HPE defeats Oracle

Oracle's court loss to HPE and a raft of smallish acquisitions were the main stories of the international ICT market last week.

At home, Neotel's acquisition stole the local ICT media space.

* Mixed Q3 numbers from Telemasters, with revenue up 14% but profit down 83.9%.
* Mixed year-end figures from Prescient, with revenue up 8.9% but profit down 12.7%.
* Excellent year-end numbers from Ansys, with revenue up 88.8% and profit up 128% (these are 13-month figures, as financial year changed to 31 March).
* Liquid Telecom, which is owned by Econet Wireless Global, acquired Neotel, which in turn is owned by Tata Communications, for R6.55 billion ($428 million). As part of the deal, Royal Bafokeng Holdings will take a 30% stake.
* Tritech Media, owned by South African entrepreneur William Kirsh, has acquired a 20% interest in big data and lead generation company Geospatial Data Solutions (GDS). Privately held Smartnet Holdings (53%) and other investors, including founder Gary Berman, hold the balance in GDS.
* Vantage Capital spent R250 million in investment funding in Vumatel, a broadband FTTH provider.
* Nedbank Corporate and Investment Banking is buying a 25% stake in Comsol, joining shareholder Convergence Partners, as the company gets ready to spend hundreds of millions of rands building a fibre and wireless broadband network in SA. The telecommunications company is launching Comsol Fibre Connect, SA's first and only nationwide, open-access, high-speed, carrier-grade data network.
* The appointments of James Aguma as acting CEO of the SABC; Teddy Daka as chairman of Ansys (was group CEO); Arnold Fourie as non-executive chairman of Pinnacle Holdings (was co-CEO); Pierre Spies as CEO of Pinnacle Holdings (was co-CEO); and Rynier van der Watt as group CEO of Ansys.
* The resignation of Jimi Matthews, acting CEO of the SABC.

* HP country manager Thibault Dousson, who was due to take up a new EMEA-wide position within the group this week, has resigned and left HP altogether.
* Tanzania's telecommunications operators will be forced to list shares on the local exchange by the end of the year. An amendment to a new finance Bill will require the eight operators in Tanzania, one of Africa's fastest growing telecoms markets, to float 25% of their shares on Dar es Salaam's thinly traded stock exchange.

Facebook has won its privacy case against the Belgian data protection authority.

* AMD acquired HiAlgo, a developer of unique PC gaming technologies designed to help Radeon RX Series GPUs transform gaming experience, increase GPU efficiency and improve the overall consistency of gaming experiences.
* Callidus Software bought certain assets of Badgeville, the leading technology provider in enterprise gamification and digital motivation, $7.5 million.
* CenturyLink purchased certain strategic assets of the company formerly known as Active Broadband Networks, a provider of software-based broadband networking.
* Cisco acquired CloudLock, a company that specialises in cloud access security broker technology that provides enterprises with visibility and analytics around user behaviour and sensitive data in cloud services, including SaaS, IaaS and PaaS. The deal was worth $293 million.
* ECI, a private equity firm, bought a majority stake in IT Lab, a UK-based technology support business.
* Elisa purchased Anvia Telecom and four other Anvia subsidiaries: Anvia IT Services, Anvia Hosting, Anvia TV Oy and Watson Nordic, for EUR107 million.
* The Epson Group acquired Italy-based Fratelli Robustelli, a leader in the textile printing industry.
* Espial bought Arris's Whole Home Solution platform.
* Gartner purchased UK-based SCM World, a cross-industry peer network and learning community providing subscription-based research and conferences.
* Incipio, a consumer-technology provider, acquired headphones maker Skullcandy for $177 million.
* Orange Moldova bought local cable provider Sun Communications, a firm that offers digital and cable TV services under the SunTV brand and provides VOIP and up to 300Mbps fixed broadband services.
* Rambus purchased the memory interconnect business of Inphi for $90 million.
* Australia's Vocus acquired fibre backhaul network provider Nextgen Networks and two submarine cable projects for EUR541 million. Vocus, which provides wholesale, business and government services, will pay an extra sum for the North West Cable System and the Australia Singapore Cable.
* Corning invested in Versalume, a new company that focuses on developing smart, integrated products and solutions based on Corning Fibrance Light-Diffusing Fibre. Fibrance is an innovative optical fibre created by Corning from a unique glass composition for maximum flexibility - it can be bent, curved and wrapped around almost anything, while maintaining bright, beautiful, and uniform light.
* The London Court of International Arbitration has ordered Tata Sons to pay Japan's NTT DoCoMo US$1.17 billion in damages for breach of the pair's shareholder agreement with regard to Tata Teleservices, which operates under the Tata DoCoMo banner. NTT DoCoMo has been trying to offload its 26.5% stake in the mobile joint venture for the past couple of years and had turned to arbitration to recoup what it believes is a fair value for the shares, in accordance with the terms of the deal struck by the pair in 2009.
* HP Enterprise has been awarded $3 billion in its 'Itanium' legal battle with Oracle, although the latter will appeal the judgment.
* Dell and T Rowe Price have settled their buyout lawsuit for $25 million.
* Facebook has won its privacy case against the Belgian data protection authority.
* Qualcomm has filed 17 fresh complaints in China against Meizu Technology, stepping up its battle with the Chinese smartphone maker, after the two were unable to reach a licensing accord in the US tech giant's biggest market.
* Sistema has agreed to buy back a 17.14% stake in its Indian unit Sistema Shyam Teleservices (SSTL) from the Russian government, which acquired the stake back in 2011.
* Spanish tax inspectors have raided Google's offices in that country.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Paychex and Progress Software.
* Satisfactory year-end figures from Carphone Warehouse.
* Quarterly losses from CalAmp and Micron Technology.
* The appointment of William Largent as CEO of Veeam Software.
* The death of Alvin Toffler, a futurist and author, known for his 1970 best-seller 'Future Shock'.
* A dual IPO filing from Line, the Japanese messaging app firm. 14 July is planned for New York and Tokyo on 15 July.

