Oracle buys Xsigo

The international ICT market was quiet last week, with the strategic acquisition of Xsigo by Oracle being the most important story, as it sets up the latter to compete in the space in which VMware has been dominant.

At home, it was very quiet, with no particularly significant story.

* A positive trading update from Blue Label Telecoms.
* A final liquidation order has been made against African Cellular Towers.
* Servaas Venter was named acting country manager for EMC.

OnMobile Tanzania has been ordered to halt operations while it awaits its trading licence.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* Intelsat launched Intelsat 20, a satellite that will host the largest DTH platform in Africa.
* Atlantic Wireless (Libercell) in Liberia has been shut down.
* OnMobile Tanzania has been ordered to halt operations while it awaits its trading licence.

* AT&T acquired NextWave Wireless, a wireless technology company, for $600 million.
* CenturyLink's subsidiary, Savvis, bought Ciber IT's outsourcing business.
* Google purchased Wildfire Interactive, a start-up that helps companies market their wares via social media, for over $250 million.
* Oracle acquired Xsigo, a virtual networking concern.
* Synopsys, a chip-design software maker, bought SpringSoft, a Taiwanese chip-design software automation company, for $406 million.
* SAP has agreed to pay Oracle $360 million in damages for copyright infringement allegations.
* Seiko Epson will pay $150 million to Motorola Mobility to settle their LCD dispute.
* Excellent quarterly results from Yandex.
* Very good quarterly figures from CommVault, Cray (back in the black) and Seagate Technology.
* Good quarterly numbers from American Tower and Diebold.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from ADP, Amdocs, Comcast, DST Systems, Fiserv, Garmin, Gartner, MicroStrategy, Telecom Italia (back in the black) and Teradata.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Arrow Electronics, Atmel, HTC and Pitney Bowes.
* Mixed quarterly figures from AVG, with revenue up but profit down; BMC Software, with revenue up (just) but profit down; Hitachi, with revenue down but profit up; LinkedIn, with revenue up but profit down; Panasonic, with revenue down but back in the black; and Softbank, with revenue up but profit down.
* Quarterly losses from Alvarion, Guidance Software, Interactive Intelligence, Quantum, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba.
* The appointments of Hans-Holger Albrecht as CEO of Millicom International Cellular; and Nick Jeffrey as CEO of Cable & Wireless Worldwide (CWW), which is now within the Vodafone Group.
* The resignations of Gavin Darby, CEO of CWW; Mikael Grahne, president and CEO of Millicom International Cellular; and Ross Levinsohn, interim CEO of Yahoo.
* A satisfactory IPO on Nasdaq by Eloqua, a provider of performance management software solutions.

International:
* The winner of Kodak's patents. Apple and Google have emerged as the frontrunners.
Africa:
* A new ICT policy for Zimbabwe that is currently being formulated.
* Plans by Ghana to dominate the ICT sector in West Africa.
South Africa:
* Further developments regarding Business Connexion and its cautionary; and Telkom SA and its future.

* Worldwide media tablet shipments rose 66.2% in Q2 to reach an estimated 25 million shipments, according to IDC.

* JSE All share index: Up 1.7% (highest-ever weekend close)
* Nasdaq: Up 0.3%
* Top SA share movements: Amecor (+36.1%), Blue Label Telecoms (+9.2%), ConvergeNet (+12.1%), Digicore (-8.6%), FoneWorx (+19.6%), Huge (+15%), Ifca Technologies (-14.3%), MICROmega (+10.4%), Morvest (+11.8%) and Telemasters (+22.5%)

The recently published book, 'Startup Asia', by Rebecca Fannin, explores the top strategies for cashing in on Asia's innovation boom. The book is filled with many tables/statistics about this region. The following are just some of the more interesting numbers:

* China is now the second largest venture capital market, followed by India.
* China ranks fourth in the world for new patent applications, with Huawei Technologies and ZTE among the top four businesses on the patent scales.
* In 2010, China accounted for 22 of the 61 venture-financed IPOs in the US.
* China tops the world for Web and cell connections, with 440 million Internet surfers and 840 million mobile service subscribers in 2010, with India not far behind with 673 million mobile callers.
* As of the end of 2010, Tencent, Baidu and Yahoo Japan were number three, number five and seven in the list of the most valuable Internet companies.

The book also discusses the rapid rise of Vietnam as another of the major players of the future, a location where much manufacturing of hi-tech goods is now being undertaken, having moved out of mainland China.