This is my 30,000 foot seem at events in the ICT industry for February 2014.
A Small History of earlier year’s Februarys…
Five years in the past in February 2009 the news was ALL about layoffs and financial uncertainty. Nortel, in addition to their layoffs marketed their Alteon asset for less than $18 million, which they had purchased for $7 billion 9 years beforehand! In February 2010 M&A activity was gradual with no massive buys. Google bought Aardvark Oracle acquired a pair of smaller sized entities IBM purchased a modest network application business that focuses on the telco vertical and Sybase bought a firm that has a powerful foothold in the financial companies vertical. There were plenty of indications that the recovery was underneath way and Canada noticed some task expansion after a interval of decline. February 2011 was an additional peaceful thirty day period for M&A with HP acquiring Vertica Opentext bought Metastorm ($182 million) and Rackspace acquired Anso Labs. Globe news was dominated by the well-known uprisings in a increasing quantity of nations and the reactions of individuals governments including the brutality of Gaddafi’s Libyan supporters. Two many years ago, February 2012 was not a blockbuster thirty day period for M&A, but there was some interesting exercise. The biggest deal of the thirty day period noticed Oracle shell out $one.9 billion for expertise administration firm Taleo. Siemens Canada paid $440 million for networking tools business Rugged.com. IBM acquired BYOD firm Worklight Dell acquired backup and restoration firm AppAssure Apple acquired cell look for business Chomp and LM Ericsson bought Ottawa based BelAir Networks. Last yr in February 2013 Dell went personal in a $24.four billion offer, that incorporated a $2 billion expense by Microsoft. Oracle paid $one.7 billion for networking firm Acme Packet Inc. Rackspace purchased huge information company ObjectRocket Telus was active with two acquisitions, electronic health care information division of the Canadian Health-related Association and digital forensics business Electronic Wyzdom HP also marketed the Palm functioning method to LG for their wise TVs.
Which delivers us back to the existing…
February 2014 saw Facebook make a large go with $sixteen billion acquisition of Whatsapp, which is almost certainly excellent valuation information for Blackberry due to the fact its BBM item would be a immediate competitor. Blackberry even so had an additional tough thirty day period when IDC released its numbers as the firm’s smartphones accounted for only 1.9% of product sales in This autumn of 2013.
Yet another organization with large news, even though not always constructive was Sony. They appear to be reinventing themselves in their various niches as they are closing their eReader shop and divesting on their own of their Personal computer division (Vaio).
In other M&A information Comcast is making a $45 billion play for Time Warner Cable Oracle compensated a reputed $four hundred million for information administration system organization Bluekai LinkedIn compensated $a hundred and twenty million for on the web occupation lookup organization Vibrant and Klout was bought for about $100 million by Lithium Technologies. Google created a couple of acquisitions, on the internet fraud company Spider.io and secure logon organization Slicklogin. IBM is getting database as a services company Cloudant and Monster bought a few of businesses, social profile organization Talentbin and job aggregation and distribution technological innovation business Gozaic.
Other companies creating news this month include Microsoft who announced a new CEO, Satya Nadella (who replaces Steve Ballmer) in addition a new Board Chair John Thompson (who replaces Monthly bill Gates). Dell started its new life as a private company with major restructuring, resulting in very likely fifteen,000 work losses. On the great information entrance, jobs development and infrastructure additions in Canada arrive in the kind of new datacenters for Bell Aliant and for Telus.
In studies from numerous resources Android has about eighty% of the cell OS industry share, with Apple a distant 2nd. check over here was the dominant handset hardware provider with 32% share, with Apple next. Apple nonetheless accounted for roughly one/three of tablet product sales in Western Europe last 12 months, with Samsung second.
A Cisco research suggests that users will enhance mobile information use by a factor of roughly eight above the coming 5 many years… so make positive you have excellent knowledge plans! The Canadian Federal Govt announced an infrastructure expense to set broadband into rural communities and Gartner tell us that IT shelling out was flat calendar year over yr, for the thirteenth year in a row!
Financial news was normally combined, with no major negative news and no large breakthroughs. Some work growth in Canada and the US, some optimistic self-assurance indicators and some not so excellent. A single research appeared to sum it up for me, Careerbuilder located that 58% of companies truly feel the economic downturn is nonetheless lingering!
That is it for my look at what was taking place in the engineering room above the last thirty day period, in contrast to the very same thirty day period in prior years.
I am going to be back again at the stop of March, till then… stroll rapidly and smile!