Ghana launches first satellite

Digital Reality Trust's $7.6 billion acquisition and two more acquisitions by Accenture were the main stories of the international ICT market last week.

At home, Datatec's disposal of its Westcon-Comstor Americas business was the main local event.

* Good year-end figures from Telkom SA, with revenue up 9.8% and profit up 66%.
* Synnex acquired Datatec's Westcon-Comstor Americas business for $830 million.
* M-FiTec has terminated its acquisition of Viable Assets.
* Rand Merchant Investment Holdings, through its innovation hub for fintech entrepreneurs AlphaCode, and Nedbank Private Equity, through its private equity investment vehicle BoE Private Equity Investments, have each acquired minority shareholdings in Entersekt, in a multimillion-dollar transaction.
* SA's first privately owned nanosatellite, nSight1, was successfully launched into orbit from the International Space Station.
* Wireless Business Solutions, the holding company of iBurst and Broadlink, has been rebranded as Rain.
* A new JSE cautionary by M-FiTec.
* A withdrawn JSE cautionary by Datatec.
* The appointments of Teddy Daka as CEO of Ansys (was executive chairman); Martin Haines as MD of Ninzi-Connect; and Nhlanhla Mjand-Mncube as non-executive chairman of Ansys.

* Ghana's first satellite, called GhanaSat1, has been successfully launched. It was developed by university students who took two years to design, assemble and test it as part of a Japanese space project.
* Intelsat has opened an office in Nairobi, Kenya.
* The Nigerian Federal Government will build a $1 billion ICT company in the country to boost indigenous technology.
* Vodacom Tanzania's IPO is on track to be the largest in the 19-year history of the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange (DSE). More than 40 000 Tanzanians, many of them first-time participants in the capital market, have subscribed for shares in the IPO. Vodacom Tanzania is due to list on the DSE during June 2017.

Kaspersky Lab has filed anti-trust complaints against Microsoft.

* Accenture acquired Phase One Consulting Group, a privately held company specialising in modernisation and digital transformation for the federal market, and SolutionsIQ, a provider of agile transformation solutions for business and technology.
* Alteryx bought Yhat, a data science software company.
* Sweden-based telco group AINMT Holdings purchased up to 60% of Nextel Brazil.
* CallidusCloud purchased Learning Heroes, an innovative and disruptive provider of education content that has been saving the world from boring e-learning.
* CoreLogic acquired Mercury Network, an appraisal vendor management software firm.
* Digital Realty Trust bought fellow data centre operator DuPont Fabros Technology for $7.6 billion, its biggest deal yet. The move is designed to help it expand in high-demand markets in the US, amid a rapid shift to the cloud by technology companies.
* Professional services firm EY purchased identity and access management provider Open Windows Australia, in a bid to strengthen its cyber security service capability in Asia Pacific.
* Private equity firm KKR proposed the $1.6 billion acquisition of Australia-based Vocus Group, a telecommunications company.
* OpenText bought Covisint, a cloud platform for building identity, automotive and Internet of things applications.
* Snap purchased location-based analytics and ad measurement start-up Placed.
* Softbank acquired Alphabet's Boston Dynamics and Tokyo-based Schaft, which design and manufacture robots that simulate human movement.
* Telstra bought UK-based Company85, a provider of data centre, workspace, cloud, security and network services.
* Veritas Capital's Emergency Communications Network, whose product CodeRED can reach millions of people in minutes during an emergency, purchased competitor Send Word Now. It will merge the two firms to create a new company, OnSolve, which will aim to take on publicly traded market leader Everbridge.
* Alibaba made a $24 million (27%) investment in China-based Baison Software, an ERP provider.
* Tencent Holdings made a $44 million (7.71%) investment in Coocaa, a smart TV unit of Chinese TV maker Skyworth Digital Holdings.
* A federal judge has ordered Dish Network to pay $280 million in penalties to the US government and four states, in an eight-year-old 'robocall' telemarketing lawsuit.
* Kaspersky Lab has filed anti-trust complaints against Microsoft with the European Commission and the German federal cartel office.
* Dixons Carphone will end its US tie-up with Sprint and sell its 50% in its joint venture to the latter.
* The EU anti-trust regulators will investigate the $38 billion Qualcomm/NXP Semiconductor deal.
* European broadcasters TF1, ProSiebenSat.1 and Mediaset plan to set up a joint trading platform for digital video advertising to appeal to media agencies planning continent-wide campaigns.
* Pinterest, which develops visual search technology and allows users to save images on its Web site, has raised $150 million from existing investors in its latest round of funding, valuing the company at $12.3 billion.
* Kinnevik is selling its remaining EUR227.7 million stake in Rocket Internet SE, bringing to a close a volatile relationship between the Swedish investment firm and the German start-up factory.
* Good quarterly numbers from Ambarella and ARI Network Services.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Keysight Technologies, with revenue up but profit down.
* Quarterly losses from Analogic, Cloudera, Coupa Software, Covisint, Harte-Hanks, Okta, SeaChange International, SecureWorks, Sigma Designs, Verifone Systems, Verint Systems and Volt Information Sciences.
* The appointments of Katarzyna Iwuc as CEO of Netia; and Stu Shea as CEO of Harris's former government IT division, a $1 billion business that was spun-off and sold to private equity investor Veritas Capital in April, but is as yet unnamed.
* The resignation of Tomasz Szopa, CEO of Netia.
* A planned IPO in Frankfurt from Delivery Hero, the European food delivery company, whose shareholders include Rocket Internet (35%) and Naspers (10%).
* A planned IPO from facility management company BVG India.
* A good IPO on Nasdaq by ShotSpotter, a gunshot detection company in which Motorola Solutions is a major shareholder.

