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In this Issue: |
> GENERAL INTEREST
Canada gained 43,000 jobs in January for total employment of more than 16.9 million, and the jobless rate fell to 8.3% in January from 8.4% in December, according to Statistics Canada. Most of the job gains were in part-time employment.
The US Conference Board reported that budgets for salary increases in 2010 is 2.8%, the lowest level in more than two decades.
Spherion’s employee confidence index rose one point in January to a reading of 50.1 as more workers were optimistic about the strength of the economy and job availability.
In the UK, a KPMG report showed that demand for permanent staff rose last month, with the IT sector showing the strongest rate of growth. The report uses a figure to represent demand, where anything below 50 indicates a drop on the previous month. In January, the figure for permanent IT staff was 67.7. This was the sixth consecutive month of growth, and was greater than the previous month’s figure of 65.7.
A former security researcher turned criminal hacker has been sentenced to 13 years in federal prison for hacking into financial institutions and stealing credit card account numbers. Max Ray Butler, who used the hacker pseudonym Iceman, was sentenced on charges of wire fraud and identity theft.
> MERGER & ACQUISITION ACTIVITY
Google acquired social search start-up Aardvark, a company founded by ex-Google employees. Google has not confirmed a price, but a report on TechCrunch says that Google will pay about $50 million. Aardvark is a matchmaking service for questions and answers. It allows users to submit queries and then connects the searcher to friends or associates who are likely to have the best answer. By acquiring the company, Google is deepening its already substantial commitment to social. Google’s last social networking acquisitions, Zingku and Jaiku, occurred in September and October 2007.
In a move to beef up its LTE and WiMax testing capabilities, JDSU is buying Agilent’s network solutions unit for $165 million in cash. JDSU was formerly known as JDS Uniphase. “This acquisition establishes JDSU as a market leader in wireless test instruments and systems and enables us to provide customers with new innovative LTE solutions as they deploy this next-generation mobile data technology,” said Tom Waechter, JDSU president and CEO, in a statement. “JDSU gains market-leading technology and a talented employee team that will fit well with JDSU’s customer-centric culture.” The Agilent unit has about 700 employees in facilities in Colorado, the United Kingdom, Singapore, and Beijing.
Oracle has made a couple of smaller acquisitions following the completion of its $7.4 billion purchase of Sun. Convergin will broaden Oracle’s presence in the telecom market, as it develops Service Broker and Service Capability Interaction Management (SCIM) offerings for both wireless and wireline network carriers. “As communications service providers transition from legacy telephony networks to next-generation networks, the combination of Oracle and Convergin will accelerate new service innovation while reducing network complexity and cost,” said Bhaskar Gorti, senior VP and general manager for Oracle’s Communications group. The other acquisition is AmberPoint, which provides Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) solutions designed to help businesses improve application performance and transaction speeds. AmberPoint technology helps IT organizations diagnose and fix problems with application performance and business transactions within an SOA environment in which multiple applications need to work together. Such applications could be used, for example, in insurance claim processing or account provisioning.
Sybase is buying Aleri Inc., a complex event processing (CEP) vendor entrenched on Wall Street and growing in other industries. The deal bolsters Sybase’s position in financial services as well as its ability to support real-time analytics. “If we can be the leader in real-time analytics in the capital markets, customers will turn to us as real-time analytics becomes a must-have technology in other markets ,” said Neil McGovern, director of marketing at Sybase. CEP is used to spot patterns in fast-moving, high-volume data streams as they course through business systems, rather than after the data is stored and becomes a matter of history. The technology was pioneered on financial trading floors and in national intelligence circles, but CEP is now being adopted for telecommunications network monitoring, smart power grid management, real-time Web clickstream analysis and adaptive supply chain/shipping logistics planning.
IBM bought Intelliden, Inc., a provider of network automation software for telecom companies and other service providers. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. IBM said it plans to integrate Intelliden’s offerings into its Tivoli line of middleware.
Manpower paid $430 million for Comsys. This acquisition bolsters Manpower’s “Professional Staffing” capability. When coupled with ELAN, Manpower’s European professional staffing , it creates a $2.4 billion entity. Comsys brings 52 offices across North America to the Manpower organization.
> PRIMARY SOURCES:
IT World Canada – http://www.itworldcanada.com
Ottawa Business Journal – http://www.ottawabusinessjournal.com
ZDNet – http://www.zdnet.com
Information Week – http://www.informationweek.com
