Sky's the limit for Comcast

Paul Booth.

---

The auction for Sky, a major acquisition by Adobe and another acquisition by Cognizant were the main 'events' of the international ICT market last week.

At home, Naspers' unbundling announcement was one of the main stories.

* The acquisition by the Argility Technology Group of US-based SkyData Communications, a provider of wireless data communication products, services and solutions which enable clients to access data where conventional wireline connections are impractical or too costly.
* The announcement that Bitcoin wallet and exchange, Luno, is eyeing rapid African expansion after investing millions of US dollars into its new Johannesburg office. Luno (formerly BitX) is a Bitcoin company headquartered in London, with operations in SA, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria, Singapore, the UK and 35 other European countries. The Johannesburg office, which will also be home to a new engineering hub, will serve as Luno's regional headquarters for Africa, with the local team working closely with the team in Nigeria.
* Arcserve, a data backup and availability company, has opened a branch in Johannesburg to serve the Southern Africa region.
* Naspers is to list its Video Entertainment business separately on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and simultaneously unbundle the shares in this business to its shareholders. The new company will be named MultiChoice Group Ltd and will include MultiChoice South Africa Holdings (Pty) Ltd and its subsidiaries, associates and/or affiliates; MultiChoice Africa Holdings BV and its subsidiaries, associates and/or affiliates; MultiChoice Botswana (Pty) Ltd; MultiChoice Namibia (Pty) Ltd; NMS Insurance Services SA Ltd; the African division of Showmax BV and its subsidiaries, associates and/or affiliates; Irdeto Holdings BV and its subsidiaries, associates and/or affiliates; and Irdeto South Africa (Pty) Ltd.
* JUMO, a South Africa-based financial technology firm, plans to expand in high-growth Asian markets after securing the backing of Goldman Sachs in an equity funding round. Headquartered in Cape Town, JUMO has offices in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ghana, Zambia and the United Kingdom, and now operates in Pakistan and Singapore from where the Asia push will be focused.
* A withdrawn JSE cautionary by Huge Group.
* The appointment of Mark Howling as chairman of Redstor.

* MTN Uganda has secured the right to run its business in the East African country for the next decade following cabinet approval of a Uganda Communication Commission plan to renew the licence.
* For the first time in recent Internet history, a new submarine cable carried live traffic across the South Atlantic, directly connecting South America to Sub-Saharan Africa. The South Atlantic Cable System built by Angola Cables achieved this feat around midday on 18 September 2018.

* The $4.75 billion acquisition by Adobe of Marketo, a marketing automation firm.
* The $325 million acquisition by Cerberus Capital Management of TE Connectivity's Subsea Communications business.
* The acquisition by CGI Group of ckc AG, a specialised provider of agile software development and management services, with a focus on the automotive sector.
* The acquisition by Cognizant of Advanced Technology Group, in a move designed to expand its consulting capabilities on the Salesforce platform. It is its fourth deal in the last five months.
* The acquisition by NetApp of StackPointCloud, a developer of multi-cloud Kubernetes-as-a-service and a contributor to the Kubernetes project.
* The acquisition by Rocket Software, a global software development firm with a presence in the US, Europe and Asia, of Fundi Software, an Australia-based specialist IBM technology provider.

Turkey's competition authority has fined Google $15 million for violating competition laws with its mobile software sales.

