Bartz gets the boot

The ousting of Yahoo's CEO was the dominant story in the international ICT world last week. At home, Adcorp's acquisition of Paracon took pride of place.

* Satisfactory year-end figures from CompuClearing, with revenue up 14% and profit up 4%.
* A positive trading update from Remgro.
* Adcorp bought Paracon for R265 million. If successful, it will culminate in the termination of the listing of Paracon.
* Altech acquired SetOne, a German set-top box maker.
* Tier One Electronics, a Durban-based in-car DVD and accessories solutions provider, is opening an office in Centurion, Gauteng.

* The appointments of Shivan Bhargava as MD of Airtel Kenya; and Rene Meza as MD of Vodacom Tanzania.
* The resignations of Dietlof Mare, MD of Vodacom Tanzania; and Rene Meza, MD of Airtel Kenya.

* Adobe purchased certain assets of IRIDAS, a provider of high-performance tools for digital colour grading and the enhancement of professional film and video content.
* CSC bought Maricom Systems, a provider of BI and data management solutions.
* Google acquired Zagat, a popular dining ratings authority, for $125 million.
* Hitachi/HDS purchased BlueArc, a provider of scalable and high-performance file storage systems, for $600 million.
* Open Text bought Operitel, a company specialising in learning management systems and enterprise learning portals.
* Qualcomm acquired the HQV and FRC video processing assets of Integrated Device Technology.
* SAP bought Right Hemisphere, a provider of visual enterprise solutions.
* Groupon has temporarily put its planned IPO on ice.
* Excellent half-year numbers from Facebook.
* Good quarterly numbers from Verifone and VimpelCom.
* Good full-year figures from Kofax.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Mobile TeleSystems (MTS Russia).
* Quarterly losses from Sycamore Networks.
* Martin Anstice was named CEO of Lam Research.
* Stephen Newberry resigned as CEO of Lam Research (will stay on as vice-chairman).
* Carol Bartz was dismissed as CEO of Yahoo.

Groupon has temporarily put its planned IPO on ice.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* International:
* The winner of the bid for Hulu, a US-based video streaming service. The bidders seem to include AllThingsDigital, Amazon, Dish, Google and Yahoo.
* The possible 20% investment by Toshiba in Westinghouse Electric, ie, buying the stake currently owned by Shaw Group.
* A possible tie-up between AOL and Yahoo.
* Africa:
* The acquisition by France Telecom of an operator in Congo.
* South Africa:
* Further developments regarding a possible tie-up between Orange and Business Connexion.

* The worldwide hardcopy peripherals market grew 6% in Q211, with shipments of 29 million units, according to IDC.
* The worldwide external controller-based disk storage market grew 11.6% in Q211 to reach $5.1 billion, with Hitachi/HDS taking over the number five slot from Dell, according to Gartner.
* Worldwide PC shipments will slow to 3.8% in 2011, with a unit increase of 10.9% in 2012, according to Gartner.

* JSE All share index: Down 0.3%
* Nasdaq: Up 1.6%
* Top SA share movements: Ansys (-10.3%), CompuClearing (+52.4%), ConvergeNet (-12.5%), Ideco (+77.8%), Ifca Technologies (-21.4%) and Poynting Antennas (-26.7%)

Every year, VentureWire editors and an advisory board of seasoned venture capitalists select the FASTech50. It represents the most innovative start-ups across the technology industry developing data storage, cloud, social media, Web, software, healthcare and other technologies for consumers and enterprises.

This year's list includes the following companies, which I thought were particularly interesting:

* Apptio, a software as a service company, with technology that enables managers to track IT costs at a time when virtualisation and cloud computing are making the task of allocating expenses to various departments even harder.
* Factual, a company that seeks to structure and verify data in an endless number of verticals around the world, and make it available to mobile and Web application developers. Its data sets, culled from both private and public sources, include everything from CEO compensation and bottled beers to school rankings and local business listings.
* Nimble Storage, a company whose storage system combines flash memory with high-capacity disk to bring together storage, backup and disaster recovery in one device. This not only saves money for businesses with limited IT staff, but also the time and inconvenience of having to back up data every day or week.
* Nutanix. For years, Google and other Web companies have been combining storage and computing in a single appliance. This company brings that capability to all data centres, with software based on concepts from the Google File System, which runs many servers in a single cluster.
* Sencha, which offers a number of open source Web application frameworks and tools to help software developers create feature-rich Web and mobile applications, and has Best Buy, Dell and Salesforce.com among its long list of customers.