Oracle’s SaaS Shopping List

Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL) in October announced its plans to acquire its first Software as a Service (SaaS) company, RightNow, for $1.5 billion. Oracle had for long shied away from making any acquisitions in the SaaS sector, but it can no longer ignore the SaaS market, which is projected by Gartner to reach $21.3 billion in 2015. RightNow was the first step for Oracle, and it is highly likely that many more SaaS acquisitions are to follow. Even its rival SAP has followed suit with the $3.4 billion acquisition of SuccessFactors, a SaaS talent management vendor. This year seems to be gearing up for a SaaS roll-up.

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Online Travel in China

iResearch estimates that China’s mobile Internet market grew 155% over the year and 39% sequentially to 10.83 billion by the third quarter of last year. Researcher Analysys International estimates that mobile Internet users will surpass computer-based Internet users by 2012 and account for more than 500 million users by 2012. Mobile phone app downloads are also increasing. They crossed 863 million downloads in 2010 and are expected to surpass 20 billion by 2013.

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Accenture Will Hire 60,000 in 2012

Market researcher Everest Group expects that in 2012 the IT outsourcing market will be driven by cloud computing and M&A activity. Although it seems that the economic crisis will still loom large in the first half of the year, by this fall, increased business confidence is expected to boost the growth in the outsourcing segment. Meanwhile, cloud computing will be a driving force among IT outsourcers. The researcher expects acquisitions within cloud computing and believes that demand will mature so that technology departments move beyond evaluation to focus on governance of the cloud. Accenture’s recently announced results could be indicative of this emerging trend.

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China To Be World’s Largest E-Commerce Market by 2015

China is seeing a boom in the e-commerce segment. According to Forrester Research, business to consumer sales in China are expected to triple to $159 billion in 2015 from $49 billion in 2010. Yet, within retail sales, e-commerce sales will account for a mere 5% share in the next three to five years. While that may be a small contribution, it is still a significant leap from the 2.5% share it accounts for currently. BCG expects China to be the world’s largest e-commerce market in 2015.

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MobiTV Faces Stiff Competition

Long before the likes of Hulu and Netflix hit the mobile device TV space, another player was making inroads in the segment. Founded in 2000, California-based MobiTV is a leading provider of premium end-to-end mobile media solutions. Their service offerings include a platform that not only delivers live TV and video on-demand, but also has the capability to let viewers download and store content for offline viewing to its users in the U.S. and Canada.

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Guidewire Gearing For IPO; Looks Solid

Not only are Internet companies vying for the stock market, other software companies are also lining up. Earlier this year, insurance technology provider Guidewire Software filed their S-1 to raise more than $100 million to expand business. Guidewire’s offerings cater to a market that Gartner estimated was worth $14.5 billion last year, of which $4 billion was spent on software.

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58.com Looks Uncertain

Last year, 22 Chinese players listed in the U.S., raising more than $2.8 billion from the market. The current year was comparatively slower with seven Chinese IPOs listing on the New York Stock Exchange and raising a total of $1.5 billion. The weak global economy is causing some Chinese companies to stay away from listing despite having filed their S-1s. The Chinese equivalent of Craigslist, 58.com, is one such player.

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Acquire RIMM For Patent Portfolio?

It does not seem that Research in Motion’s (NASDAQ:RIMM) shaky position will improve anytime soon. According to research firm, Canalys, the company’s BlackBerry phones accounted for a mere 9% of the smart phone market in the U.S. during the third quarter of this year, compared with a 24% share reported a year ago. Android devices continued to dominate the U.S. market with more than 70% market share. Among devices, HTC took the lead with 5.7 million units shipped last quarter, followed by Samsung’s 4.9 million units. Apple slipped into third place with 4.6 million units as consumers waited for the launch of the new iPhone 4.

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Smartphones Increasingly Critical For Carriers

AT&T (NYSE:T), the second-largest carrier in the U.S., is facing problems with its plans to acquire T-Mobile, the fourth-largest carrier. Meanwhile, Verizon (NYSE:VZ), the largest carrier in the country announced its plans to buy spectrum from Cox Communications for $315 million. >>>

Fusion-io Well Positioned In A Data-Hungry World

According to an IDC report, increasing deployment of virtualized data centers has resulted in enterprises shifting their focus from improving capital efficiency to improving operational efficiency. These organizations’ IT departments are looking for solutions that help to improve data capacity efficiency, and they are moving away from the traditional rotating magnetic media such as hard disk drives (HDDs) to solid state drives (SSDs) that use NAND flash memory and advanced controller technology to create a faster storage device. The recent quarter results, this SSD market was dominated by the recently listed Fusion-io.

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