DST strikes again

Both the international and local ICT markets were quiet last week.

On the international scene, Atos Origin was renamed Atos following its conclusion of the Siemens IT Solutions & Services acquisition. A number of small takeovers also took place, including the fourth by DST Systems in the last two months.

At home, the acquisitions by Datatec and EOH were the key stories.

* A positive trading update from Morvest Business Group.
* Datatec acquired US-based Netarx, a Cisco gold partner and provider of managed services, data centre and collaboration IT solutions, for $34 million.
* EOH bought TSS Managed Services, a provider of ICT infrastructure managed services, for R130.5 million.
* MIH Allegro, the Polish subsidiary of Naspers, acquired 71.2% of Markafoni, a Turkish e-commerce and fashion company.
* Pinnacle Technology made a R16.8 million investment in Datanet, raising its shareholding in the company to 100%.
* EOH was named the local representative of Invensys Operations Management in sub-Saharan Africa.
* Clive Brindley was appointed HP's software channel manager for SA; and Michael Davies was named MD of ContinuitySA.
* Norbert Gachet resigned as HP's software channel manager for SA.

* The Egyptian government has put activities regarding its fourth mobile licence on hold.
* Eddy Njoroge was appointed chairman of Telkom Kenya.

Facebook is integrating Skype video chat into its social network.

Paul Booth, MD, Global Research Partners

* BMC Software purchased Aeroprise, a provider of technology that lets companies extend their technical support functions to BlackBerrys and other mobile devices.
* Compuware bought dynaTrace Software, a provider of application performance monitoring and diagnostic software, for $256 million.
* DST Systems acquired IntelliSource Healthcare, a creator of software for health insurers. This is DST's fourth acquisition in the last two months.
* eBay purchased Zong, a mobile payments firm, for $240 million.
* HTC bought S3 Graphics, a graphics-technology licensing company, for $300 million.
* JP Morgan acquired Apac Customer Services, an outsourcing company, for $470 million.
* A consortium that includes KKR and Silver Lake Partners bought Go Daddy, a Web hosting company, in a deal worth $2.25 billion.
* Tencent Holdings purchased Kingsoft, a software developer, for $114.6 million (15.7%).
* Twitter acquired BackType, a start-up that helps publishers measure the impact of their social media use.
* Alibaba.com plans to launch its own mobile operating system in Q3 this year.
* Atos Origin has completed its acquisition of Siemens IT Solutions & Services and has renamed itself Atos.
* Baidu, China's largest search engine company, has signed a deal with Microsoft's Bing to offer English language search to Baidu users.
* Baidu and NTT DoCoMo will form a joint venture in China to distribute games and other mobile phone content.
* Facebook is integrating Skype video chat into its social network.
* Software AG has entered an alliance with Harte-Hanks' Trillium Software, a move that is intended to create a seamless master data management experience for its customers.

* Excellent quarterly results from HTC.
* Quarterly losses from OCZ Technology.
* Rupert Pearce was named CEO of Inmarsat; and Andrew Sukawaty was appointed executive chairman of Inmarsat (was CEO).
* A planned IPO by deal-of-the-day Web site, LivingSocial, a competitor to Groupon.

International:
* A possible merger between Portugal Telecom and Oi (Brazil).

South Africa:
* Further developments regarding the unbundling of the local loop.

* The total value of mobile payments for digital and physical goods, money transfers and near-field communications transactions will reach $670 billion by 2015, up from $240 billion this year, according to Juniper Research.
* The value of global mobile transactions will exceed $1 trillion by 2015, a CAGR of 56% from this year, according to the Yankee Group's Mobile Money Forecast.
* Worldwide SaaS revenue is forecast to reach $12.1 billion this year, a 20.7% increase from 2010, according to Gartner.

* JSE All share index: Up 0.2%
* Nasdaq: Up 1.6%
* Top SA share movements: Ansys (+20%), Cape Empowerment (+25%), EOH (+16.3%), Huge Group (+14.3%), IFCA Technologies (+100%), Net 1 UEPS Technologies (+13.2%), Poynting Antennas (-75%), Stella Vista (+20%), and TeleMasters (-12.5%)

IDate, founded in 1977, is one of Europe's foremost market analysis and consulting companies. Its mission is to provide assistance in strategic decision-making in the telecommunications, Internet and media industries.

One of its outputs is its annual yearbook, the DigiWorld Yearbook, the 2011 version of which has recently been published. I will use some of its findings in my column.

DigiWorld segments the market a little differently from other analyst organisations, and its view of the last few years and its projections to 2014 are summarised in the following chart (the numbers are in billion EUR):