronically 'fix' words and images onto the screen.
* SS&C technologies, a financial software and software-enabled services provider, acquired Unisys' Maximis asset management software business.
* French sovereign fund, Fonds Strategique d'Investissement, made an 8% investment in Gemalto.
* US-based Micron Technology is to spin off 65% of its imaging unit (Aptina Imaging) in a transaction that will put two private equity companies, Riverwood Capital and TPG Capital, in control of the business.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from SAIC.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Wind River Systems (revenue down, but profit up).
* Quarterly losses from ADC, Blue Coat Systems, KCom (Kingston Communications).
* Bill Halbert was appointed chairman of Kcom.

* International:
* The outcome of the proposed $1.8 billion acquisition by EMC of Data Domain, which is already the subject of a takeover proposal by NetApp.

* Africa:
* The outcome of the battle for Mobinil (Egypt) shares between France Telecom and Orascom Telecom.
* South Africa:
* Activities at Square One, since it seems to be in dispute with yet another IT vendor.

* Worldwide server revenue declined 24% in Q109, with IBM retaking top spot from HP, reports Gartner.
* Worldwide external disk storage revenue declined 13.6% in Q109, with Dell suffering the least shrinkage among the top six players, reports IDC.
* Global chip sales in 2009 will drop 21%, according to the Semiconductor Association.

* JSE All share index: Up 1.7% (highest weekend close since September 2008)
* Nasdaq: Up 4.2% (highest weekend close since October 2008)
* Top SA share movements: African Cellular Towers (+13.6%), Alliance Mining (+22.7%), DTH (+14.3%), Dynamic Cables (+59.1%), ISA (+40%), Mustek (+56.9%), Stella Vista (-13.6%), TCS (-33.3%), TeleMasters (+14.1%) and Zaptronix (+100%)

Datamonitor recently published its rankings of the IT services market. The top two spots were taken by IBM and HP, as expected. However, Fujitsu, Accenture, CSC and T-Systems came in at numbers three, four, five and six respectively. Other interesting positions were BT Global Systems at seven, Atos Origin at 11, Tata Consultancy Services at 16 and Logica at 17.