Google buys Xively

Acquisitions by Google, OpenText and Oracle dominated the international ICT market last week.

At home, the news regarding the South African Gupta empire was the highlight of a quiet tech week.

* Mixed interim numbers from Jasco, with revenue up 6.2% but profit down 27.2%.
* Positive trading updates from Alaris Holdings, Alviva Holdings, Blue Label Telecoms and Cartrack Holdings.
* EOH acquired LSD Information Technology, a company specialising in Linux and enterprise open source technology.
* Exmile Technologies bought the assets of WirelessG, a WiFi operator that has been under business rescue since August 2015.
* The Agility Group purchased Indaba Mobile, a social mobile commerce platform that delivers content, chat and transacting capabilities via a social network.
* One of the key companies in the Guptas' crumbling business empire, Sahara Computers, has quietly closed down. Sahara Computers and two of its sister companies in the IT sector - Annex Distribution and Sahara Systems - closed down several months ago, apparently without drawing much attention.
* President Cyril Ramaphosa, in his maiden State of the Nation address, said government will soon establish a "digital industrial revolution commission" to ensure SA "is in a position to seize the opportunities and manage the challenges of rapid advances in information and communications technology".
* A renewed JSE cautionary by the Huge Group.
* A withdrawn JSE cautionary by Cognition Holdings.

* AI Technologies, a company incorporated in Ghana, acquired BusyInternet Ghana, a subsidiary of the Afrimax Group.
* The appointment of Fr'ed'eric Debord as director-general of Orange Cameroon.
* The departure of Elisabeth Medou Badang, director-general of Orange Cameroon, now appointed to the board of directors of Orange MEA as zone director and official spokesperson.

Look out for new ministers for the ICT industry following the inauguration of the new South African president.

* Citrix Systems acquired Web-monitoring company Cedexis in a deal designed to fast-track Cedexis's product adoption and boost Citrix's ability to help enterprise customers adopt cloud IT infrastructure.
* CoreLogic bought eTech Solutions, one of the UK's leading providers of innovative mobile surveying and workflow management software that enhances productivity and mitigates risk for participants in the UK property market.
* CTG purchased Paris-based Soft Company, an innovative consulting and engineering company with complementary expertise in both business and information systems.
* Equinix acquired Infomart Dallas, including its operations and tenants, for $800 million. It is one of the largest interconnection hubs in the US.
* Fitbit bought Twine Health, a health coaching platform that's geared towards those with chronic conditions such as diabetes and hypertension.
* General Dynamics purchased CSRA, a leading government IT business providing next-generation technology solutions to federal customers, in a deal worth $9.6 billion. CSC's Government Service business merged with SRA in November 2015 to create CSRA.
* Google acquired Xively, a unit of LogMeIn, in a bid to capture sales from businesses that manage a growing number of devices connected to the Internet.
* LiveRamp bought Acxiom company, of Pacific Data Partners, to accelerate LiveRamp's ability to power people-based business-to-business marketing.
* Australia's Macquarie and three Danish pension funds purchased Denmark's telco TDC for $6.7 billion.
* Russian telco MTS acquired two ticket-selling businesses: a 100% stake in MDTZK, which operates under the name Ticketland.ru, and a 78.2% stake in Kulturnaya Sluzhba, also known as Ponominalu.ru.
* OpenText bought Hightail, formerly known as YouSendIt, the provider of a leading cloud service for file sharing and creative collaboration.
* Oracle purchased Zenedge, a company that helps secure critical IT systems deployed via cloud, on-premises or hybrid hosting environments.
* Telesystems acquired the Infosys stake in OnMobile Systems for $2.49 million.
* Thoma Bravo, a private equity firm, bought a majority stake in Nintex (Australia), a workflow automation software developer that offers intelligence process automation products.
* Alibaba made an $865 million investment in Easyhome, a Chinese home improvement chain.
* A Belgian court threatened Facebook with a fine of up to EUR100 million if it continued to break privacy laws by tracking people on third-party Web sites.
* Excellent quarterly results from BE Semiconductor Industries, LogMein, Sina, Weibo and Xperi (back in the black).
* Very good quarterly figures from Arista Networks, CenturyLink, Radcom (back in the black), Varonis Systems and Yandex.
* Good quarterly numbers from Cohu, Global Payments, Nice Systems, Orbotech, Quotient Technology and SS&C Technologies.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Amkor Technology, Baidu, Du (UAE), Equinix, First Data, PC Connection, Photronics, Quantenna Communications, and Sabre.
* Satisfactory year-end figures from Capgemini and Relx.
* Mediocre quarterly results from CommScope, Liberty Global and Omnicom Group.
* Mediocre year-end numbers from Supercell.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Airgain, Applied Materials, Ceragon Networks, CyberArk, Genpact, Gilat Satellite Networks, Insight Enterprises, IPG Photonics, Iron Mountain, Qualys, Syntel, Trend Micro, Turkcell and WT Microelectronics, with revenue up but net income down; and from Arris, Groupon (back in the black) and Himax Technologies, with revenue down but net income up.
* Quarterly losses from Adesto Technologies, Agilent, America Movil, BlackLine, Cincinnati Bell, Cisco, Cognex, CRA International, Cray, Diebold Nixdorf, EPAM Systems, Flir Systems, FocalTech, Impinj, Japan Display, Lattice Semiconductor, MaxLinear, Maxwell Technologies, Mimecast, MuleSoft, NetApp, PDF Solutions, Pixelworks, QuickLogic, Rapid7, Sequans Communications, Shopify, Talend, Tower International, Twilio, Uber and Wix.
* The appointments of Nobuaki Kurumatan as CEO and chairman of Toshiba; Brady Murphy as president and COO of Tetra Technologies; and Satoshi Tsunakawa as COO of Toshiba (was CEO).
* A planned IPO in the US from Baidu's iQiyi, as the Chinese search group steps up spending on AI.
* A disappointing IPO on Nasdaq by Cardlytics, a provider of software that helps retailers, restaurants and service providers deliver ads to specific consumers via banking Web sites.

