IT Industry News
All of which brings us back to August Twenty-ten and here in Ontario as we continue to enjoy great weather, we remain fairly optimistic about our economic future. Certainly, if M&A activity is and indicator, then August would suggest that we are well on our way. It was a very busy month for acquisitions. More…
Here we are in July 2010, Spain won the World Cup and we continue our slow recovery from the recession. There were some very positive signs for the recovery . Canada added 93,000 jobs in June and Canada’s Staffing Index rose 7 basis points; a CareerBuilder survey suggests that 58% of hiring managers are looking to hire in the second half of 2010; US GDP is still growing, although a little slower; and in the EU it looks like employment is stabilising with an unemployment figure in the 10% range (9.5% in the US and 7.9% in Canada). More…
In June of 2008 the economy was rocked by high oil prices, the fallout from the sub debt crisis and signs of inflation. Last year, in June 2009 the general consensus supported a long, slow recovery, although there were some bright lights. Which bring us up to date and June 2010 and the continuation of the long, hard, slow road to recovery. June saw the G8 and G20 groups of countries gather and Canada continues to be held up as a good example in this recovery. The Canadian Staffing Index index dipped down again, but overall we are about 10% better than this time last year and consumer prices are up about 1.4% over a year ago. Both HP and Oracle are still struggling to swallow their big acquisitions, resulting in some layoffs. It was also interesting to see an Alberta staffing company charged for collecting fees from foreign workers. On the M&A front a Canadian data centre company Fusepoint was snapped upand web analytics companies were popular. The biggest deal of the mnonth was in the Health Systems world. More…
In May Twenty-Ten the world is in much better shape economically, but there are still plenty of concerns ranging from the financial impact of the volcanic ash on the world’s airline industry, to the meltdown of the Greek economy and the lingering effects of the recession including the debts that countries incurred to help the recovery. More…
Here we are talking about April 2010 and lots of positive signs that the recession is behind us, but a fairly consistent message that the recovery is slow. My own industry’s Staffing Index for March suggests that the Canadian Staffing Industry is recovering but is still only half way back to where it was pre-recession. IDC Canada is telling us that the compound growth rate in IT spending over the next 5 years will be in the 4% range . which I find hard to believe given the competitive pressures industrial nations will be facing during that time, but what do I know! More…
This year in March Twenty-Ten we are still in recovery mode . but headed in the right direction. It was a quiet month for M&A activity with CA’s pursuit of the “cloud computing” world providing some activity with its two purchases, 3Tera for reputedly about $90 million and Nimsoft for $350 million. This would make it five acquisitions in the last ten months for CA’s Cloud business unit. Chordiant software fell victim to the recession and was picked up by Pegasytems for a little over 160 million, and the other notable purchase was Avnet’s $340 million buy, Bell Microproducts. The Albany group suffered financial issues, (a thorny issue in the staffing world, when the VMS suppliers run into financial difficulty) and their managed services group was picked up by Allegis. More…
All of which brings us to February 2010. February has not been a busy month for M&A activity in a couple of years now, and this year is no exception. Close to home was Manpower’s acquisition of Comsys which will see their US professional staffing capability notably improved, and may have some spillover into Canada. Google continued its moves into social networking with the acquisition of Aardvark in addition to its BUZZ offering. Oracle purchased a couple of smaller entities, now that its big Sun purchase is all done. IBM bought a small network software company that focuses on the telco vertical and Sybase bought a company that has a strong foothold in the financial services vertical. More…
So . here we are in January Twenty-Ten and there is cautious optimism in the air, but not much in the way of blockbuster M&A deals! There were several positive indicators in January particularly in the US . US GDP grew at an annual rate of 5.7% in the latest quarter; the ECRI weekly measure of the US economy reached an 18 month high; the number of lost jobs was the smallest decline since March 2008; and, CEO confidence was up. Forrester are bullish on tech spending expecting strong growth in 2010. Here in Canada unemployment was pretty steady at 8.5% although 2,600 jobs were lost in December. Having said that, Eagle’s experience has been a steady increase in activity of the last few months and January was one of our busiest months in a long time! More…
