The week in review

Richard Baloyi

AT HOME

THE BLACK IT Forum (BITF) has thrown down the gauntlet over Kelly Group's "removal" of deputy CEO and leading IT personality Mthunzi Mdwaba from its board. Kelly stripped Mdwaba  former BITF president - of his position and his role on the board towards the end of August, releasing a vague statement to the market in which no reasons were supplied.

The BITF threatened Kelly with war if it did not publicly apologise for the manner in which Mdwaba has been treated, as the forum thinks he is the victim of an internal dispute. BITF treasurer Morena Ntsika says: "They [Kelly] have declared war against us, so we are going to war as well." - ITWeb

GOOGLE has appointed a new country manager for SA, after going five months without a top executive to run local operations. Luke Mckend will join Google SA as country manager on 1 November. Confirming speculation that a South African will take the reins, the company adds that Mckend is originally from SA and has been with Google since 2006, working as an industry head in Google`s London office. In the UK, he was responsible for managing a wide variety of businesses across the classified, property, restaurant, education, dating and job sectors, according to the company. - ITWeb

THE AUDITOR-GENERAL (AG) has slammed the State IT Agency (SITA) in its annual report, saying SITA does not have adequate policies, procedures and systems in place to ensure compliance with laws and regulations and effective internal control. SITA`s annual report was tabled before Parliament recently. According to the report, SITA incurred R215 million worth of irregular expenditure last year, on top of R19 million in the 2008/09 financial year. A turnaround strategy is supposed to have been implemented and driven by public service and administration minister Richard Baloyi. - ITWeb

THE GAUTENG Department of Transport (DOT) has shut down its call centre for electronic driver and learner licence test booking indefinitely. Spokesperson Philemon Motshwaedi confirms there were a lot of challenges with the contact centre and says technical glitches also added to the problems. He adds that the main reason for shutting down the centre is because the provincial department cancelled its contract with the service provider, Sibize Calling International. Motshwaedi says this change is only for Gauteng, and other provincial systems will continue as normal. - ITWeb

LISTED security solutions provider SecureData lost a fair bit of operating profit because of the strong rand, but reinstated its dividend policy, despite the currency headwind. The company recently released its year-end results for the 12 months to July and said revenue was slightly down, from R464 million to R458 million. Earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) was flat at R57 million. However, the company paid out less in interest after paying more than was required into a loan, which aided net profit. Net earnings for the year improved from R5.7 million to R15.9 million. CEO Dean Brazier says had the rand not fluctuated to its current strong position during the year, the company could have gained between 10% and 15% at the operating profit level. - ITWeb

CELL C has taken its city-by-city network roll-out to Durban and Pietermaritzburg. Durban is the second major city in SA to get the operator`s high-speed HSPA+ network, after it was unveiled in Cape Town last month. The operator has been rolling out the network city-by-city, beginning in Port Elizabeth, and then heading to Bloemfontein, East London and Cape Town. Cell C has committed to 34% coverage of the entire South African population by the end of the year and 67% coverage by mid-2011. - ITWeb

INTO AFRICA

THE GOVERNMENT of Kenya is inviting bids from investors to set up amenities at a proposed Technology Park situated on the outskirt of the capital - Nairobi. Information communication technology (ICT) permanent secretary Dr Bitange Ndemo has hinted that the master plan for the proposed Konza Technology City, which was initially referred to as Malili Technology Park, is ready. "Around the end of this month, we will have a comprehensive presentation of the whole thing, including the pictures and videos. In November, we will get the people interested to put up structures. We already have about five (investors) who have come and hopefully at the beginning of the year, we can see something going on." - IT News Africa

TANZANIA will next year host a pan-African conference and exhibition that will showcase latest innovations and inventions in ICT as a tool to develop education across the continent. The 6th eLearning Africa Conference will run from May 25 to 27, 2011, focusing on Africa`s youth. "Africa has the highest percentage of young people anywhere in the world. How can it unlock the vast reservoir of talent? How can technology support education and training," said a news statement from the organisers. -  The Citizen Daily

A CENTRE that would serve as a hub to research and develop open source software in West Africa was opened at the Ghana India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in Information, Communication and Technology (ICT), to improve access to ICT. Open Source Software is computer software, which gives users accesses to its source code to enable users to modify and make it available to the public under special licensing agreements. - Ghana Web

ABROAD

HEWLETT-PACKARD recently defended new CEO Leo Apotheker from the latest barrage of criticism, and accused Mark Hurd of lying repeatedly to the board while still HP`s chief. HP said there was no evidence that former SAP AG boss Apotheker, whose appointment disappointed some in the investment community, was involved in misconduct that took place at the German software giant, as asserted by New York Times columnist Joe Nocera. That aggressive stance, laid out in a letter to the New York Times by incoming chairman Ray Lane, could further inflame the company`s already testy relationship with partner and rival Oracle, which hired Hurd as co-president in September after he left HP. - Reuters

A CHAINSAW buzzes, branches snap, and an Amazon tree crashes to the ground. It could be just another of the thousands of trees felled each year in Brazil`s portion of the world`s largest forest except for one detail: a microchip attached to its base holding data about its location, size and who cut it down. With a handheld device, forestry engineer Paulo Borges pulls up the tree`s vital statistics from the chip - a 14-meter-high tree known as a "mandiocao" cut down in Mato Grosso state, the southern edge of the Amazon where the forest has largely been cleared to create farmland. It is only a small pilot project, but its leaders say the microchip system has the potential to be a big step forward in the battle to protect the Amazon. - Reuters

MICROSOFT`S plan to offer its Xbox Live games service on its new smartphones may not be enough to woo even the most avid video gamers to its latest attempt to stay relevant in the mobile phone business.

Microsoft unveiled its Windows 7 phones recently, touting the phone`s connection to Xbox Live, the online subscription service that 25 million owners of the Xbox 360 video game console pay about $60 a year for so they can play multiplayer games online. - Reuters