DST adds to its trolley

The international ICT market was very quiet last week, with a handful of small acquisitions taking 'pride of place', including another by DST Systems, its third in the last few weeks.

At home, Intel Capital's investment in Altech was the main ICT story in the local media.

* Very good interim numbers from TeleMasters, with revenue up 34.5% and profit up 83%.
* Satisfactory year-end figures from Remgro, with revenue up 3.1% but profit up 210%. Remgro has several technology interests, including stakes in Dark Fibre Africa, Fundamo (until last week), Seacom and Tracker.
* A positive trading update from Metrofile.
* Gijima acquired African Legend Indigo's BMC Business Service management unit.
* Belgium-based Zetes, a specialist in automatic identification solutions and services, bought ProScan, a specialist in supply chain, automated data collection and mobile computing technologies and solutions in southern Africa. The deal was worth EUR5.2 million.
* Intel Capital made a strategic investment in Altech as part of a move to explore collaboration in the IT, multimedia and telecommunications sectors, which will accelerate the adoption of broadband services in Africa.
* MTN's subscriber based has passed the 150 million mark, and it will not, at present, establish a separate board for its international operations.
* SYSDBA has opened an office in Cape Town.
* The appointments of Debbie Zwane-Chikura as group COO of Gijima; and Barney Esterhuyzen as CEO of Digicore.
* The retirement of Nick Vlok, CEO of Digicore (stays on as non-executive chairman).
* The resignation of Nhlanhla Gasa, chairman of Digicore.

* AccessKenya has merged its two subsidiaries under one operating company.

Intel Capital made a strategic investment in Altech.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* CACI International purchased Pangia Technologies, a software engineering company that provides technical solutions in the areas of computer network operations, information assurance, mission systems, software and systems engineering and IT infrastructure support.
* Dell bought RNA Networks, a virtualisation software start-up.
* DST Systems acquired Subserveo, a Canadian company that provides software for broker-dealers and investment advisors. This is the third acquisition by DST Systems in the last two months.
* Garmin purchased Tri-Tronics, a designer and manufacturer of electronic dog training equipment.
* Oracle bought Datanomic, a provider of enterprise customer data quality software and related applications for Watch List compliance screening.
* Oracle acquired Fatwire, a Web software firm.
* Polkomtel, Poland's second largest mobile phone operator, said Zygmunt Solorz-Zak, a Polish media tycoon, has topped the bidding for the company, with a bid worth $6.5 billion.
* US federal regulators are to launch a probe into Google regarding an alleged abuse of dominance in Web-search advertising.
* Very good quarterly figures from Red Hat.
* Good quarterly numbers from Accenture, Jabil Circuit, Oracle and Tibco Software.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Adobe.
* Mediocre quarterly results from Micron Technology.
* Mixed year-end figures from Micro Focus, with revenue up but profit down; and Quanta Computer (Taiwan), with revenue up but profit down.
* A planned IPO by Zain for a 20% stake of its Iraq subsidiary.

* International:
* The sell-off by Cable & Wireless Worldwide of most of its international assets.
* Africa:
* The 'new' future of Nitel.
* South Africa:
* An announcement of a new telecommunications initiative by the former Telkom SA CEO, Reuben September, and former CFO of Telkom SA, Peter Nelson.
* A buyer for Tracker, currently owned by Remgro.

* Public cloud services spending will reach $72.9 billion in 2015, a CAGR of 27.6% from 2010, according to IDC.
* According to a Gartner and Forbes US Board of Directors survey, expectations of IT's strategic contribution will double in 2012.
* The worldwide semiconductor industry will grow 5.1% in 2011, with revenue reaching $315 billion, according to Gartner.
* Worldwide enterprise software revenue will grow 9.5% in 2011 to over $244 billion, according to Gartner.
* Worldwide database and data integration software revenue will reach $33.9 billion in 2011, according to IDC.

* JSE All share index: Up 0.04%
* Nasdaq: Up 1.4%
* Top SA share movements: Altron (+14.6%), Ansys (-9.4%), BCX 'A' shares (-14.3%), Dialogue Group (+9.1%), Huge Group (-29.6%), Ideco (-20%), Paracon (-8%) and Zaptronix (-50%)

Gartner recently announced its latest annual supply chain Top 25 rankings, a research initiative intended to raise awareness of the supply chain discipline and how it impacts the business. From a technology perspective, Apple came in at number one, followed by Dell at number two and RIM at four. Also in the top 25 were, in alphabetical order, Amazon.com, Cisco Systems, HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft and Samsung.