Shedding light on CIOs

Last week, the international ICT world was dominated by the news of Acer's acquisition of Gateway. At home, HP's new BEE initiative stole much of the local ICT media space.

* Excellent interim numbers from Dialogue group, with revenue up over 85% and profit up well over 100%.
* Good interim numbers from MTN, with revenue up 69% and profit up 17%.
* Very good year-end figures from Simeka BSG, with revenue up over 35% and profit up over 70%.
* Satisfactory year-end numbers from GijimaAst, with revenue slightly up but profit up nearly 50%; Metrofile Holdings, with revenue up about 8% but profit up over 30%; and Net-1 UEPS Technologies, with revenue up 14% and profit up 7.5%.
* Mediocre year-end figures from Mustek, with revenue up 10% but profit marginally down.
* Positive trading updates from Cape Empowerment Trust, Dialogue Group and Pinnacle Technology.
* SecureData Holdings acquired SensePost for R32 million. SensePost specialises in the provision of information security assessment, consulting, training and automated monitoring services to large organisations in SA and internationally.
* Dialogue Group invested R18.55 million (51%) in CallForce Direct, a staffing company focusing on permanent and temporary staff recruitment, placement and management for call centres.
* HP announced it has government approval to invest in an equity-equivalent project as its contribution to empowerment. This project is the establishment of an HP Business Institute that intends to train 1 800 people within seven years.
* The AltX-listed Huge Group created Huge Telecom through the merging of TelePassport and Centracell, which it recently acquired.
* Mohamed Kajee was appointed CEO of Sekunjalo Investments.
* Iqbal Surve resigned as CEO of Sekunjalo Investments (but stays on as executive chairman).
* Wintel Distribution was appointed the second distributor for Brother equipment in southern Africa.

* AccessKenya purchased Openview Business Systems, an IT services provider.
* The board of directors of Gamtel and its subsidiary Gamcel, Gambia's national telecommunications company, was dissolved. The new board has not yet been made public, following the sell-off of 50% of both companies to a Lebanese organisation, Spectrum.
* Telkom SA plans to invest $1 billion over the next five years in the network expansion of Multi-Links, its new Nigerian subsidiary.
* The privatisation of Sotelma (Mali), previously planned for last year, has now been re-scheduled for 2008.
* Paul Kukubo was appointed CEO of Kenya's Information and Communication Technology Board. This has been established to advise the Kenyan government on all matters regarding development, co-ordination and promotion of the ICT industries, and to fast-track the development of the ICT sector.

On average, CIOs keep their jobs for just over three years.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* Acer acquired Gateway, the fourth largest PC vendor in the US, for $710 million. The combined entity will have annual shipments of over 20 million units and revenue in excess of $15 billion. It will be the de facto global number three, behind Dell and HP. As Gateway has the right of first refusal on all the shares of PB Holding Company, the parent company of Packard Bell, it is likely the latter will also become part of the enlarged Acer Group.
* Microsoft bought Parlano, the developer of MindAlign, a leading application for enterprise group chat, which is expected to be added to Microsoft's Office Communications Server and Communicator products.
* Excellent half-year results from Asustek, with profit up over 90%.
* Excellent Q2 figures from Quanta Computer, with profit more than double Q2 2006.
* Satisfactory quarterly numbers from Dell and Open Text.
* Quarterly losses from Novell (revenue marginally up).

* According to Gartner, worldwide mobile phone sales reached 270.9 million in Q207, up 17.4% over last year. Gartner predicts a total of 1.13 billion this year. Motorola kept its second place, but Samsung is closing in fast and now has a market share of 13.4%, as compared to Motorola's 14.6%.
* Linux-based operating systems are expected to be the fastest growing smartphone operating systems over the next five years, accounting for 31% of all smart devices in the market, according to ABI Research.

* JSE All share index: Up 4.5%
* Nasdaq: Up 0.8%
* Top SA share movements: Ansys (+9.4%), Celcom (-13.3%), ISA (+12.2%), Labat Africa (+81.3%), MTN (+11%), Square One (+14%), Stella Vista (-23.1%) and Vestor (+15.4%)

On average, CIOs keep their jobs for just over three years, according to research undertaken for EDS by Populus. The research indicates over 80% of CIOs have a technology background and have only 20% of their IT budget to spend on new projects, with the other 80% used for maintaining current systems.