Progress for Vodacom BEE

The local and international ICT markets were both quiet last week. The international scene saw several small acquisitions by some of the major players, while at home the proposed Vodacom BEE deal stole much of the local ICT headline space.

* A positive trading update from Datatec.
* TeleMasters acquired the least-cost routing business of Motion Telecommunications and Marketel, a wireless application services provider.
* The R32 million investment by Aureos Capital in Sandbox Holdings, a technology integration company.
* Vodacom announced it is to open up its proposed R7.5 billion BEE deal to black South Africans.
* The official launch of the e-Skills Academy.

* The 51% acquisition by Altech Stream Holdings of Infocom, a Ugandan ISP.
* The Safaricom IPO process will start on 28 March.
* Satisfactory year-end numbers from Telecom Egypt, with revenue and profit up between 4% and 5%.

Fortune has published its latest Most Admired Companies list; from a technology perspective, Apple is number one, Microsoft is at 10, IBM at 13 and Cisco at 15.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* Alcatel-Lucent purchased ReachView Technologies, a consulting and integration company.
* AOL's $850 million acquisition of Bebo, a social networking site.
* EMC bought Infra, a provider of IT service management software.
* The $21.4 million acquisition by France Telecom of Orca Interactive, the Israeli producer of technology for TV over the Internet.
* IBM acquired Encentuate, an identity and access management software provider.
* The acquisition by LSI, a major electronics company, of Infineon's Technologies AG's hard disk drive semiconductor business.
* Microsoft purchased Credentica's U-Prove technology, which will boost the former's privacy capabilities; Kidaro, a provider of desktop virtualisation applications; and, Rapt, a provider of advertising yield management solutions.
* Qualcomm's $32 million acquisition of Xiam Technologies, a developer of wireless content targeting solutions.
* The sell-off to Vector Capital of Symantec's applications performance management business.

* Vodafone buying the remaining 26% stake it doesn't already own, in Arcor, the German mobile operator, for EUR500 million.
* Fujitsu's acquisition of Kaz, the technology services arm of Australia's Telstra.

* The worldwide storage software market grew 11.2% in Q407 to $2.9 billion, according to IDC.
* IDC expects worldwide PC shipments to grow 12.8% this year to 302 million units.

* JSE All share index: Down 0.2%
* Nasdaq: No change
* Top SA share movements: AdaptIT (+33.3%), African Cellular Towers (-11.1%), Beget Holdings (-20%), Celcom (-10.1%), Jasco (-11.1%), Labat Africa (+33.3%), SecureData (-11.8%), Simeka (-10.5%) and UCS (-9%).

Fortune magazine has published its latest Most Admired Companies list. From a technology perspective, Apple is number one, Microsoft is at 10, IBM at 13 and Cisco at 15.

As it is Easter this weekend, my next column will appear on 31 March and will cover a two-week period.