When asked about the rise in Pakistan’s internet bandwidth in recent times, Vice President and Territory Leader Sales for South Region at InfoTech Group Private Limited Asim Haque, in an exclusive interview with Profit, said that internet users have increased greatly, and this has been the case since 2000. Former IT Minister Atta-ur-Rehman according to Haque, did a great job for enhancing bandwidth capacity of the country, and this could be gauged by the fact that some 1100 towns got internet access in his tenure. In addition, he said that Pakistan has the lowest rates in the region for internet, both in the domain of availability and pricing. He said that it was a natural phenomenon that we see increasing bandwidth due to popularity of internet in terms of imparting knowledge.
When asked as to why international vendors did not report their sales figures to Pakistan, Haque said that international companies usually come for testing the potential of their business in the local market, and this is the reason they have liaison/ business development offices in the country. Another reason he said, is that they have partner-driven business models in Pakistan. And if their business grows and they reach a threshold point to start as an entity, they start business directly. But again, he added it did not matter if they do their business directly or not. Currently Haque said only one international vendor reached threshold point and that is doing direct business in the local market.
Pakistan’s IT exports
When asked about the IT export figures of Pakistan Haque said the figure was controversial as there is little access to the exact export figures and nobody is in a position to cite satisfactory numbers of IT exports of the country. Also, he said some IT companies work for foreign companies, so it is difficult to gauge how it contributes to industry exports. Outsourcing is another phenomenon that is supposed to have a share in export figures, yet it is difficult to ascertain its real contribution.
Therefore, he said that there is a need to bring all IT firms and professionals under one umbrella in order to seek the benefits from the industry. One issue he said is the collective consciousness being negligible at company levels, which in turn hampers the support to the IT industry of the country.
Collaboration
with India
When asked about agreements with the Indian IT market he said that he was unaware of any such arrangements. However, he said that Infotech’s Chief Executive Officer Naseer Akhtar is a member of the IT committee of the joint peace initiative program of a local media group. Haque said that they had undertaken some exchanges in this regard, after which the Indian IT firms have shown their interest to outsource from Pakistan. This, he said is a good omen and through this the country can expand its expertise. Pakistan in 2005 had one of the highest numbers of ISO/CMM certifications in the world. We asked Haque as to what the situation was in this regard?
Haque said that it is an indication of the maturity level of any company or industry. International community he said wants comprehensive and sophisticated business from organizations, so they ask for consolidated aspects. Today, he said that we might not have that number of certifications due to increasing ration of small IT businesses, but still he said that there are many companies that have satisfactory number of recognized certified professionals and systems. A delegation of the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) of India are coming to Pakistan in October, so a major breakthrough related to the IT industry is expected this time.
IT: a tool against poverty
On a question as to how the rapid uptake of mobile telephones in Pakistan increased the potential for ICT to play a constructive role in the fight against poverty Haque said, that since the introduction of calling-party-paid in the early 90s, the communication mobility shot up phenomenally. These days he said it poses tremendous opportunities for the increasing potential of ICT in the country. This has major implications for IT industry in regards to data convenience i.e. mobile banking. Similarly, almost all mobile applications are developed by IT companies, and even small level companies have made millions of rupees through this facet.
As far as poverty reduction is concerned by means of IT-telecommunication, he said it does help the poor in many ways. For example small vendors and farmers have now been able to have direct connectivity with their respective markets, and they get to know how they can negotiate the price mechanism for their products. We asked Haque as to how challenges of localisation would be addressed. To this he said that this will take place one day, but it has a slow pace at the adoption level in the world. In Pakistan tools for localisation (Urdu for example) are available, and conversion is possible. But the only issue he said is whether an IT company is willing to do that or not. Because the capacity of localisation is there, but adoption level is not good. We asked him how the IT sector served the telecom sector of the country. He said that the IT sector serves the telecom industry through two means; one is infrastructure level and second is that we provide them multiple disparate solutions. At infrastructure level we provide them hardware solutions and maintenance. While at the second level we integrate their multiple systems for example integrating their billings is one of the tasks being undertaken by them.
Development
work in Africa
Haque was asked as to why Ghana was chosen as a prospect for investment, he said that a lot of development is happening in the African region. And many international donor agencies are working there. So he said that they needed to have automated systems, and we provided them with those. One thing we did in Ghana was to automate their central stock exchange. And the second thing we did was to provide tax solutions, as the World Bank and other funding agencies want to have automated tax solutions in order to ensure transparency.
According to Global Information Technology report 2010 Pakistan stands at number 87 for ‘availability of latest technologies” in Market Environment component, while it stands at number 97 for ‘availability of research and training services’ in Infrastructure Environment. When asked about how Pakistan could improve its positions in the said spheres, he said that it was unfortunate that people do not think collectively for the country. They should first come under one umbrella for the sake of the country’s progress in every sector, because it is collaboration that would help Pakistan grow. In our industry, it is as an odd practice to work collectively, which is not a good sign for the betterment of both the industry and country. For training purposes, Infotech is the only company that is partnering with the Oracle’s training programme for IT professionals. He further added that many of their trained professionals are working in leading firms of the region.
ABOUT INFOTECH: InfoTech is a systems integration company that delivers end-to-end IT solutions for data centers, server consolidation and enterprise management. Currently serving customers across different countries, the group’s enterprise division aims to provide solutions that give them a competitive edge, by designing, installing and implementing agile IT infrastructure. InfoTech provides comprehensive range of professional, technical support and training services. With a management focused on operational excellence, industry accreditation, growing clientele, and partnership with global brands like IBM, Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, VMware, McAfee, CA Technologies and now APC, InfoTech aims to remain the leading IT solutions company. With consistent technological leaps, InfoTech is serving financial, public and telecom sectors. The company is headquartered in Pakistan with its regional offices in Karachi, Lahore & Islamabad and global footprints in Singapore, UAE and Ghana. InfoTech is now ready to build the APC line of products into its end-to-end infrastructure solutions.
