Local firms splurge on software

BlackBerry's handset announcement and a stunning IPO from Nutanix were the highlights of the international ICT market last week.

At home, government's approval of the long-delayed national integrated ICT policy white paper was the main story of a quiet week.

* Mixed year-end figures from Cognition Holdings, with revenue up 69.5% but profit down 29.5%; Jasco, with revenue down 4.2% but back in the black; and Telemasters, with revenue up 7.4% but profit down 26.9%.
* A negative trading update from Datatec.
* The announcement that Clive Butkow, a former management consultant who spent 28 years at Accenture (formerly Arthur Andersen), is building a new R100 million fund for high-potential South African start-up technology businesses.
* Cabinet approved the long-delayed national integrated ICT policy white paper.
* The resignation of Lee Naik, Accenture Digital MD.

* Good half-year revenue from Halotel (Tanzania), Lumitel (Burundi), Movitel (Mozambique) and Nexttel (Cameroon).
* The $7 million acquisition by the Tanzanian government of Bharti Airtel's 35% stake in Tanzanian Telecommunications, the country's oldest operator, giving the former full control.
* The acquisition by the Direct Pay Online Group, East Africa's largest online payments processor, of a majority stake in PayGate, SA's online payment processor, in a move to create a pan-African presence.
* The appointments of Waziri Kindamba as acting CEO of Tanzanian Telecommunications; and Lee Naik as TransUnion's regional president for Africa.

Spending on IT by organisations based in South Africa is forecast to total R272 billion in 2016, a 3.8% increase from 2015.

* Accenture purchased DayNine, a global Workday consulting and employment services provider.
* The acquisition by Akamai of Concord Systems, a provider of technology for the high performance processing of data at scale.
* IBM bought Promontory Financial Group, a global risk management and regulatory consultancy firm.
* The acquisition by Motorola Solutions of Spillman Technologies, a privately-held provider of law enforcement and public safety software solutions computer-aided despatch and records management systems.
* The acquisition by Rogers Media, a subsidiary of Rogers Communications, of Tillsonburg Broadcasting Company.
* SAP purchased Altiscale, a big data start-up, and plat.One, an Italian IOT company.
* The acquisition by Sonus Networks of Taqua, a supplier of IP communications systems.
* The $200 million (8.1%) investment by Elliott Associates, the activist hedge fund, in Mentor Graphics.
* A federal jury ordered Apple to pay more than $302 million in damages for using VirnetX's patented Internet security technology without permission in features including its FaceTime video conferencing application.
* BlackBerry announced it would outsource its handset design business.
* Safran (France) entered exclusive talks about the sale of its Morpho identity and security business to Advent International, which owns smartcard maker Oberthur Technologies.
* Renren will spin-off a newly formed subsidiary that will hold the social video platform woxiu.com and most of the investments in minority stakes in privately-held companies.
* Good quarterly numbers from Synnex.
* Good half-year figures from Viettel.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Accenture, FactSet Research Systems, Paychex and Progress Software (back in the black).
* Very poor quarterly figures from CalAmp.
* Quarterly losses from BlackBerry.
* The appointments of Boulos Doany as CEO of Turk Telecom, and Fred Kornberg as president and CEO of ComTech Telecom (was chairman).
* The resignation of David Richards, co-founder and CEO of WANdisco.
* The departures of Stanton Sloane, CEO and president of Comtech Telecom.
* A planned IPO from Netmarble Games, South Korea's largest online games company, with a potential listing date of early next year.
* A possible IPO by ForeScout Technologies, a US network security company.
* IPO filings from accounting software maker BlackLine; cyber security provider Carbon Black; and Quantenna Communications, which sells next-generation semi chipsets for high-speed WiFi networks.
* A very good IPO on Nasdaq by Impinj, a provider of RAIN RFID technology and item intelligence solutions for retail, healthcare, electronics, manufacturing and supply chain applications.
* An excellent IPO on Nasdaq by Nutanix, a provider of an enterprise cloud platform that natively converges compute, virtualisation and storage into a resilient, software-defined solution with rich machine intelligence.
* A delayed IPO from US software firm Apttus, which has raised $88 million from private investors.
* An abandoned IPO by Telefonica's Telxius, its infrastructure company.

South Africa:
* According to Gartner, spending on IT by organisations based in South Africa is forecast to total R272 billion in 2016, a 3.8% increase from 2015. Software spending in South Africa is on pace to exhibit its highest year-on-year growth in 2016, at 11.4%.

EMEA/Africa:
* According to IDC, the Middle East and Africa wearables growth story continues unabated, with the latest figures showing the market grew 66% year-on-year in Q216 to total approximately 482 000 units for the quarter.
* In Q216, the EMEA server market reported a moderate year-on-year decline in vendor revenue of 3.7% to $3 billion and a slight year-on-year increase of 0.8% in units shipped to just over 530 000, says IDC.
* According to IDC, shipments of smartphones in Africa fell 5.2% to 23.1 million units in Q216. Overall mobile handset shipments were up slightly in Q216, with shipments of basic feature phones rising 31.9% year-on-year to total 29.8 million units.

Worldwide:
* According to Berg Insight, the number of shipped cellular M2M terminals was 2.7 million worldwide during 2015. Growing at a compound annual growth rate of 16.1%, this number is expected to reach 5.7 million in 2020.
* According to IDC, the total security appliance market showed positive year-over-year growth in both vendor revenue and unit shipments for Q216. Worldwide vendor revenue increased 5.8% year-over-year to $2.75 billion and shipments grew 15.2% year-over-year for a total of 659 305 units.
* The worldwide converged systems market increased revenue 12.1% year-over-year to $2.9 billion during Q216, says IDC. The market generated 1 693 petabytes of new storage capacity shipments during the quarter, which was up 31.8% compared to the same period a year ago.

* JSE All share index: Down 0.1%
* FTSE100: Down 0.1%
* DAX: Down 1.1%
* NYSE (Dow): Up 0.3%
* S&P 500: Up 0,2%
* Nasdaq: Up 0.1% (highest-ever weekend close)
* Nikkei225: Down 1.8%
* Hang Seng: Down 1.6%
* Shanghai: Down 1%

International:
* Qualcomm buying NXP Semiconductor.
* Spotify buying SoundCloud.

Africa:
* MTN Group selling about $500 million in shares of its Ghana business.

South Africa:
* Further news re Cell C and Blue Label.

IDC Financial Insights has announced its 2016 IDC Financial Insights FinTech Rankings Top 100 and Enterprise Top 25. Now in its 13th year, the annual rankings evaluate global technology providers of hardware, software and IT services, and track revenue from the financial services industry as well as IT providers whose revenue from financial institutions is significant.

The data is analysed by IDC Financial Insights analysts globally to not only create industry standard rankings, but to put the information in the context of industry trends that affect both financial institutions that buy technology, and the providers of IT solutions to the industry.

The 2016 IDC FI FinTech Rankings Top 10:
1. Tata Consultancy Services
2. FIS
3. Cognizant Technology Solutions
4. Fiserv
5. NTT Data
6. Infosys
7. NCR
8. Total System Services
9. Nomura Research Institute
10. Diebold

The 2016 IDC FI FinTech Rankings Enterprise Top 5:
1. IBM
2. Hewett-Packard
3. Microsoft
4. Accenture
5. Cisco Systems