Oracle acquires Sleepycat, HotSip

The international ICT market was unusually quiet despite Oracle`s two small acquisitions. From the quarterly results last week, good numbers emerged from Dell, SAS and Symbian, with disappointing numbers from Qwest Communications and Tiscali. The local ICT scene again was very quiet with the results from Business Connexion holding top spot.

* Mediocre interim numbers from Business Connexion with profits significantly down despite very good growth in revenues.
* A positive trading update from CompuClearing.
* Irdeto, a subsidiary of Naspers, acquired Philips Electronics` CryptoTec business unit.
* The National Empowerment Fund bought World Computer Systems.
* Blue Label Investment, a company headed by Alan Knott-Craig Jnr, acquired 40% of Wireless Business Solutions, the parent company of iBurst.
* DataPro bought Netralink, an Internet business solutions provider.
* Integrear sold off the second of its three business, Zeus, to Zader Municipal Services.
* The appointments of Alan Knott-Craig Jnr as MD of Wireless Business Solutions and Pierre Spiers as CEO of Tarsus Technologies.
* The retirement of John Hurrell as CEO of Westcon AME (stays on as chairman).
* The resignation of Guy Whitcroft as CEO of Tarsus Technologies.
* Cipher Data Solutions was appointed as distributor of CyberTrust`s products in SA.

* Business Connexion disposed of its Mauritian operation and Angolan branch.
* MTC bought a 61% stake in MobilTel of Sudan for $1.332 billion.

Watch out for further developments re the talks involving ERP.com.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* Oracle to divest Siebel`s OnTarget business unit.
* Oracle bought Sleepycat, an open source software vendor, and Sweden-based HotSip, a provider of telecommunications infrastructure software.
* Nokia and Sanyo formed a mobile phone joint venture.
* Microsoft bought French search technology company, MotionBridge.
* Sprint Nextel will spin-off its local phone business into an independent company called Embarq.
* The appointments of Michael Aviles as CEO of Vignette, Chris Brundage as president of Global eTelecom, Linda Giampi as president and CEO of Transparency Software, Robert Grasby as president and CEO of Interalia, William Green as chairman of Accenture, Mike Holt as CEO of Jam Technologies, James Leto as president and CEO of GTSI, and Gadi Tamari as CEO of Axerra Networks.
* The resignation of Michael Neuman as president and COO of EchoStar.
* Analyst upgrades for AMD, Applied Materials, ATI Technologies, Audible, Business Objects, Celestica, Cincinnati Bell, Covad Communications, Digital Insight, Honeywell, HP, Molex, Ness technologies, Nortel Networks, Richardson Electronics, Synplicity and WebEx Communications.
* Analyst downgrades for Concur Technologies, Cyberonics, Dell, Dot Hill Systems, Ingram Micro, Photronics, Sony, Valassis Communications and Visteon.
* Negative result warnings from Blue Coat Systems, Lexar Media, Oracle and TCL Multimedia.
* Stock repurchase announcements from 3M, Docucorp, Juniper Networks and Kronos.
* Job loss announcements from Activision, France Telecom and GTSI.
* Private funding obtained for JAM Technologies, a mixed signal innovator; MySQL AB, an open source database vendor; Nallatech, a FPGA computing developer; and Netli, an application accelerator specialist.
* A private placing of stock by SYS Technologies.
* A share split announcement from Palm (2:1).
* Planned IPOs from Neuf Cegetel, a French telecommunications group; and Playtech, an international designer and developer of online gaming software.

* Hutchison Whampoa`s disposal of 10% of its Italian unit, 3 Italia.

* Worldwide spending on hardware, software and services for 3D visualisation, simulation and training will reach $22.1 billion this year and rise to $31.5 billion by 2011, predicts Acacia Research.
* The wireless LAN market grew in Q405 to $263 million, a rise of 29%, says the Dell`Oro Group.
* PDA shipments reached 14.9 million units in 2005, a 19% increase over 2004, according to Gartner.

* JSE All share index: Down 0.005%
* Nasdaq: Up 0.9%
* Top SA share movements: Alliance Data (+25%), Eureka (-26.4%), I-Solutions (+20%), Idion (-22.2%), Infoware (+16.1%), ISA (+25%), Stella Vista (-30%), Trematon (+10%) Vesta (-25%) and Zaptronix (-10%).

Watch out for further developments re the talks involving ERP.com.