Megabuyte - Technology sector intelligence

K3 has announced this morning the acquisition of IT solutions and managed services player Panacea for £2.2m. The acquisition significantly enhances K3’s managed services capability, provides a substantial customer base into which to sell application hosting services and brings a new relationship with Sage. Read our full analysis of the acquisition in Newswire Plus.

Strong results as a parting shot from DiData

Just as its acquisition by NTT is about to close, Dimension Data has issued its abbreviated results for the year to September. The results reflect recent trends seen by other infrastructure services players and report an improving top line and generally better trading conditions. Revenue for the year (at constant currencies) increased 10% to $4.7bn and operating profits increased 8.2% to £237.8m. DiData enjoyed growth across all areas of its business with managed services once again particularly strong with revenue up 14% whilst professional services recovered strongly with growth of 15%. From a geographic perspective, Asia was the main driver although growth was registered in all territories.

Geo Networks fibre infrastructure play

Fibre provider Geo Networks has been busy recently, signing deals to build a subsea cable between Anglesey and Dublin and a fibre network in Leeds, as well as deals yet to be announced. We met with CEO Chris Smedley and CFO Gary Plumpton to discuss Geo’s role as a fibre infrastructure solutions provider in a market enjoying favourable macro trends. Geo's experience shows that, in contrast to ten years ago, money can now be made out of building and operating fibre networks. Premium subscribers can read our full analysis following the meeting here and Premium Plus subscribers can also view the full Geo Networks profile including three year financials and peer group analysis here.

The emergence of SaaS 2.0 in business management software

In our recent report on the opportunities and challenges presented to software vendors by the move to SaaS (Forum members can download it here) we highlighted the SME business management software sector as the key battleground for SaaS. To be fair, this was probably not really a revelation for most readers; one only has to look at the success of Salesforce.com to see how SaaS is coming to dominate this part of the market. But what is interesting to see it that, whilst other parts of the market are just starting to get going with SaaS, it already seems that the SME business management software space is moving onto the next iteration of SaaS – we could call it SaaS 2.0. After all, Salesforce and Netsuite have been around for well over a decade now and it seems logical that things might have moved on in that time. Premium subscribers can read the full piece here.