Ushering in New Beginnings Making Ends Meet

By Umair Naeem

And yet another financial year comes to a close, with businesses everywhere wondering how to implement all the talk and discussion about the mean, lean times. Customers, both large and small, will only spend money where they feel they are getting the maximum return on their investment, no matter how small. Vendors have probably reached a situation where they can no longer cut costs, because they’ve done what they could, and now need to be more creative in their selling approach.
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Switch on the Networking and Turn Up the Volume!

IT’S A BRAVE NEW WORLD OUT THERE!

To borrow a tagline from one of Pakistan’s largest community portals, teabreak.pk, I cannot emphasize enough as to what a critical role the web is playing in terms of shaping traditional media. An increasing number of journalists and anchors are looking to the internet to find their dose of breaking news and opinions being discussed on the various forums and a greater interest is being generated by television channels and corporations to somehow learn more about this online world that seems to be ripping apart at the seams.
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Welcome to another issue of CMO

customized marketing content for the C-Level executives, from CIO Pakistan!

The concept of marketing is all about creating the right perception in the minds of your target, in order for the target to appreciate and buy your product. This is something that remains constant, no matter what the product is that is being marketed. In the case of the Pakistani software industry as well, image marketing will help fuel the industry’s growth towards a brighter future. In this issue of CMO, we have a look at how image marketing can work as a complimentary tool to create the right sort of perception in the minds of the buyers and users of the said product: the Pakistan software industry and its constituent software companies, both big and small. We speak to the president of PASHA, Jehan Ara, on the topic, and also hear the perspective of Arif Hussain, the COO of Multinet. Read more

The Blogger-Actor Parallel

At times, we all strive to be who we’re not. Could be a different persona, a character, something better than ourselves or an alias that will make us feel stronger, more powerful or more sociable than who we really are. Despite the fact that there has been a greater population of the virtual community who has revealed their real identity online, the fact that the communication is being made through a screen, makes a difference. Similar to the stage that an actor steps up on to perform. The similarities didn’t hit me until the day we invited Sania Saeed, a popular stage and television actor in Pakistan, came by to the CIO Pakistan WebStudio to interact with a few bloggers. Read more

HP: Touch the Future Now! Umair Naeem Reports from Beijing, China

By Umair Naeem

The venue was the Ritz Carlton in Beijing, China; and the event was HP’s Touch the Future Now, and I am here, right in the thick of things! Media from a number of Asia Pacific and South Asian countries descended to cover the event, and the mood remained that of excited anticipation. With the additional scare of the swine flu in China, most visitors kept trying to keep themselves cool so as to not be red flagged by the medical temperature checking team because of the high temperatures! Read more

Celebrating World Telecom Day

Every year on the 17th of May, the Telecommunication industry across the world gathers to celebrate World Telecom Day. The theme is decided upon and rolled out based on trends and growth. The theme this year is about “Protecting Children in Cyberspace”, something which has been talked about extensively throughout the years. Yup! The fear of the virtual world has been around since the days of the dial up connection. But the fear of anything new, has been around since, well, anything new has ever come up. Read more

Hello, hello!? Can Anybody Hear Me?!

Accessing the Right Bandwidth
That might be the question you’re asking, depending on the network you’re using! And May celebrates World Telecom Day, we wanted to dedicate this issue of CIO Pakistan to one of the most progressively moving industries in the country.

You’ll find a lot of articles and interviews that have something to do with the industry itself, its history or an idea and concept which brings in value addition. Take Omer Allahwala from IRD as an example. Medical Research probably has little to do with telecoms until you read about the innovation his solution has brought into the realm of data collection and archiving.  Salman Ansari, the telecom analyst who can see through most ‘telco strategies’ and tell you what’s backward about them, takes up the OpEd column, which is an extension of his weekly program from the WebStudio. And of course, our Smart CIO interview with the Chief Information Officer of Ufone, Faisal Khaliq, who talks about the changing (and increasingly challenging) role of the CIO for Telcos.
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Getting to the Top and Staying There

A Brave New World!
This has been a strange month and there is definitely a hint of movement in the air. With two more events under our belt, the CIO Pakistan team is getting a lot of hopeful feedback from people talking about change and progress. That’s always a good change of scenery.

Business is still slow with an economy that is still somewhat sluggish which is why we’re so excited about Salim Ghauri being on the cover of CEO Pakistan. Read more

Going Up? The Start of a New Wave?

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. Read more

Profiling the Pakistani CEO

Take a few moments to take this survey? It should help us to better understand the average CEO of the Pakistani enterprise. It should take about 5 minutes to respond - Thanks!

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