Splunk hits the big time

Splunk experienced an exceptionally good IPO on Nasdaq, which stole much of the international ICT headline space this week.

At home, the ongoing Telkom/ZTE situation was a key item of news.

Kenya's mobile phone subscriptions have hit 28 million.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* Very good interim numbers from Business Connexion, with revenue up 43.5% and profit up over 100%; SecureData Holdings, with revenue up 27.5% and profit up over fourfold; and Sekunjalo Investments, with revenue up 33% and profit up 26%.
* Satisfactory year-end figures from Datacentrix, with revenue up 11.6% but profit only up 0.7%.
* A negative trading update from ConvergeNet Holdings.
* Business Connexion acquired Quad Automation, a company that specialises in the industrial sector, providing programmable logic controls, supervisory control, and data acquisition and manufacturing execution systems.
* Cims SA, the local subsidiary of Affinion International, bought a 51% stake in MobiCover, an end-to-end smartphone channel enabler, supporting cross-platform, rapid smartphone channel delivery and mobile strategy enablement.
* Net1 UEPS Technologies has finalised its BEE deal.
* Miles Crisp was appointed interim CEO of SecureData Africa; Carel du Toit was named MD of Mint Management Technologies; and Sipho Maseko was appointed Group COO of Vodacom (retains his role as MD of Vodacom SA).
* David Woolnough resigned as MD of Mint Management Technologies.

* Shivan Bhargava was appointed MD of Bharti Airtel Kenya; and Wind Li was named CEO of Huawei Kenya.
* Herman He resigned as CEO of Huawei Kenya.

* DTS, a leader in high-quality audio, bought SRS Labs, a producer of audio processing technology, for $148 million.
* Software AG purchased UK-based my-Channels, a provider of universal messaging technology that will complement and extend the former's current integration technology.
* Toshiba acquired IBM's point-of-sale terminal business, which includes cash registers, for $870 million.
* Objet and Stratasys, both makers of 3D printers, merged. The former, which had filed in March for an IPO, has dropped this initiative.
* Tata Communications has pulled out of the race for C&W Worldwide, leaving Vodafone as the only party still interested in doing a deal.
* Excellent quarterly results from Seagate Technology.
* Very good quarterly figures from Qualcomm.
* Good quarterly numbers from eBay, EMC, F5 Networks, NCR and VMware.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from China Mobile, IBM, Verizon Communications and Yahoo.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Altera, ASML, Lam Research and SanDisk.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Intel, with revenue up but profit down; Microsoft, with revenue up but profit down; Millicom International Cellular, with revenue up but profit down; Polycom, with revenue up but profit down; Riverbed Technology, with revenue up but profit down; and TeliaSonera, with revenue up but profit down.
* Quarterly losses from AMD, Freescale Semiconductor, Nokia and Rambus.
* Hezi Lapid was appointed CEO of Alvarion.
* Eran Gorev resigned as CEO of Alvarion.
* A planned IPO from MegaFon, Russia's second-largest telecommunications operator, which could raise as much as $4 billion.
* An IPO filing on Nasdaq by BlackStratus, formerly netForensics, a provider of cloud-based security information and event management software products.
* An excellent IPO on Nasdaq by Splunk, a provider of software that enables organisations to monitor, search, analyse, visualise and act on massive streams of real-time and historical machine data. Its share price at the end of the first day of trading was at over 100% of the originally filed price.
* A good IPO on the NYSE by Infoblox, a manufacturer of networking appliances.
* A satisfactory IPO on Nasdaq by Proofpoint, a provider of security software.

* International:
* The possible acquisition by AMD of MIPS Technologies.
* Further details on Korea Telecom's plans for overseas expansion that still could include Telkom SA.
* Further news regarding the planned new cable that will link the BRICS countries.
* South Africa:
* Resolution of the Telkom dispute involving ZTE and its local arm, ZTE Mzansi.

* Worldwide semiconductor revenue reached $307 billion in 2011, up 1.8% from 2010, according to Gartner.
* Europe's telecommunications sector core revenue will decline by 1.8% per year through 2015, unless operators make drastic changes, including cost-cutting and moving into new sectors, according to a joint study by Arthur D Little and Exane BNP Paribas.

* JSE All share index: Up 1.5%
* Nasdaq: Down 0.4%
* Top SA share movements: Ideco (-7.1%), Labat Africa (+11.1%), Metrofile (+7%), Mix Telematics (+7.6%), MICROmega Holdings (+14.1%), Pinnacle Technology (+7.4%), Poynting Antennas (-7.1%), Sekunjalo (+7.9%) and Zaptronix (-33.3%)

Gartner has outlined 10 consumer macro trends that will impact technology, media and service providers over the next 10 years. Among the full list are unlocking gender opportunities and the social information lifeline. Please cli

As this weekend is a holiday, my next column will appear on Monday, 7 May, and will cover the intervening two weeks.