VimpelCom replaces Dell

The $4.85 billion AT&T Towers deal and the news that VimpelCom was replacing Dell in the Nasdaq-100 Index were the main international ICT news items last week.

At home, the shock suspension of Telkom's CFO and the appointment of the new CIO at Telkom were the main local ICT stories.

* The Paris-based call centre operator, The Webhelp Group, intends to set up call centres in Cape Town and Johannesburg.
* CA Technologies will open a Mainframe Academy in SA.
* MTN said its Q3 subscriber numbers grew 1.1%.
* A renewed JSE cautionary by TCS.
* A withdrawn JSE cautionary by Silverbridge Holdings.
* The appointments of Ravi Bhat as African regional director for VMware; Len de Villiers as CIO for Telkom SA; Pakamile Pongwana as CEO of ICASA; and Debbie Pretorius as GM of MWeb Business.
* The resignation of Collins Khumalo, CEO of MultiChoice SA. * The departure of Themba Dlamini, CEO of ICASA (as from 31 October).
* The suspension of Jacques Schindeh"utte, CFO of Telkom SA.

* Gilat Satcom has established a new point of presence in Ghana.
* Sage Africa has opened an office in Lagos, Nigeria.

Look out for further revelations regarding the departure of the CFO of Telkom SA.

* Crown Castle International has leased the 9100 wireless towers of AT&T, in a deal worth $4.85 billion.
* eBay acquired UK start-up, Shutl, a marketplace that uses a network of couriers to deliver local goods within a couple of hours of the online purchase.
* Google bought France-based FlexyCore, a company that develops software that improves the speed of running Android apps without increasing battery drain. The deal was worth EUR16.9 million.
* Intuit purchased Level Up Analytics, a consulting firm with a speciality in data analytics.
* Marlin Equity acquired Tellabs, a telecommunications network equipment manufacturer, for $891 million.
* NetSuite bought TribeHR, an HR software player.
* Oracle purchased BigMachines, a cloud-based configure, price and quote solution provider.
* RR Donnelley & Sons acquired Consolidated Graphics for $620 million.
* Telenor bought Tele2's Swedish fibre and cable business.
* Telus purchased Public Mobile in a consolidation within the Canadian market.
* Yahoo acquired LookFlow, an image recognition start-up for Flickr.
* The following patent and lawsuit activity:
* Diebold has settled its patent infringement lawsuit with NuSource.
* It was found that Apple didn't infringe a patent held by WiLan.
* ParkerVision has won a $173 million settlement in its lawsuit with Qualcomm.
* Corning will take control of its LCD glass venture with Samsung.
* Dassault Syst`emes, Europe's second-largest software company by market capitalisation, will spin-off its US unit.
* Following the privatisation deal regarding Dell, VimpelCom will join the Nasdaq-100 index as its replacement.
* Very good quarterly figures from Juniper Networks, Mail.ru, RF Micro Devices (back in the black) and Yandex.
* Good quarterly numbers from Akamai Technologies, ARM Holdings, Canon, China Unicom, Equifax, Equinix, Ingram Micro, Lam Research, Microsoft, Netflix, Qlik Technologies, Samsung Electronics, TriQuint Semiconductor (back in the black), VMware and Wipro.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from AT&T, Avnet, Broadcom, Check Point Software Technologies, Compuware, DST Systems, F5 Networks, Millicom International Cellular, Molex, NCR, Netgear, Rogers Communications, SAP and VeriSign.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Altera, ATMI, Belgacom, EE, KLA-Tencor, Logitech International, LSI, Maxim Integrated Products, SMIC, Software AG, Texas Instruments, Teradyne, TPSA (Poland), Western Digital and ZTE (but back in the black).
* Mixed quarterly figures from America Movil, with revenue up but profit down; Anixter International, with revenue down but profit up; CA Technologies, with revenue down but profit up; Celestica, with revenue up but profit down; China Mobile, with revenue up but profit down; Citrix Systems, with revenue up but profit down; EMC, with revenue up but profit down; Ericsson, with revenue down but profit up; Forrester Research, with revenue up but profit down; Informatica, with revenue up but profit down; Lexmark, with revenue down but profit up; LG Electronics, with revenue up but profit down; Micros Systems, with revenue up but profit down; Motorola Solutions, with revenue down but profit up; ScanSource, with revenue down but profit up; Shaw Communications, with revenue up but profit down; Symantec, with revenue down but profit up; and Xerox, with revenue down but profit up.
* Quarterly losses from Amazon, KPN, NetSuite, Polycom, Quantum, STMicroelectronics and Unisys.
* The appointments of Ross Cormack as CEO of Ooredoo in Myanmar; and Greg Young as CEO of Nawras (Oman).
* The resignations of Vic Alston, CEO of Ixia; and Ross Cormack, CEO of Nawras.
* A planned IPO from UK-based AppSense, a provider of software that allows employees to work on multiple mobile devices seamlessly.
* A disappointing IPO on Nasdaq by CommScope, a provider of connectivity solutions for wireless, enterprise and residential broadband networks.

* International:
* Buyers for HP's mobile patents.
* Africa:
* Vodafone buying out the stake in its Egyptian joint venture with Telecom Egypt, which is valued at about $2 billion.
* South Africa:
* Further revelations regarding the departure of the CFO of Telkom SA.

* Worldwide PC, tablet and mobile phone shipments to grow 4.5% in 2013, to 2.32 billion units, according to Gartner.
* Smartphone shipments to Africa were up 21.5% in Q3, with Samsung accounting for 52.1% of the market, according to IDC.
* Worldwide financial services IT spending will top $430 billion in 2014, with the MEA region seeing growth in excess of 7%.

* JSE All share index: Up 1% (highest-ever weekend close)
* Nasdaq: Up 0.7% (highest weekend close this year)
* NYSE (Dow): Up 1.1%
* Top SA share movements: Ansys (-12.5%), CompuClearing (-10%), ConvergeNet Holdings (-8.3%), Gijima (-10.3%), MICROmega (+24.5%), Morvest (-9.1%), Poynting (-8.1%), Sekunjalo (-12.3%) and TCS (+100%)

Fortune magazine has just published its annual '50 most powerful women in business' list. From a technology perspective, it is very healthy, and includes:
1: Ginni Rometty, president, CEO and chairman of IBM
5: Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook
8: Marissa Mayer, CEO and president of Yahoo
9: Meg Whitman, CEO of HP
13: Ursula Burns, chairman and CEO of Xerox
14: Safra Catz, CFO of Oracle
19: Susan Wojcicki, SVP, Ads and Commerce and co-president at Google
27: Renee James, president of Intel
28: Bridget Van Kralingen, SVP, Global Services at IBM
40: Maggie Wilderotter, chairman and CEO of Frontier Comms
42: Sondra Barbour, EVP, IS and Global Solutions at Lockheed Martin