This is my 30,000 foot look at events in the ICT sector for February 2014.
A Small Heritage of preceding year’s Februarys…
Five several years back in February 2009 the information was ALL about layoffs and economic uncertainty. Nortel, in addition to their layoffs sold their Alteon asset for considerably less than $18 million, which they experienced acquired for $seven billion nine many years formerly! In February 2010 M&A exercise was gradual with no large purchases. Google bought Aardvark Oracle purchased a few of more compact entities IBM bought a little community software program firm that focuses on the telco vertical and Sybase acquired a business that has a sturdy foothold in the fiscal services vertical. There ended up heaps of indications that the recovery was underneath way and Canada saw some work progress right after a time period of decline. February 2011 was another peaceful thirty day period for M&A with HP purchasing Vertica Opentext acquired Metastorm ($182 million) and Rackspace obtained Anso Labs. Entire world news was dominated by the well-known uprisings in a increasing amount of international locations and the reactions of those governments including the brutality of Gaddafi’s Libyan supporters. Two several years in the past, February 2012 was not a blockbuster month for M&A, but there was some fascinating exercise. The largest deal of the thirty day period noticed Oracle pay out $1.nine billion for expertise management organization Taleo. Siemens Canada compensated $440 million for networking equipment company Rugged.com. IBM bought BYOD business Worklight Dell bought backup and recovery organization AppAssure Apple purchased cell research organization Chomp and LM Ericsson purchased Ottawa based mostly BelAir Networks. Very last year in February 2013 Dell went non-public in a $24.4 billion deal, that incorporated a $2 billion expense by Microsoft. Oracle paid out $1.seven billion for networking company Acme Packet Inc. Rackspace purchased huge info firm ObjectRocket Telus was active with two acquisitions, electronic medical documents division of the Canadian Medical Affiliation and digital forensics business Electronic Wyzdom HP also sold the Palm running system to LG for their wise TVs.
Which delivers us back again to the present…
February 2014 observed Facebook make a big shift with $sixteen billion acquisition of Whatsapp, which is probably great valuation information for Blackberry because its BBM item would be a direct competitor. Blackberry nevertheless had one more tough thirty day period when IDC released its figures as the firm’s smartphones accounted for only 1.nine% of product sales in This fall of 2013.
Another firm with massive news, despite the fact that not necessarily good was Sony. They look to be reinventing on their own in their numerous niches as they are closing their eReader retailer and divesting them selves of their Computer division (Vaio).
In have a peek at this web-site &A news Comcast is producing a $forty five billion engage in for Time Warner Cable Oracle compensated a reputed $400 million for information administration platform firm Bluekai LinkedIn paid out $one hundred twenty million for on the web work lookup business Bright and Klout was purchased for about $a hundred million by Lithium Technologies. Google manufactured a couple of acquisitions, on the internet fraud company Spider.io and protected logon company Slicklogin. IBM is purchasing database as a support organization Cloudant and Monster bought a few of businesses, social profile firm Talentbin and job aggregation and distribution technological innovation company Gozaic.
Other businesses creating news this month incorporate 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 existence as a personal firm with key restructuring, resulting in most likely fifteen,000 occupation losses. On the good news entrance, employment generation and infrastructure additions in Canada arrive in the sort of new datacenters for Bell Aliant and for Telus.
In stories from numerous resources Android has about 80% of the mobile OS marketplace share, with Apple a distant next. Samsung was the dominant handset components supplier with 32% share, with Apple 2nd. Apple nevertheless accounted for around one/three of pill sales in Western Europe final calendar year, with Samsung next.
A Cisco research implies that customers will increase mobile knowledge utilization by a element of about 8 above the coming 5 many years… so make confident you have good data plans! The Canadian Federal Govt declared an infrastructure expense to set broadband into rural communities and Gartner notify us that IT spending was flat 12 months above 12 months, for the 13th 12 months in a row!
Economic news was generally blended, with no main negative news and no huge breakthroughs. Some job progress in Canada and the US, some positive self-assurance indicators and some not so good. A single examine appeared to sum it up for me, Careerbuilder found that 58% of businesses come to feel the economic downturn is still lingering!
That is it for my search at what was occurring in the technological innovation space in excess of the previous thirty day period, in comparison to the identical thirty day period in preceding years.
I’ll be back at the stop of March, right up until then… walk quickly and smile!