This is my 30,000 foot look at activities in the ICT market for February 2014.

A Tiny Background of previous year’s Februarys…

Five several years ago in February 2009 the news was ALL about layoffs and financial uncertainty. Nortel, in addition to their layoffs offered their Alteon asset for considerably less than $18 million, which they experienced acquired for $seven billion 9 several years previously! In February 2010 M&A action was gradual with no huge buys. Google purchased Aardvark Oracle obtained a couple of more compact entities IBM acquired a tiny community software program business that focuses on the telco vertical and Sybase acquired a organization that has a sturdy foothold in the economic services vertical. There had been plenty of indicators that the recovery was below way and Canada saw some occupation progress after a time period of drop. February 2011 was one more silent month for M&A with HP acquiring Vertica Opentext purchased Metastorm ($182 million) and Rackspace acquired Anso Labs. Entire world information was dominated by the common uprisings in a growing amount of nations and the reactions of these governments such as 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 activity. The biggest offer of the thirty day period observed Oracle spend $1.nine billion for talent administration organization Taleo. Siemens Canada paid $440 million for networking products business Rugged.com. IBM bought BYOD firm Worklight Dell acquired backup and restoration organization AppAssure Apple acquired mobile search company Chomp and LM Ericsson bought Ottawa dependent BelAir Networks. Final yr in February 2013 Dell went personal in a $24.4 billion deal, that provided a $two billion investment by Microsoft. Oracle paid out $1.7 billion for networking organization Acme Packet Inc. Rackspace acquired large info firm ObjectRocket Telus was hectic with two acquisitions, electronic health care records division of the Canadian Medical Affiliation and digital forensics company Digital Wyzdom HP also bought the Palm functioning method to LG for their smart TVs.

Which provides us again to the existing…

February 2014 observed Fb make a massive shift with $16 billion acquisition of Whatsapp, which is probably good valuation news for Blackberry simply because its BBM solution would be a direct competitor. Blackberry however experienced one more rough month when IDC introduced its numbers as the company’s smartphones accounted for only one.9% of income in This fall of 2013.

Another business with large news, though not always positive was Sony. They look to be reinventing themselves in their a variety of niches as they are closing their eReader retailer and divesting themselves of their Laptop division (Vaio).

In other M&A information Comcast is making a $45 billion enjoy for Time Warner Cable Oracle paid a reputed $four hundred million for knowledge administration system company Bluekai LinkedIn paid out $one hundred twenty million for on the web work lookup business Bright and Klout was acquired for about $one hundred million by Lithium Technologies. Google created a few of acquisitions, on the internet fraud business Spider.io and protected logon company Slicklogin. IBM is acquiring databases as a services firm Cloudant and Monster acquired a few of organizations, social profile organization Talentbin and work aggregation and distribution technologies business Gozaic.

Other companies making information this thirty day period include Microsoft who declared a new CEO, Satya Nadella (who replaces Steve Ballmer) additionally a new Board Chair John Thompson (who replaces Invoice Gates). Dell commenced its new lifestyle as a non-public firm with key restructuring, resulting in probably 15,000 job losses. On the good news front, jobs development and infrastructure additions in Canada come in the kind of new datacenters for Bell Aliant and for Telus.

In reviews from various sources Android has about 80% of the cell OS marketplace share, with Apple a distant second. Samsung was the dominant handset hardware provider with 32% share, with Apple 2nd. Apple nevertheless accounted for about 1/three of tablet revenue in Western Europe last 12 months, with Samsung next.

A Cisco examine implies that consumers will increase mobile info use by a element of approximately 8 in excess of the coming 5 several years… so make certain you have great knowledge programs! The Canadian Federal Government declared an infrastructure investment to set broadband into rural communities and Gartner explain to us that IT paying was flat calendar year more than 12 months, for the thirteenth yr in a row!

Financial news was generally blended, with no major poor news and no large breakthroughs. Some occupation progress in Canada and the US, some positive self-confidence indicators and some not so great. One particular examine appeared to sum it up for me, Careerbuilder located that 58% of employers feel the economic downturn is nevertheless lingering!

That is it for my appear at what was happening in the technology area more than the previous thirty day period, compared to the identical thirty day period in earlier years.

tech product reviews will be back at the conclude of March, until finally then… stroll fast and smile!