This is my 30,000 foot look at functions in the ICT business for February 2014.
A Little Background of preceding year’s Februarys…
Five several years in the past in February 2009 the information was ALL about layoffs and economic uncertainty. Nortel, in addition to their layoffs offered their Alteon asset for less than $18 million, which they had acquired for $seven billion nine many years formerly! In February 2010 M&A action was sluggish with no enormous purchases. Google acquired Aardvark Oracle obtained a pair of smaller entities IBM acquired a small community software business that focuses on the telco vertical and Sybase acquired a business that has a powerful foothold in the monetary companies vertical. There had been lots of indicators that the recovery was under way and Canada saw some occupation progress after a time period of decrease. February 2011 was an additional peaceful month for M&A with HP acquiring Vertica Opentext bought Metastorm ($182 million) and Rackspace obtained Anso Labs. Planet news was dominated by the common uprisings in a growing quantity of international locations and the reactions of these governments including the brutality of Gaddafi’s Libyan supporters. Two years back, February 2012 was not a blockbuster month for M&A, but there was some intriguing action. The greatest offer of the thirty day period saw Oracle spend $one.9 billion for expertise management business Taleo. Siemens Canada paid $440 million for networking equipment organization Rugged.com. IBM acquired BYOD organization Worklight Dell acquired backup and restoration business AppAssure Apple bought mobile search business Chomp and LM Ericsson purchased Ottawa dependent BelAir Networks. Last year in February 2013 Dell went private in a $24.four billion offer, that integrated a $two billion expenditure by Microsoft. Oracle paid $one.seven billion for networking organization Acme Packet Inc. Rackspace bought huge data business ObjectRocket Telus was hectic with two acquisitions, electronic healthcare data division of the Canadian Health care Affiliation and digital forensics company Electronic Wyzdom HP also bought the Palm operating method to LG for their wise TVs.
Which provides us back again to the present…
February 2014 observed Facebook make a massive transfer with $sixteen billion acquisition of Whatsapp, which is most likely very good valuation information for Blackberry due to the fact its BBM item would be a immediate competitor. Blackberry however had an additional tough month when IDC introduced its quantities as the company’s smartphones accounted for only one.9% of revenue in This fall of 2013.
An additional organization with massive news, although not essentially good was Sony. They show up to be reinventing them selves in their numerous niches as they are closing their eReader retailer and divesting on their own of their Pc division (Vaio).
In other M&A news Comcast is making a $45 billion engage in for Time Warner Cable Oracle paid a reputed $four hundred million for info administration platform firm Bluekai LinkedIn paid $a hundred and twenty million for on the internet work lookup business Brilliant and Klout was bought for about $100 million by Lithium Technologies. Google made a few of acquisitions, online fraud business Spider.io and protected logon company Slicklogin. IBM is getting databases as a service company Cloudant and Monster acquired a few of companies, social profile business Talentbin and task aggregation and distribution engineering organization Gozaic.
Other businesses generating news this thirty day period include Microsoft who declared a new CEO, Satya Nadella (who replaces Steve Ballmer) furthermore a new Board Chair John Thompson (who replaces Invoice Gates). Dell began its new lifestyle as a private business with significant restructuring, resulting in very likely 15,000 job losses. On the good information entrance, jobs creation and infrastructure additions in Canada occur in the type of new datacenters for Bell Aliant and for Telus.
In reviews from a variety of resources Android has about eighty% of the cellular OS market share, with Apple a distant next. Samsung was the dominant handset components provider with 32% share, with Apple second. Apple nonetheless accounted for approximately 1/3 of tablet sales in Western Europe very last 12 months, with Samsung next.
A Cisco research implies that consumers will boost cellular data use by a aspect of about eight over the coming five many years… so make certain you have good knowledge programs! The Canadian Federal Government declared an infrastructure investment to put broadband into rural communities and Gartner notify us that IT investing was flat 12 months over yr, for the thirteenth 12 months in a row!
Financial news was usually mixed, with no major undesirable news and no massive breakthroughs. hud display in Canada and the US, some constructive self confidence indicators and some not so good. One particular study appeared to sum it up for me, Careerbuilder discovered that fifty eight% of employers come to feel the recession is nevertheless lingering!
That is it for my appear at what was going on in the technology area above the last month, in comparison to the exact same thirty day period in earlier many years.
I am going to be again at the conclude of March, till then… wander quick and smile!