A Little Birdie Told Me…

ACTIVISM Cyber activism through Twitter has provided a new forum in cyberspace to draw attention to a cause or event. The most recent case in point relating to Pakistan was the Twenty20 World Cup Finals when Pakistan Cricket made it to the trending topics on  Twitter, the term used to describe the ten most talked about topics on the network. Read more

Can you Reuse the Refuse?

A Look at reusing old hardware to decrease the burden onthe CapEx without
killing the OpEx…even in Pakistan!
Things aren’t always what they seem to be. Case in point, a pile of junk, isn’t always a pile of junk. And if you’re anything like the many technology enthusiasts who buy hardware directly as opposed to through a proper procurement or purchase department, chances are, you’ve ended up buying a truckload of hardware that you didn’t necessarily need. Instead of throwing it all away, there are things you can do to bring some of the hardware back in use. And before you stand up in protest of the fact that this will only add to the refurbished hardware market, we asked people to tell us ways that our companies could save on cost because they already had hardware lying around on their premises.
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Industry Rising?

How much of the economic sludge can the new fiscal budget actually help to relieve? Every industry has its strong points to consider, hence making a business case to one association or another as to why or why not it should be in the tax net. But when you look at the Information Technology sector, you simply cannot look at it in isolation because it has an impacting effect on every other industry. Call it the common denominator or whatever other buzzword you’d like, Information Communications Technology touches the boundaries of several hundred industries. In many cases, they drive the competition and enable traditional Pakistani enterprises to compete more effectively in international markets.

Technology is an enabler. It makes sure that businesses can run on it. Much like physical infrastructure, the progress of roads and other infrastructure which enable logistics will be severely hindered, if you put strain on the services which enable the growth. If you tax the industry itself, instead of being able to have the requisite impact, the costs will be too much for any other organization to bear. And once that happens, not only will we be killing off hundreds of thousands of jobs, we’ll be putting our economy into some serious economic distress in the long term. So what needs to happen? Read more

Pakistan is the 6th most populated country. Facebook could be the Fifth

If there is anyone on the planet left wondering if Facebook is still a fad or simply something weaved into the fabric of our everyday lives, that’s a statistic that will blow your mind! According to UN estimates available on Wikipedia.org that puts the population of Pakistan at 166 million. Use this as a benchmark to compare the population online at Facebook.com and the figure is startling. According to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s blog post dated the 8th of April, 2009, the social networking community welcomed its 200 millionth active user. Based on stats available on Facebook, there are more than 200 million active users, more than 100 million users log on to community at least once each day, more than two-thirds of Facebook users are outside of college and the fastest growing demographic is those 35 years old and older!

Another interesting stat is that there are more than 30 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices. In fact, Facebook mobile users are almost 50% more active on Facebook than non-mobile users and there are more than 150 mobile operators in 50 countries working to deploy and promote Facebook mobile products. The community is more quoted on television and seems to host more anchor fan pages than any other site. With conventional media integration, even from Pakistan, is there really anyone out there who doesn’t know about how valuable online properties can be? You might be as popular as you are on television, but Facebook simply enables you to quantify the figures.

With this kind of engagement, surely the online population is comparable (and aggressively competing) like the new utopia we’ve always wanted!

Is eCommerce Just a Buzz?!

The professional executive is considered to know what he is talking about. Especially when it comes to technology, if the CEO or, better yet, the Chief Information Officer says something, everyone stands up and listens. And this is quite true for the industry as well as colleagues within the company itself. They know, therefore they cannot be all that wrong.

And in case you are one of those Chiefs who hold the opinion that there isn’t enough demand or know-how in the market to justify B2C or B2B online payments, then here’s our knowledge-share for you. Read more

ICT Sector in Pakistan Touching New Lows

By Munawar Iqbal

“The report of WEF must be an eye-opener for decision makers as it suggests that a coherent government vision on information and communication technologies, coupled with an early focus on education is keys to spur network readiness and to lay the foundations for sustainable growth. For a sustainable ICT sector, the people at the helm of affairs should have been working with close collaboration of the stake-holder. Thus, a balanced policy could have been envisaged. Unfortunately, it could not happen and this apathy has shaken the confidence of investors and destroyed the enabling environment of business as well.”
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Pakistan: In The Line Of Wire

What’s on the mind of one of the most networked professionals of
Pakistan’s IT Industy? Jehan Ara, President of P@SHA,
shares her insights!

Why do you feel so passionate about promoting the local industry?

The Pakistan IT and ITES industry is such a vibrant and exciting industry. There is a lot of cutting edge work being done here and companies have been growing and achieving their own levels of success. However there has been no concerted effort to support them, highlight their achievements or assist them in scaling up. There is a lot of creativity, passion and expertise that exists in this sector. I feel, however, that we have not been very successful in marketing ourselves to the extent that we can and should. Hence my focus on creating a brand and getting it out there. Read more

What’s In a Name?

Well, everything! And this becomes even more important when it comes to names on the internet. There are some domain names that aren’t part of your everyday lingua franca, but they still always get the repeat traffic because people can remember the name. And since there is such a fine science behind the art of naming, we asked a few active #ciopk and #blaagers followers on Twitter, to help us put these bits and pieces of advice together. Read more

A CIO’s Guide to Pakistan By Talha Ghafoor

I was recently assigned to work on a project for a financial institution in Pakistan and had to travel to Karachi for a few days. For someone who is so plugged into the system, travel outside the comfort of the digitally integrated world, always proves to be an interesting experience. Keeping this in mind, I thought I’d share a technology perspective of the trip – I’m not sure that some of these things are known by people who live there, which is why it makes for an interesting write up. So here we go! Read more

Aligning Growth: Arif Hussain, COO Multinet

Who do you think this is a description of? Name the company that has successfully expanded its long haul DWDM to cover a distance greater than 5,000km across 42 locations spanning Pakistan, using its own fiber to connect 107 cities across Pakistan, and can deliver broadband speeds of up to 100mbps over FTTP? Yes, we’re talking about Multinet.
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