Accenture buys Mindtribe, Pillar

Paul Booth.

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Two more acquisitions by Accenture and another by Intel were the main stories of the international ICT market last week.

At home, it was very quiet.

* Very good year-end figures from Adapt IT, with revenue up 35.9% and profit up 40.1%.
* A renewed JSE cautionary by Alaris Holdings.
* Withdrawn JSE cautionaries by EOH and YeboYethu.
* The appointment of Ashely de Klerk as MD of Metrofile Records Management.
* The resignation of Mike Buttner, COO of BCX.

* The Uganda government has asked the local unit of the MTN Group to list some of its shares on the local stock exchange as a condition for renewing its operating licence.
* The appointment of David Helfer as senior VP of sales for EMEA at F5 Networks.

* Accel-KKR acquired a majority stake in SugarCRM.
* Accenture bought hardware engineering firm Mindtribe and smart embedded software company Pillar Technology.
* Best Buy purchased GreatCall, the maker of senior-focused Jitterbug mobile phones, as part of an effort to increase investments in technology that addresses the needs of older people. The deal was worth $800 million.
* Cabot Microelectronics acquired specialty chemicals maker KMG Chemicals, in a move aiming to expand the range of products the former supplies to the semiconductor industry. The deal was worth $1.6 billion.
* Intel bought Vertex.ai, a start-up developing a platform-agnostic AI model suite.
* Veritone purchased Wazee Digital, a provider of video management and licensing services.
* CK Hutchison Holdings invested in Nuron, a British start-up that has developed a system for putting fibre-optic cables in much smaller suburban water and waste pipes.
* Activist investor Starboard Value made a 5.8% investment in Symantec.
* Tsinghua Unigroup made a $95.34 million investment in a 30% stake in Suzhou ASEN Semiconductors, which is wholly owned by ASE Technology Holding.
* Accenture made a strategic partnership with Malong Technologies, an artificial intelligence start-up headquartered in China, in which it has also made a minority investment.
* Very good quarterly figures from Acter and Nvidia.

Cloud computing ranks as the top risk concern for executives in risk, audit, finance and compliance, according to Gartner.

* Good quarterly numbers from Accton, Applied Materials, Formula Systems Lenovo (back in the black), NetApp and Phison Electronics.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Adata, Agilent Technologies, CACI International, Casa Systems, CDK Global, Cisco, Document Security Systems (back in the black), Elbit Systems, Flytek, Kingpak and Posiflex Technology.
* Satisfactory half-year figures from China Unicom.
* Satisfactory full-year numbers from Telstra.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Asustek, Epistar, Everlight Electronics, Giantplus Technology, Oclaro, Partner Communications and Rovio.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Foxconn, Switch and Tencent Holdings, with revenue up but net income down; and from Lextar Electronics (but back in the black) with revenue down but net income up.
* Quarterly losses from Ali, Boxlight, Cardlytics, Cellcom Israel, Chin-Poon, CPT, Cree, Fusion, GDS Holdings, Innolux, Intellicheck, jd.com, ParkerVision, Superconductor Technologies, Uber, Veritone, Viavi Solutions, voxeljet AG, WidePoint and YY.
* A half-year loss from Xintec.
* An IPO filing for Nasdaq from Chinese content aggregator Qutoutiao, which is backed by Tencent Holdings.
* A satisfactory IPO on London's AIM market by Sensyne Health, an AI-based health group.

* Worldwide:
* Worldwide server shipments, based on the number of motherboards delivered, reached 3.84 million units in Q218, rising 9.6% sequentially, according to Digitimes Research.
* Worldwide spending on information security products and services will reach more than $114 billion in 2018, an increase of 12.4% from last year, according to Gartner. In 2019, the market is forecast to grow 8.7% to $124 billion.
* Cloud computing ranks as the top risk concern for executives in risk, audit, finance and compliance, according to Gartner.
* Worldwide revenue for big data and business analytics solutions will reach $260 billion in 2022, with a CAGR of 11.9% over the 2017-2022 forecast period, according to IDC. BDA revenue is expected to total $166 billion this year, an increase of 11.7% over 2017.
* Worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $117.9 billion during Q218, up 6% sequentially and 20.5% on year, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association.

* JSE All share index: Down 1.8%
* FTSE100: Down 1.4%
* DAX: Down 1.7%
* NYSE (Dow): Up 1.4%
* S&P 500: Up 0.6%
* Nasdaq: Down 0.3%
* Nikkei225: Down 0.1%
* Hang Seng: Down 4.1%
* Shanghai: Down 4.5%

International:
* It has been speculated that Lord Carter may become the new CEO of BT Group.

South Africa:
* Further news regarding government and its ICT 'restructuring' programme.

Fortune magazine has published its 2018 Global 500 listing. From a technology perspective, the following was noted:

* Newcomers and returnees:
* DXC Technology at 484
* SK Hynix at 442
* Toshiba at 326 (a returnee)
* Wistron at 432 (a returnee)

* Displacements:
* Avnet (was 414)
* Qualcomm (was 460)
* Telecom Italia (was 493)

* Ups and downs:
* Alibaba Group at 300 (was 462)
* Charter Communications at 264 (was 376)
* Facebook at 274 (was 393)
* Ericsson at 500 (was 419)
* Fujitsu at 313 (was 237)
* HPE at 409 (was 181)
* JD.com at 181 (was 261)
* Tech Data at 315 (was 412)
* Tencent Holdings at 331 (was 478)

My next column will be in two weeks as I am travelling overseas during this period. As usual, it will fully cover the intervening period.