The question “can things get any worse?” always makes for a hot topic of discussion. While businesses around the world brace for the worst, companies in Pakistan are simply being cautious. Perhaps the fact that we haven’t been as plugged into the global economies as we could have been, has been protected us from experiencing the negative impact. Or maybe the fact that our economy is pre-occupied with its own internal challenges that we’ve managed to keep ourselves from being hurled off the map. Whatever the case may be, we’re here and our businesses are going to continue the struggle.

March was significant from a number of perspectives. For the first time in our history, the world got to see another side of Pakistani Politics through the mobile phones, sms texts and tweets of citizen journalists who blogged the events as they unfolded. Bloggers became the digital militia who wouldn’t let corporate media take over and for the most part, they prevailed. While you’re wondering why we’re even talking about blogging and the individual voice in CIO, well, we have more evidence to show the reach and coverage that the blogosphere can give to you. It’s a powerful information tool that can be used to aggregate all kinds of information and serve it to everyone who is willing to put in the effort to search for it. But more about that in the next issue of CMO Pakistan.

In this issue, we’re looking at the dismal state of the economy and the role technology companies can play to make it better. We’ve also got experts from Teradata talking about why investing in technology during the downtime is so important, as well as how restricted, non-existent budgets, are starting to squeeze companies. But no matter what, IT, the enabling force, will prevail. Mergers and acquisitions and partnerships may take place, but for the economy and GDP to improve, you will need optimization, efficiency and automation – processes that the IT sector can play a role in.

We’ve also got photographs and some preliminary details to share with you about the CIOYearAhead’09 conference which took place on the 31st of March, 2009. What an amazing panel of speakers across the three sessions focusing on Business-Technology Challenges, HR Roadmap and the IT Policy, for which we delayed the print of the April issue by 2 days! You’ll also find more photographs and videos at: ciopakistan.com and webstudio.ciopakistan.com

Until the next issue,
Signing out,

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