Canon spends a healthy sum

Canon's multibillion-dollar acquisition and yet another take-over by IBM were the highlights of the international ICT market last week.

At home, the latest situation update from Altron was probably the most significant piece of local news.

* Mixed year-end figures from MTN Zakhele, with revenue up but profit down.
* A negative trading update from Altron.
* African Rainbow Minerals made an 18.1% investment in Metrofibre Networx, the fibre broadband company led by former Absa CEO Steve Booysen.
* Renewed JSE cautionaries by Altron and TCS.
* The appointment of Christopher Geerdts (ex-MTN executive) as COO of OTEL Telecoms.

* Botswana Telecommunications' IPO was oversubscribed and will list on the BSE on 8 April.
* NetOne CEO Reward Kangai has been sent on forced leave after the company's board sanctioned a forensic audit into the affairs of Zimbabwe's second largest mobile phone operator.

Sony acquired Michael Jackson's stake in their joint music business.

* Canon acquired Toshiba's medical equipment unit for $5.9 billion.
* Coherent bought Rofin-Sinar Technologies, a laser products company, for $942 million.
* Daktronics purchased ADFLOW Networks, which specialises in delivering digital media solutions to retailers, convenience stores and other businesses throughout North America.
* IBM acquired Octevia, a privately owned software as a service systems integrator specialising in Microsoft Dynamics CRM solutions for public sector organisations.
* Ingram Micro bought NETXUSA, a unified communications and collaboration value-added distributor focused on VOIP solutions and IP phones for telecommunications service providers and resellers.
* Midea Group, a Chinese household appliance giant, purchased Toshiba's white goods business.
* Sony acquired Michael Jackson's stake in their joint music business for $750 million, thus taking control of a catalogue that includes artists Sting and Alicia Keys.
* Verizon Digital Media Services, now a part of AOL, bought Volicon, a provider of video capture, archival, compliance monitoring and clip creation workflow for broadcasters.
* Xerox purchased Imagetek Office Systems, a full service document services provider.
* Freenet, a German MVNO and reseller, made a EUR714 million (23.83%) investment in Sunrise Communications, a Swiss telecommunications operator.
* The Moscow Arbitration Court has rejected an appeal from Google and upheld a ruling that the firm broke anti-monopoly laws by abusing its dominant position with its Android mobile platform. The company now has to amend its contracts with smartphone manufacturers in order to comply with the ruling, and pay a fine.
* EMC won a partial victory in a legal battle against Pure Storage, an upstart competitor that EMC accused of infringing patents on data storage technology. A federal jury found EMC was entitled to $14 million in damages for Pure's infringement of one of three EMC patents at issue in the case.
* A German court ruled against Apple in a case over video streaming patents, handing Kudelski's OpenTV unit a victory in its ongoing intellectual property licensing campaign against major technology companies.
* Alphabet will sell its robot maker, Boston Dynamics.
* Good quarterly numbers from Adobe and Tencent.
* Good year-end figures from Pegatron Technology.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Jabil Circuit.
* Satisfactory year-end numbers from Advantech.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Cellcom Israel and Oracle.
* Mediocre year-end numbers from China Unicom and Gigabyte Technology.
* Mixed quarterly figures from TeleTech, with revenue down but profit up.
* Mixed year-end figures from China Mobile, with revenue up but profit down; and Paysafe (UK), with revenue well up but profit down.
* Quarterly losses from 3D Systems, Avid Technology and NTELOS Holdings.
* A full year loss from WANdisco.
* The appointments of Stephen Elop as group executive for technology, innovation and strategy at Telstra; Christopher North as CEO of Shutterfly; Yona Ovadia as CEO of Gilat Satellite Networks; and Scott G Stephenson as chairman of Verisk Analytics.
* The resignation of Dov Baharav, CEO of Gilat Satellite Networks (stays on as chairman).
* A planned IPO from Australia's WiseTech Global, a global developer of cloud-based software solutions for the logistics industry.

Worldwide:
* Worldwide shipments of wearable devices are expected to reach 110 million by the end of 2016, with 38.2% growth over the previous year, according to IDC. An expanding line-up of vendors, combined with fast-growing consumer awareness and demand, will generate double-digit growth throughout the 2015-2020 period, culminating in shipments of 237.1 million wearable devices in 2020.

* JSE All share index: Up 4%
* Nasdaq: Up 1%
* NYSE (Dow): Up 2.3%
* S&P 500: Up 1.4%
* FTSE100: Up 0.8%
* DAX: Up 1.2%
* Nikkei225: Down 1.3%
* Hang Seng: Up 2.3%
* Shanghai: Up 5.2%

International:
* The acquisition of TeliaSonera's Spanish mobile operator, Yoigo, by UK-based Zegona, which has made a higher bid than Masmovil for the company.
* The acquisition by Blackstone Group of Hewlett-Packard Enterprise's controlling stake, worth about $940 million, in Indian IT outsourcing services provider MphasiS.

South Africa:
* Further developments from the local telecoms sector.

Last week, I was in Hannover at CeBIT, the world's largest IT event, which had as its lead theme this year: "D!conomy: join-create-succeed", which puts people unequivocally at the centre of the digitalisation that is already under way and transforming all areas of life. Not surprisingly, there was a strong focus from the exhibitors on this as well as the Internet of things, virtual reality, robotics and drones. Apart from about 400 start-ups, the majority of the world's players were also represented.

In line with the overall theme of CeBIT, one of the most significant announcements came from Software AG, Europe's oldest software company, which unveiled its Digital Business Platform (DBP), a full set of software products, services and solutions that will help any organisation manage and accelerate the transformation needed to become a digital enterprise. The significance was further underpinned by Jim Sinur, an ex-Gartner VP and now an independent digital business consultant, who says Software AG is the first and currently the only company to offer such a platform.

Software AG has already very successfully negotiated this transition to become a truly digital business, and according to its CEO, Karl-Heinz Streibich, not a single sector of any business will remain unaffected by this ongoing wave of digitisation as it transforms work and lifestyles around the globe at breath-taking speeds. Thus, his company's focus is on helping organisations successfully meet these challenges and seize the business opportunities presented by it.

The DBP is the layer between changing markets and agile business operations; the common face of business strategy and IT strategy. It allows the creation of flexible and adaptive applications serving as a foundation for ongoing change as it enables management and governance on both the IT and business sides; integrates seamlessly with on-premises and cloud applications; provides for the design of new dynamic and automated business processes; is able to build agile and adaptive applications designed for continuous change; and can leverage real-time and historical data through in-memory technology and complex event processing, since packaged applications cannot provide the necessary flexibility and speed for the continuous change digitisation requires.

Finally, as Easter occurs over the coming weekend, my next column will appear on Monday, 4 April.