A look at Pakistan’s CMMI-certified Companies

“This is Pakistan’s golden opportunity to increase its software exports, making an impact on total exports.” says Farhan Mirza, a CMMI Lead Appraiser in Pakistan.

Information Technology is rated as one of the most rapidly growing and expanding sectors world wide, with projects worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Can software exports ever actually have an impact on the GDP of a country? Of course. It is the development and export of intellectual capital; takes a smaller amount of physical and financial investment than, for example a manufacturing industry, contributes towards the building of the skillset of a population and has a growing demand for such virtual commodities, around the world.

In the case of India, for example, the country has been able to establish itself in a strong position within this industry, and the software industry has become a major contributor towards its high GDP growth rate. India has been able to maintain an average annual growth rate of 38 % since last 10 years in the field of IT. In fact, the export figures of 2006-7 are touching approximately US$23 Billion. This has also enabled the government to tackle the unemployment issues, as the IT and BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) sector collectively are providing more than 1.2 million jobs in India. So yes, there is a direct link between the quality of the software houses, and the impact they have on the country’s economy.

Pakistan has been a bit slow in tapping this tremendous opportunity, but then you have to see the picture in its entirety, rather than do a gung-ho comparison between the two neighbors. “It is true that the country has only recently realized that in order to increase its export figures and help to decrease the trade deficit, that it must accelerate in the field of Software and across all disciplines in the IT sector.” comments Farhan. But then, rather at looking at this glass half empty, I’m going to be a skeptic and say ‘better late than never’.

One of the leading contributors to this amazing success story of Indian IT rise is adopting the latest methods and best practices by the Indian IT houses. The most prominent in this category is CMMI , Capability Maturity Model Integrated. This is a standard which is developed jointly by United States Department of Defence and Carnegie Mellon University and is now monitored by Software Engineering Institute ( SEI).

While a cursory look at the number of CMM certified companies in India might reveal a very impressive number, upon closer inspection, because of the sheer size of each company there, individual departments or branches of the same company. And of course, there is no way Pakistani companies can hope to compete with that number, because the sheer size of one Indian company, is probably equal to the size of the number of students that graduate each year from the entire country.

However, even with these figures, analysts label Pakistan as being competitive. The size differential between Pakistan and India is huge – one is almost 9 times larger than the other in physical landmass, population, economy – so why are people so surprised when the same percentage applies to the IT industry?

If you look at the progress achieved by individual companies and compare the growth and trend to countries that are better matched with Pakistan, the country DOES shine out in the spotlight.

Farhan continues, “The key success to increase the export of software / information technology business is by penetrating more into US market which is still considered the hub of Information Technology. Now the important question, which comes in mind, is how to do this and the best answer is by adopting International Standard CMMI. Countries like India and China are getting more and more share of International Software Market by quickly adopting to this standard.”

The CMMI, or Capability Maturity Model Integrated, is a standard based on best practices, developed by the United States Department of Defense and Carnegie Mellon University. Farhan explains, “This is essentially a collection of best practices which have a proven data of increasing the efficiency and project management.”

Why CMMI is a MUST
All the prominent IT players have themselves adopted this and now they only work with organizations that are appraised on CMMI. Some of the prominent players in US who believe in this philosophy include US Army, Department of Defense, Boeing, General Motors, IBM, JP Morgan, Lockheed Martin, Siemens, NCR and many more. If a software house wants to get clients and business, this is a minimum benchmark, which they have to achieve.

As per the official figures India has more than 350 companies, China 500 , Taiwan and Korea near about 100 and Japan 220 companies appraised on CMMI requirements. “If Pakistan does not move quickly for such standards then our dreams of becoming a prominent player in Software world will really be hampered.” At the same time Pakistan only has 20 companies so far Appraised on CMMI.

CMMI in Pakistan
The Quality Assurance Institute (QAI) truly believes in training local resources as this makes CMMI more affordable for small and medium size organizations – which is where the greatest growth potential is. Taking advantage of the initiative started by the Pakistan Software Export Board, QAI began evaluating companies in Pakistan to provide long term sustainability to companies in the international markets.

“Pakistan made history when two of its organizations, KalSoft and Systems Pvt Ltd, were appraised on CMMI Level 3. This work was being carried out by QAI, International Resources.” Based on this ‘track record’, QAI began training local resources for this and Farhan Mirza was sent to Frankfurt and Washington for training, becoming Pakistan’s first Lead Appraisal authorized by SEI. There are less than 400 Lead Appraisers worldwide. He went through a successful observation in June 2007 from a faculty member of SEI. “This was an important leap for Pakistan because we no longer had to depend on foreign bodies to come and conduct the appraisals. This is a bold step towards becoming self reliant.”

Farhan has thus far, appraised the following organizations on CMMI Maturity Level 2:

eWorx International.
Descon Infosys
Techlogix
Abacus Consulting
Si-3
eDev Technologies
Avanza Solutions
ProSol
GeoPaq
Shaukat Khanum Hospital
ACES
CARE
LMK Resources
Technosoft
NADRA

A list of companies that are CMM Level 3 and upwards:
NetSol Technologies (Pvt.) Ltd.  CMMI Level 5
NCR Pakistan  CMMI Level 5
Kalsoft (Pvt.) Ltd.  CMMI Level 3
Systems (Pvt.) Ltd.  CMMI Level 3
Digital Processing Systems  CMMI Level 3

With this we can assume that Pakistan IT is now picking up pace in the right direction and if the other important geo-political factors remain positive so we are all set to make our self a prominent country in the world IT map.

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