* The acquisition by Tailwind Capital, a New York-based private equity firm, of Core BTS, a US-based solution provider focused on networking, collaboration, security and data centre solutions.
* The acquisition by Thai-listed IT services provider Vintcom Technology of I-Secure, a managed security service player.
* The New York State Court of Appeals overturned a $115 million judgement against Samsung Electronics over television patents, brought to court by MPEG LA.
* Alibaba plans to set up a new semiconductor company to focus on customised AI chips and embedded processors to support its growing cloud and IOT businesses.
* The EU announced that Facebook and Twitter face sanctions unless they comply with European consumer rules by the end of the year, as its regulators continue their crackdown on US social media giants over privacy concerns.
* Comcast topped 21st Century Fox in a weekend auction for Sky, winning the British broadcaster with a $38.8 billion bid that ends a long takeover battle and promises the former a greatly expanded international footprint.
* Turkey's competition authority has fined Google $15 million for violating competition laws with its mobile software sales.
* Very good quarterly figures from Micron Technology.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Oracle.
* Mediocre quarterly results from TDC.
* Mixed quarterly figures from Red Hat, with revenue up but net income down.
* The appointment of Christine Leahy as CEO of CDW.
* The retirement of Tom Richards, CEO of CDW.
* The departure of Philip Jansen, co-CEO of Worldpay.
* A satisfactory IPO in Hong Kong by Meituan Dianping, the Chinese online food delivery-to-ticketing services firm.
* An excellent IPO on Nasdaq by Qutoutiao, the Chinese news and video aggregation app backed by Tencent.

EMEA/Africa:
* According to IDC, technology investments relating to smart city initiatives across the MEA region will total more than $1.3 billion, with this figure set to reach $2.7 billion in 2022.
* The EMEA purpose-built backup appliance market finished the second quarter with an increased 26.8% year-on-year to reach $239.7 million. This is the second period in a row of double-digit growth for the market, and the first half of 2018 ended with a 19% increase compared to the first half of 2017, says IDC.
* According to IDC, a total of 22.4 million smartphones were shipped in Africa during Q218, an increase of 9.8% quarter-on-quarter and 6% year-on-year.

Worldwide:
* Gartner predicts 28% of spending within key enterprise IT markets will shift to the cloud by 2022, up from 19% in 2018.
* IDC forecasts that global spending on cognitive and artificial intelligence (AI) systems will continue its trajectory of robust growth as businesses invest in projects that utilise cognitive/AI software capabilities with spending on cognitive and AI systems reaching $77.6 billion in 2022, more than three times the $24 billion forecast for 2018. The CAGR for the 2017-2022 forecast period is expected to be 37.3%.

* JSE All share index: Up 1%
* FTSE100: Up 2.5%
* DAX: Up 2.5%
* NYSE (Dow): Up 2.3% (all-time high reached during the week)
* S&P 500: Up 0.9% (all-time high reached during the week)
* Nasdaq: Down 0.3%
* Nikkei225: Up 3.4% (highest 2018 weekend close)
* Hang Seng: Up 2.4%
* Shanghai: Up 4.3%

International:
* A possible break-up of Amazon.

Africa:
* Econet Wireless Zimbabwe restructuring the company, including a possible Liquid Telecom IPO or an LSE listing.

South Africa:
* Further developments re the 'break-up' of Naspers.

For the third consecutive year, the Forbes Cloud 100 recognises the best and brightest of tech's hottest category. Compiled with the help of partners Bessemer Venture Partners and Salesforce Ventures, the list tracks the best private cloud companies in the world by operating metrics such as revenue and funding, while enlisting the help of no less than 34 of their public cloud CEO peers.

The companies of the Cloud 100 are champions of small business and facilitators of the world's most important multi-national corporations, helping manage everything from restaurant orders to the field operations of oil rigs at sea.

The list includes:
* 1 Stripe, an online payments firm.
* 2 Slack, a provider of collaboration software.
* 3 Zoom Video Communications, a provider of a video messaging service.
* 4 Tanium, a security vendor.
* 5 Procore Technologies, a construction management technology company.
* 6 CrowdStrike, a cyber security firm.
* 7 Qualtrics, an experience management platform provider.
* 8 Squarespace, a Web site builder.
* 9 Elastic, a data analytics firm.
* 10 Eventbrite, an event tech platform provider that has already filed to go public.
* 12 Cloudflare, a cyber security firm.
* 13 SurveyMonkey, an online survey company that is going public later this month.
* 14 UiPath, a robotic process automation firm (a new entrant).
* 30 Veeam, a data management firm.
* 32 HashiCorp, a cloud infrastructure automation firm (a new entrant).
* 36 Darktrace, an AI-backed cyber security firm (a new entrant).