tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21521744.post-71892137615531832212008-05-01T11:44:00.002-04:002008-05-01T11:51:10.892-04:00Every month I take a 30,000 foot look at events in the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">ICT</span> industry. This is my overview of April's news, with a brief reminder of what was news in April a year ago! What you see here is a precis of the monthly report I produce, which will be available at the <a href="http://www.eagleonline.com/Website/EagleWeb3.nsf/page/Industry+News!OpenDocument">Eagle website </a>over the next day or two.<br /><br />Last year in <strong><span style="font-size:130%;">April 2007</span></strong> Google had a busy month, paying a whopping $3.1 Billion for <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Doubleclick</span>, in addition to buying <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Marratech</span>’s videoconferencing software; other big deals included <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">CSC</span> paying $1.3 Billion for <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Covansys</span>; <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Mitel</span> paid $732 million for Inter-tel, Software AG paid $546 million for <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">webMethods</span> and Business objects bought <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Cartesis</span> for about $300 million. Also this time last year <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Lenovo</span> announced cutbacks of 1,400 staff.<br /><br />The big M&amp;A deal in <strong><span style="font-size:130%;">April 2008</span></strong> saw a merger of the third and fourth largest chip makers <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">STMicroelectronics</span> and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">NXP</span> into a $3 Billion company. IBM was busy, making three acquisitions this month Diligent, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">FilesX</span> and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">InfoDyne</span>; Yahoo bought <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">Tensa</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">Kft</span>. despite spending time fending off the attentions of potential buyer Microsoft; and speaking of Microsoft they had a couple of acquisitions <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">Farecast</span> and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">Komoku</span>; <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">EMC</span> also had a couple of forays into the M&amp;A market with <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">Iomega</span> and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">Conchango</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">plc</span>.<br /><br />Other than M&amp;A activity this month there was some bad news from DELL, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">Symantec</span> and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">AMD</span> who all announced layoffs. Juniper Research tell us that more than 800 million consumers will be accessing banking services though their mobile phone over the next three years. Despite the US recession IT jobs increased 12% last quarter, which is a good reason to get your kids into IT … but it is engineers that rank as the hardest job to fill according to a Manpower survey. Finally the email scams are getting more sophisticated and “spear <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">phishing</span>” has been getting some press due to its levels of success.Kevin Deehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15202522310322583294noreply@blogger.com