South Africa:
* SA's overall ICT market is expected to reach $21.4 billion by the end of 2018, and $23.4 billion by 2021, representing a CAGR of 2.9%, according to IDC.

EMEA/Africa:
* Spending on blockchain solutions in MEA is set to more than double this year, with spending in the region totalling $80.8 million for 2018, up 107% on the $38.9 million spent in 2017, according to IDC.

Worldwide:
* Total IT spending by small and medium-size businesses will be nearly $602 billion in 2018, an increase of 4.9% over 2017, according to IDC. With a CAGR of 4.7% for the 2016-2021 forecast period, spending by businesses with fewer than 1 000 employees on IT hardware, software and services, including business services, is expected to reach $684 billion by 2021.
* Shipments of consumer electronics devices enabled with wireless charging rose 40% in 2017 compared to the previous year, according to IHS Markit. In all, nearly 500 million devices with wireless charging were shipped.

* JSE All share index: Up 5.8%
* FTSE100: Up 2.9%
* DAX: Up 2.8%
* NYSE (Dow): Up 4.3%
* S&P 500: Up 4.3%
* Nasdaq: Up 5.3%
* Nikkei225: Up 1.6%
* Hang Seng: Up 5.4%
* Shanghai: Up 2.2%

International:
* The outcome of talks by Apple and Yangtze Memory Technologies, a provider of storage chips, in a move that would mark the iPhone maker's first buy from a Chinese memory chipmaker.

Africa:
* A potential IPO by Bharti Airtel's Africa operations.

South Africa:
* New ministers for the ICT industry following the inauguration of the new South African president.

Barron's has recently published its first ranking of 'the most sustainable companies in the US'. Included in this top 100 are:
* 1: Cisco
* 2: Salesforce.com
* 4: Intuit
* 5: HP
* 6: Texas Instruments
* 7: Microsoft
* 11: Adobe
* 13: Motorola Solutions
* 16: Cognizant Technology Solutions
* 20: Applied Materials
* 21: AMD
* 22: Lam Research
* 24: Symantec
* 35: Citrix Systems
* 39: Teradata
* 42: ON Semiconductor
* 44: Keysight Technologies
* 51: Red Hat
* 52: NetApp
* 61: CA
* 62: Apple
* 64: CenturyLink
* 66: Xilinx
* 76: DXC Technology
* 77: Autodesk
* 78: Western Digital
* 83: Xerox
* 89: ADP
* 94: Splunk
* 97: eBay