This is my 30,000 foot search at activities in the ICT sector for February 2014.
A Little History of preceding year’s Februarys…
5 years in the past in February 2009 the news was ALL about layoffs and financial uncertainty. Nortel, in addition to their layoffs offered their Alteon asset for much less than $eighteen million, which they had acquired for $seven billion nine years formerly! In February 2010 M&A activity was slow with no large buys. Google bought Aardvark Oracle obtained a couple of scaled-down entities IBM acquired a modest network software program business that focuses on the telco vertical and Sybase purchased a organization that has a robust foothold in the economic companies vertical. There ended up lots of symptoms that the recovery was below way and Canada observed some occupation expansion after a period of decline. February 2011 was one more silent month for M&A with HP getting Vertica Opentext acquired Metastorm ($182 million) and Rackspace obtained Anso Labs. tech reviews was dominated by the popular uprisings in a growing variety of countries and the reactions of individuals governments such as the brutality of Gaddafi’s Libyan supporters. Two many years back, February 2012 was not a blockbuster thirty day period for M&A, but there was some exciting activity. The largest deal of the month noticed Oracle pay $one.nine billion for expertise administration company Taleo. Siemens Canada paid out $440 million for networking products company Rugged.com. IBM acquired BYOD business Worklight Dell acquired backup and recovery firm AppAssure Apple bought mobile lookup organization Chomp and LM Ericsson acquired Ottawa dependent BelAir Networks. Very last calendar year in February 2013 Dell went private in a $24.4 billion offer, that included a $two billion expenditure by Microsoft. Oracle paid out $one.seven billion for networking firm Acme Packet Inc. Rackspace purchased huge knowledge company ObjectRocket Telus was active with two acquisitions, electronic health-related records division of the Canadian Medical Affiliation and electronic forensics organization Digital Wyzdom HP also offered the Palm operating method to LG for their sensible TVs.
Which provides us back to the current…
February 2014 saw Facebook make a big go with $sixteen billion acquisition of Whatsapp, which is most likely very good valuation information for Blackberry due to the fact its BBM merchandise would be a direct competitor. Blackberry nevertheless had one more tough month when IDC unveiled its numbers as the firm’s smartphones accounted for only 1.nine% of product sales in Q4 of 2013.
An additional organization with large information, even though not essentially good was Sony. They show up to be reinventing by themselves in their various niches as they are closing their eReader keep and divesting them selves of their Personal computer division (Vaio).
In other M&A information Comcast is making a $forty five billion engage in for Time Warner Cable Oracle compensated a reputed $four hundred million for info management system firm Bluekai LinkedIn paid $a hundred and twenty million for on the web occupation lookup business Vivid and Klout was acquired for about $one hundred million by Lithium Systems. Google created a few of acquisitions, on the internet fraud organization Spider.io and protected logon company Slicklogin. IBM is buying database as a support firm Cloudant and Monster acquired a few of businesses, social profile firm Talentbin and occupation aggregation and distribution technologies business Gozaic.
Other firms generating news this thirty day period include Microsoft who introduced a new CEO, Satya Nadella (who replaces Steve Ballmer) furthermore a new Board Chair John Thompson (who replaces Bill Gates). Dell started its new daily life as a non-public company with main restructuring, resulting in most likely fifteen,000 job losses. On the good information front, jobs development and infrastructure additions in Canada appear in the sort of new datacenters for Bell Aliant and for Telus.
In studies from numerous sources Android has about 80% of the mobile OS market place share, with Apple a distant next. Samsung was the dominant handset components supplier with 32% share, with Apple second. Apple even so accounted for around 1/3 of pill product sales in Western Europe previous yr, with Samsung second.
A Cisco research implies that users will increase cellular information utilization by a issue of approximately eight over the coming 5 many years… so make confident you have great information strategies! The Canadian Federal Authorities introduced an infrastructure expense to place broadband into rural communities and Gartner explain to us that IT shelling out was flat calendar year above yr, for the thirteenth year in a row!
Economic news was typically combined, with no significant poor information and no big breakthroughs. Some work expansion in Canada and the US, some optimistic self-assurance indicators and some not so good. One particular research seemed to sum it up for me, Careerbuilder found that 58% of employers truly feel the recession is nevertheless lingering!
That is it for my search at what was taking place in the technological innovation room more than the previous month, in comparison to the exact same thirty day period in preceding a long time.
I will be back at the end of March, till then… walk rapidly and smile!