Companies gang up on Google

The consortium 'win' against Google for the patents of Nortel Networks was the key international ICT story last week.

At home, Telkom's 'giveaway' of Multi-Links stole much of the local ICT media space.

* Good year-end figures from Naspers, with revenue up 18% and profit up 50%.
* Mixed year-end figures from Amecor, with revenue up 2% but profit down 13%.
* A full-year loss from Huge Group, with revenue also down 8.7%.
* Dimension Data acquired US-based OpSource, an enterprise cloud computing company, for R24.4 million.
* An affiliate of Helios Towers Nigeria bought Telkom's Multi-Links for $10 million.
* Johan du Toit was appointed interim CEO of SecureData.

* Craig Hockley was named McAfee's regional director for SA and Sub-Saharan Africa.
* David Venn (ex-CEO of Vodafone Ghana) was appointed CEO of Augere Holdings, which operates WiMax networks under the Qubee brand, and has access to spectrum in a number of countries, including Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.
* Sanjiv Ahuja resigned as CEO of Augere Holdings (stays on as chairman).

An affiliate of Helios Towers Nigeria bought Telkom's Multi-Links for $10 million.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* Ansys purchased Apache Design Solutions, a maker of engineering simulation software, for $310 million.
* Arrow Electronics acquired the distribution business of Seed International, a value-added distributor of embedded products.
* AXA Private Equity bought a 52.3% stake in Outremer Telecom, an alternative telecommunications operator in the French overseas region that includes Reunion. The deal was worth EUR133 million.
* CA Technologies acquired Interactive TKO, a producer of software that allows customers to predict how their applications will perform in different environments. The deal was worth $330 million.
* A consortium purchased Nortel Networks' patents for $4.5 billion. The group includes Apple, EMC, Ericsson, Microsoft, Research In Motion and Sony.
* Intuit bought the mobile banking technology assets of Mobile Money Ventures.
* Kyocera acquired Denmark-based Unimerco Group A/S, an industrial cutting tool manufacturer.
* Oracle purchased Pillar Data Systems, a storage start-up whose principal owner was Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle.
* Ricoh bought Hoya's Pentax camera business.
* Specific Media acquired MySpace, a music and entertainment Web site that was originally bought by News Corp for $580 million. The new deal was a bargain, at $35 million.
* Synchronica bought Nokia's unit that provides e-mail, instant messaging and other software for cellular carriers.
* Vodafone has bought out Essar's stake in its Indian joint venture for $5.46 billion, giving it a 74% share in the venture.
* Zygmunt Solorz-Zak, a Polish mogul, purchased Polkomtel, the second largest Polish mobile operator, for $6.6 billion. The deal includes Vodafone's 24.4% stake.
* The investments by Citrix Systems in Gizmox, the developer of Visual WebGui, a cloud and mobile delivery platform; and Graymatics, a stealth mode company that is developing a highly scalable cloud platform for content-based analysis of video and other digital media.
* GSV Capital made a $6.6 million investment in Facebook, in a move that now values the latter at about $70 billion.
* The Hong Kong Stock Exchange has suspended the shares of SMIC following the non-appointment to the board of its CEO.
* Good quarterly numbers from Synnex.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Progress Software, with revenue up but profit down.
* The appointments of John Barton as chairman of Cable & Wireless Worldwide; and John Pluthero as CEO of Cable & Wireless Worldwide (was chairman).
* The resignations of Paul Doany, CEO of Oger Telecom (the owner of Cell C); Jim Marsh, CEO of Cable & Wireless Worldwide; and Biz Stone from his day-to-day work at Twitter; he was one of the company founders.
* The death of Jiang Shangzhou, chairman of SMIC.
* A planned IPO from LivingSocial, a social shopping site and a competitor to Groupon.
* An IPO filing from Zynga, a social networking games developer.

* International:
* A split in the roles of the joint CEOs at Research In Motion, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis.
* Hitachi joining the LCD merger plan of Sony and Toshiba.
* South Africa:
* The buyout by Ideco of Ideco Biometrics Solutions.

* The number of mobile phone users making payment for digital goods will reach 2.5 billion worldwide by 2015, up from the 1.8 billion forecast for this year, according to Juniper Research.
* Consumers are on track to spend $2.1 trillion globally on digital information and entertainment products and services this year, according to Gartner.
* The worldwide IT market is on track for a 7.1% growth this year, according to Gartner.

* JSE All share index: Up 4.1%
* Nasdaq: Up 6.1%
* Top SA share movements: Ansys (-13.8%), BCX A shares (+50%), Cape Empowerment (-20%), Digicore (+16.7%), IFCA Technologies (-33.3%), Morvest (+11.1%), Paracon (+11.8%), Stella Vista (-28.6%), TeleMasters (+33.3%) and Zaptronix (+50%)

SearchCloudComputing.com has released its listing of the top 10 cloud computing providers of 2011. The list is as follows and contains names that may be unfamiliar to many.

1. Amazon (retains its number one slot for a second year)
2. Verizon/Terremark (the latter was bought by Verizon earlier this year)
3. IBM (new to the list)
4. Salesforce.com (retains its place in the top five)
5. CSC (new entrant)
6. Rackspace (even though it fell in the ranks from last year's list, it's still the number two cloud provider after Amazon in terms of revenue)
7. Google
8. BlueLock (a new entrant and a small-scale provider that's been a key test-bed for VMware's vCloud Express)
9. Microsoft
10. Joyent (kept a spot in the top 10 by releasing its platform software and forming a partnership with Dell to sell preconfigured cloud infrastructure packages)