Worldwide:
* Worldwide server revenue declined 4.5% in Q117, while shipments fell 4.2% from the first quarter of 2016, according to Gartner.
* The expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) enabled services from companies including Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Samsung Electronics is expected to drive growth of the AI-powered digital assistants market, which is on track to exceed 4 billion consumer devices by the end of 2017, according to HIS Markit.
* The worldwide wearables market maintained its upward trajectory during 1Q17, with companies shipping a total of 24.7 million wearable devices during 1Q17, up 17.9% from the 20.9 million units shipped in 1Q16, according to IDC.
* Vendor revenue in the worldwide server market declined 4.6% year-on-year to $11.8 billion in 1Q17, according to IDC.
* The combined consumer and enterprise worldwide wireless local area network market segments decreased 0.8% year-on-year in Q117, finishing at $2.15 billion, according to IDC.
* Total worldwide enterprise storage systems factory revenue was down 0.5% year-on-year, and reached $92 billion in 1Q17, according to IDC.
* The worldwide Ethernet switch market (layer 2/3) recorded $5.66 billion in revenue in 1Q17, an increase of 3.3% year-on-year, according to IDC.

* JSE All share index: Down 1.3%
* FTSE100: Down 0.3%
* DAX: Down 0.1%
* NYSE (Dow): Up 0.3% (highest-ever weekend close)
* S&P 500: Down 0.3%
* Nasdaq: Down 1.6%
* Nikkei225: Down 0.8%
* Hang Seng: Up 0.4% (highest weekend close since mid-2015)
* Shanghai: Up 1.7%

International:
* A buyer for Gigamon, a US network monitoring software maker.
* Deutsche Telekom disposing of the legacy part of T-Systems.

South Africa:
* Further developments regarding Cell C and Blue Label.

The Forbes Global 2000 ranking is based on a composite score from equally weighted measures of revenue, profit, assets and market value. The following is some further analysis of that list.

Significant movements include:
* Adobe at 701 (was 837)
* America Movil at 340 (was 142)
* Atos at 822 (was 1 023)
* Charter Communications at 107 (was 784, but has bought Time Warner Cable in the last year)
* Dish Network at 395 (was 517)
* Ericsson at 710 (was 303)
* Facebook at 119 (was 188)
* Lenovo at 690 (was 840)
* Nokia at 608 (was 360)
* Nvidia at 726 (was 1 105)
* Orange at 304 (was 130)
* Ricoh at 1 202 (was 748)
* Salesforce.com at 929 (was 1 052)
* Seiko Epson at 1 423 (was 1 271)
* SES at 1 126 (was 1 351)
* Sony at 449 (was 192)
* Symantec at 857 (was 1 064)
* Tencent Holdings at 148 (was 201)
* Xerox at 1 202 (was 679, but the company has since split into two units)
* ZTE at 776 (was 1 052)

New entrants include:
* Brother Industries at 1 977
* Dell Technologies at 608
* Snap at 1 693

Departures include:
* EMC (acquired by Dell)
* Ingram Micro (acquired by Tianjin Tianhai)
* SanDisk (acquired by Western Digital)