IBM makes healthy purchases

Nokia's acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent and IBM's strong move into the healthcare sector, which included two acquisitions last week, dominated the international ICT market.

At home, Datacentrix's acquisition of Infrasol from Pinnacle, and the rebranding of the MB Technologies Group were the main local stories.

* Mixed interim numbers from Business Connexion, with revenue up 16% but profit down 58.5%.
* A positive trading update from Datacentrix.
* A negative trading update from Altron.
* Datacentrix acquired Infrasol, a subsidiary of Pinnacle Holdings, for R85 million.
* Striata, a secure electronic communications specialist, bought US-based Mass Transit, a provider of e-mail marketing tools and services.
* MB Technologies has rebranded itself as Tarsus Technology Group.
* A renewed JSE cautionary by Altron.
* The resignation of Romeo Kumalo, COO of Vodacom International.

* The sale of Nitel to the Natcom consortium has been closed following the payment by the latter of the balance owing for the deal - $252.5 million.
* The appointment of Tim Jacobs as CEO of MultiChoice Africa.
* The resignation of Nico Meyer, CEO of MultiChoice Africa.

Nokia acquired Alcatel-Lucent, a move that will create a major competitor to Ericsson.

* Apple acquired LinX Computational Imaging, an Israeli camera technology company.
* IBM bought Explorys, a healthcare intelligence cloud company.
* IBM also purchased Phytel, a provider of integrated population health management software.
* Nokia acquired Alcatel-Lucent, a move that will create a major competitor to Ericsson. The deal was worth EUR15.6 billion.
* Zomato, an Indian Internet company, bought MaplePOS, a cloud-based data firm.
* A BlackRock-led consortium made a $100 million investment in Illumio, a cyber security start-up.
* 58.com and Ganji.com, two Chinese online marketplaces, have merged. The former is listed in New York.
* The sell-off by Harte-Hanks of its B2B research businesses.
* A strategic partnership between Perpetuus Advanced Materials, a UK company involved in graphene production, and Japan's Graphene Platform Corporation.
* The EU will file anti-trust charges against Google and open a formal probe aimed at Google's Android operating system for mobile phones.
* Excellent quarterly results from TSMC.
* Good quarterly numbers from Alliance Data.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Fairchild Semiconductor (back in the black), Intel, and Linear Technology.
* Mediocre quarterly results from SanDisk and Seagate Technology.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Honeywell International, with revenue down but profit up; Netflix, with revenue up but profit down; and TCS, with revenue down but profit up.
* Quarterly losses from AMD and ServiceNow.
* The appointment of Patrick Dennis as CEO of Guidance Software.
* The resignation of Douglas Li, CEO of SmarTone (Hong Kong).
* A planned IPO from Apigee Group, provider of an innovative software platform that allows businesses to design, deploy, and scale APIs as a connection layer between their core IT systems and data, and the applications with which their customers, partners, employees and other users engage with their business.

EMEA/Africa:
* EMEA PC shipments in Q1 2015 contracted as vendors focused on depleting attractively-priced Bing inventory built up in Q4 2014, according to IDC.

Worldwide:
* Total cloud IT infrastructure spending (server, disk storage and Ethernet switches) grew by 14.4% to $8 billion in Q4 2014, accounting for approximately 30% of all IT infrastructure spend, up from about 27% one year ago, according to IDC. Private cloud infrastructure spending grew by 18.3% year-over-year to $2.9 billion, while public cloud infrastructure spending grew to $5 billion, 12.3% higher than one year ago.
* Fixed broadband subscribers should reach one billion by 2019, according to Infonetics Research.

* JSE All share index: +0.6% (highest-ever weekend close)
* Nasdaq: Down 1.3%
* NYSE (Dow): Down 1.3%
* S&P 500: Down 1%
* FTSE100: Down 1.3% (Highest-ever close during last week)
* Nikkei225: Down 1.3%
* Hang Seng: +1.4% (Highest close during the week for eight years)
* Shanghai: Up 6.3% (Highest weekend close this year)
* Top SA share movements: Altron (+9.5%), Datacentrix (+18.9%), Huge (+18.9%), ISA (+12%) and Labat Africa (+22.2%)

International:
* A tie-up between China's largest chip company, Tsinghua Unigroup, and HP's China data networking operations.

South Africa:
* Further developments regarding the outstanding deals in the telecoms sector.

The 2015 edition of The Global Information Technology Report, issued by the WEF, has recently been released. It shows SA has fallen again in the global ICT readiness stakes, out of 143 countries that were rated.

Some of the rankings are:
* 1: Singapore (was number two)
* 2: Finland (was number one)
* 7: US
* 8: UK (was nine)
* 10: Japan (was 16)
* 13: Germany (was 12)
* 21: Israel (was 15)
* 26: France (was 25)
* 45: Mauritius (was 48)
* 62: China
* 74: Seychelles (was 66)
* 75: South Africa (was 70)
* 84: Brazil (was 69)
* 86: Kenya (was 92)
* 89: India (was 83)
* 119; Nigeria (was 112)