As we welcome 2011 and say good bye to 2010, I wanted to take a look at some of the major IT industry events and developments that took place during the last year.

Mergers and Acquisitions Frenzy

IBM, Oracle and HP continued their respective shopping sprees in 2010 leading Gartner to refer to them as ‘Super Vendors’ and to warn against the impact of this trend on the levels of innovation and competitiveness in the industry. Google has made over 20 acquisitions in 2010, Cisco has somewhat slowed down its acquisition drive while Microsoft appears to have made just one acquisition. On the European side, Atos/Origin is taking over Siemens IT services business. 2011 could be a banner year in terms of IT acquisitions given the large amount of cash accumulated by the major players in IT due to their increased earnings. . The M&A rumor mill has recently revolved around HP-SAP, Oracle-EMC and SAP-RedHat, none of which has materialized yet.

Executive Musical Chairs

Mark Hurd left HP but soon he replaced Charles Phillips as president of Oracle Corp, providing the company with much needed insight into the hardware market which it needs in order to drive its Sun business. Charles Phillips in turn took over as CEO of Infor, the ERP vendor while HP replaced Hurd with SAP’s ex CEO Léo Apotheker.
Locally in the Middle East Sam Al Kharrat left CISCO to take the helm at SAP MENA replacing Sergio Maccotta bringing much needed local market experience (and hopefully some stability) to the German software maker’s local leadership team.  Husam Dajani left Oracle after some 20 years at the helm; the company joined its Middle East and Africa operation with its Eastern and Central Europe business under the leadership of Alfonso di Ianni an Oracle veteran with vast international experience. IBM on the other hand went into the opposite direction by dis-joining its MEA and ECE businesses. Takreem El-Tohamy was promoted to lead the newly formed MEA unit at IBM.

Technology Buzzwords

SOA is clearly no longer a media darling, it is rarely mentioned in IT publications, but the cloud has taken over as probably the most used (and misused) new buzzword in technology. That is not to say that SOA is not important or that the cloud is taking over our lives, this is simply a reflection of the IT media’s short memory and obsession with new buzzwords.

Landmark Court Ruling

In the Oracle versus SAP case over the unlawful activities of SAP’s subsidiary TomorowNow, SAP must now pay Oracle $1.3 billion for software theft according to a jury verdict that could be the largest-ever for copyright infringement. The decision drew a gasp from the courtroom and prompted hugs and handshakes among Oracle's legal team, which has pursued the case for years. Oracle which appeared satisfied with the ruling at first is now asking SAP for an additional $211 million in interest.

Gadget Wars

Apple has made a big splash with its iPad which I would certainly rate as the gadget of the year! The e-reader market has seen strong efforts by Amazon and Sony but the jury is still out on whether e-readers will become part of our daily lives. On the Smart phone front Google Android continues to show great momentum and Microsoft seems to have made a credible reentry into the mobile OS market with Windows 7. RIM has launched two new Blackberry phones and Google Nexus S has been introduced in the US while Nokia is seen by some to be falling behind in the smart phone arena.