* South Africa:
* Private equity fund managers raised R29 billion in 2015, up significantly from the previous year's R11.8 billion, according to the Savca's 2016 Private Equity Industry Survey. This is the highest number on record and includes funds raised for investments in SA as well as those with geographic mandates that include South Africa. While the US and UK remain large investors, 76% of the funds raised were from South African sources. Assets under management in the South African private equity industry grew by R15 billion year on year to reach R165 billion by the end of last year.

* Worldwide:
* Vendor revenue from sales of infrastructure products (server, storage, and Ethernet switch) for cloud IT, including public and private cloud, grew by 3.9% year over year to $6.6 billion in 1Q16, on slowed demand from the hyperscale public cloud sector, according to IDC.
* Global revenue from automotive telematics systems will grow at a CAGR of more than 19% to $4.2 billion by the end of 2021, according to IHS Automotive.
* 5G networks will be up and running in 20 markets in five years, and Global 5G subscriptions will reach 24 million by the end of 2021, according to Ovum.

* JSE All share index: Up 1.3%
* FTSE100: Up 7.2% (highest weekend close this year)
* DAX: Up 2.3%
* NYSE (Dow): Up 3/2%
* S&P 500: Up 3.2% (highest weekend close this year)
* Nasdaq: Up 3.3%
* Nikkei225: Up 4.9%
* Hang Seng: Up 3.6%
* Shanghai: Up 2.7%

* International:
* Intel disposing of its cyber security unit (McAfee).
* Alipay, a unit of Alibaba, taking a stake of up to 25% in Wirecard, the German banking software company.
* The possible sale of Epicor Software by Apax Partners, after fielding interest from private equity suitors amid a boom in technology company buyouts.
* The possible acquisition by Apple of Jay Z's Tidal Music Service.

* South Africa:
* Further news on the Stella/Prescient discussions.

LinkedIn has released its first Top Attractors list, which includes a ranking of the 40 most sought-after companies around the world. The networking site used its extensive data from more than 433 million members to craft the list, which was created using data on job applications, views on companies' career pages, member engagement and retention of new hires. In the list, from a technology perspective, are:
* 1: Apple
* 2: Salesforce.com
* 3: Facebook
* 4: Google
* 5: Amazon.com
* 6: Microsoft
* 11: Oracle
* 15: Adobe
* 20: IBM
* 22: Cisco
* 26: Dell
* 28: Huawei
* 32: Twitter
* 34: Accenture