The Sentech dilemma

The international ICT world was quiet last week, apart from a continuing flood of quarterly results and a handful of small acquisitions, including one from IBM.

At home, speculation regarding Sentech's possible restructuring and future took much of the local ICT space.

* Mixed interim numbers from Jasco Electronics, with revenue up 6% but profit down 40%.
* Satisfactory three-month figures from TeleMasters.
* A positive trading update from Vodacom.
* A flat trading update from Dimension Data.
* Aurora Empowerment Systems bought the 45.7% stake in Labat Africa that is currently owned by Link Private Equity and Investments. The deal will see Aurora taking its stake in Labat to 67%, and the move is likely to see Labat de-list from the Development Capital sector of the JSE.
* Avnic Trading, the official distributor of Garmin in Africa, will now be called Garmin Distribution Africa.
* UCS will partner with Cordys, Jan Baan's (the original creator of Baan software) latest ERP venture.
* Tim Modise was appointed CEO of Sizwe Africa IT Group.
* A ministerial task team report says Sentech should reposition itself in terms of its core competency as a broadcasting signal distributor.

* Etisalat made an 18% investment in Atlantique Telecom, raising its stake to 100% and securing majority shares in seven African telecommunications organisations.
* US-based BizDataSoft Solutions, a provider of IT services, will open a subsidiary in Gambia.
* The Tanzanian government will require local mobile network operators to list shares in their companies on the Dar es Salaam stock exchange.

Worldwide IT spending will increase by only 3% in 2010, with the US slightly below this figure.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* Broadcom acquired Teknovus, a chipset and software provider that enables broadband Internet services over fibre optic cables, for $123 million.
* Gemalto purchased Valimo Wireless, a mobile authentication company.
* IBM bought Initiate Systems, a company that produces software that enables the sharing of data among healthcare and government organisations.
* Informatica acquired Siperian, a master data management infrastructure technology provider, for $130 million.
* Unisys sold off its cheque and cash automation equipment business to a private equity company.
* Google plans to open a store selling online business software that integrates with its Web services.
* Very good quarterly figures from Lenovo (back in the black).
* Good quarterly numbers from Broadcom (back in the black), MicroStrategy, Open Text and Vodafone.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from ADP, Arrow Electronics (back in the black), Asustek (back in the black), Cisco, Etisalat, Panasonic (back in the black), Sharp (back in the black), Softbank, Sony and VeriSign (back in the black).
* Mediocre quarterly results from Diebold, DST Systems, NTT and Reliance Communications (India).
* Mixed quarterly figures from CGI Group, with revenue down but profit up; Fujitsu, with revenue up but profit well down; Hitachi, with revenue down but profit up and back in the black; Lexmark, with revenue down but profit up; Pitney Bowes, with revenue down but profit up and back in the black; and Unisys, with revenue down but profit up and back in the black.
* Quarterly losses from Alvarion, NCR, NetSuite and SGI.
* Hiroaki Nakanishi was appointed president of Hitachi, and Stephane Richard was named CEO of France Telecom.
* The resignations of Didier Lombard, CEO of France Telecom (stays on as chairman); Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun Microsystems; and Saad Al Barrak, deputy chairman and CEO of Zain.

* International:
* A possible buyer for Leap Wireless.
* A possible IPO of T-Mobile USA.
* The possible acquisition by Iron Mountain of Mimosa Systems, a provider of next-generation content archiving solutions, and a company that was expected to file for an IPO later this year. Iron Mountain has also been rumoured to be interested in buying Mimecast.
* A possible merger of Telefonica and Telecom Italia.

* South Africa:
* A possible strengthening of the BEE shareholding in Datacentrix.

* The shipment of tablet devices will reach four million this year, growing annually to about 57 million by 2015, according to ABI Research.
* Worldwide IT spending will increase by only 3% in 2010, with the US slightly below this figure, according to IDC.
* Global chip sales declined 9% in 2009 to $226.3 billion, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association.
* Global smartphone shipments grew 30% in Q409 to reach 53 million units, according to Strategy Analytics.

* JSE All share index: Down 3.3%
* Nasdaq: Down 0.3%
* Top SA share movements: Dynamic Cables (+20%), Huge (+15.9%), Labat Africa (-34.8%), Paracon (-17.9%), Poynting Antennas (+50%), SecureData (+17.6%), Simeka (-15%), Spescom (-16.2%), Stella Vista (-9.1%) and Zaptronix (+33.3%)

Fortune magazine has published its latest 'Best company to work for' listings. From a technology perspective, SAS comes in at number one (number 20 last year); Google at number four; NetApp at seven; Qualcomm at nine; and Cisco at 16. Also included in the top 100 (alphabetically), are Accenture, Adobe, Brocade, Intel, Intuit, Microsoft and Salesforce.com.