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Archive for the ‘IT’ Category

NetSol Technologies gets approval for trading on KSE

Thursday, June 9th, 2005

Market Wire reports Netsol is launching a $6 million IPO (which includes $1.6 million of private placement) with AKD Securities as the lead underwriter and 4 other banks participating. The listing is expected to finalize end of its 2005 fiscal year (when is this?).

NetSol recently launched its IT Village which can accomodate 600 employees, in a 5 story building. More here.

The parent company NetSol Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: NTWK) has a market cap of 25 million. What’s the outlook for this company?

Posted in Business, IT | 2 Comments »

Worldcall launches WLL service in Lahore, hopes to raise funds through IPO

Tuesday, June 7th, 2005

Business Recorder reports that WorldCall is hoping to raise Rs 690 million by holding an IPO end of June. This is a good time for the offering because of the recent launch of itâ€™s Wireless Local Loop service in Lahore (links anyone?). The service features limited mobility (limited to a 6 km zone in urban areas as dictated by PTA), ability to send and receive SMS and internet access at fixed line prices. Worldcall currently has only one competitor in the WLL market, Telecardâ€™s GO CDMA which opened shop in the beginning of this year.

Posted in IT, Telecom | 1 Comment »

Microsoft Pakistan Developers Conference 2005

Sunday, June 5th, 2005

Microsoft Pakistan will host it’s annual Pakistan Developers Conference from June 13th to 15th at the Pearl Continental Hotel in Karachi. This is the third such event for Pakistan (info about previous events here, and an independent summary of the 2003 event here). The agenda for the event includes more than 15 speakers presenting over 50 technical topics over the course of 3 days. Topics include discussions about upcoming Microsoft technologies (Yukon, Longhorn, Indigo etc) as well as general topics with titles such as ‘The Bio Informatics Revolution’ and ‘A holistic View of Enterprise Security’. Check out the agenda for more information about the topics being covered.

Registration ends June 7th.

Also, this month’s issue of Spider has an interview with one of the speakers gathering at the PDC.

Posted in IT | Comments Off

800 new IT awarness centres planned

Tuesday, May 31st, 2005

Provincial Minister of IT for Sindh, Mustafa Kamal announced 800 IT awareness centers.

This is not an official press release. It came during his speech at the golden jubilee commemorations of the chemistry department of Karachi University. He offered his profound inisght by adding that IT had significant role to play in the fields of science, especially chemistry and Karachi University’s IT department would play a significant role in the scientific development of the country.

Further, the Chairman of Higher Education Commission (HEC) Dr. Attaur Rehman was honoured with the “Best Student Award”. I think this is a misprint as he is nowhere close to being an academic student.

Anyone have details on these IT centres? What do they have? Who was contracted with building, deploying and managing the existing 35 IT centres?

Posted in Academia, Government, IT | 4 Comments »

PASHA Job fair 2005

Sunday, May 29th, 2005

Pakistan Software Houses Association (PASHA) is holding their first job fair on June 2nd 2005 at the Marriot hotel in Karachi. The fair’s objectives are are:

To create a link between the IT and ITeS industry and the academic sector
To correct the perception that there are no jobs available in the IT sector. It is imperative that we convince young people that our sector is alive and well and growing at a rate of over 50% a year.
Providing companies a platform for recruitment
To provide an opportunity for companies to market themselves

The job fair also features several workshops designed to coach new job seekers on topics such as resume writing, interviewing tips and enhancing communication skills. PASHA was started in 1992 by 9 software development houses and since then has grown to have over 200 member companies. This looks like an excellent opportunity for job seekers and employers in the IT industry. Their website says that the last day to register was May 15, though their registration link still seems to work.

Posted in Business, IT | 2 Comments »

PTCL workers on country-wide strike

Friday, May 27th, 2005

Daily Times reports that over 50,000 PTCL employees are observing a country wide strike. The PTCL workerâ€™s union claims that they have not been offered as raise for the past six years and are demanding more incentives and job surety before PTCLâ€™s upcoming round of privatization. Talks between the Union and management (chaired by the Minister of IT, Awais Khan Leghri) have ended bitterly with both sides refusing to budge on their stance. Meanwhile a bearish trend has hit the countryâ€™s stock markets partially due to the strike.

With about $2 billon at stake are the workers trying to unfairly twist the Governmentâ€™s arm less than a month before the privatization?

Posted in IT | 2 Comments »

Pakistan moving toward e-procurement with Korea’s assistance

Thursday, May 5th, 2005

As part of the e-government vision, the government of Pakistan is seeking Korea’s assistance with e-procurement. Currently a feasibility study is proposed for 3 months. The key upside to e-procurement is transparency, competitiveness and managerial efficiency. The World Bank has an interesting report on Korea’s e-procurement model (PDF Format. HTML format here) . From the report: staffing requirements fell from 1058 to 935, procurements increased by one-third to $17.1bn. The e-procurement system managed $20bn in goods and services between Sep 2002 and Sep 2003 with the participation of 25,000 public agencies and 87,000 companies. The four factors from Korea’s experience: strong leadership, nationwide e-government reforms, information and communications infrastructure and comprehensive process reengineering. The toughest of those for Pakistan might be process reengineering. Korea began it’s e-government reforms under President Dae Jung Kim (1998-2002).

This is somewhat contradictory to our previous story: Pakistan ranked second last among ‘e-ready’ nations.

Posted in Government, IT | 1 Comment »

Pakistani girl sets record for youngest MCP at age nine

Tuesday, May 3rd, 2005

Arfa Karim Randhwa of Multan, Faisalabad, Pakistan has been accredited as the youngest Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) at age 9. The requirements for MCP are by no means trivial. No details on which exam she wrote but Desktop Support Technician seems like one of the easier routes to MCP with 4 courses requiring installation, management and troubleshooting knowledge of the windows environment (hardware, filesystem, networking etc) and applications (office, outlook, etc). She studied through Applied Technologies (APTECH) (whose website is a disgrace) in a single summer vacation. She comes from a rural, agricultural background with her father working for United Nations in Congo and her mother acting as the landlady in his absence. She also won a national singing competition. Not an astonishing story, but it does set an excellent precedent for Pakistani youth — a little encouragement goes a long way. Pakistan could use a lot more intellectual capital. What can be done to promote the youth and build intellectual capital?

Posted in Academia, IT | Comments Off

IT in Karachi

Thursday, April 28th, 2005

Anthony Mitchell, columnist for E-Commerce Times has a great round-up of IT in Karachi is his article Searching for IT in Karachi. He highlights the economic growth factor and potential in Pakistani markets. He also reports on quite a few established firms working with high profiles companies like Amazon and Walmart and some receiving work by way of India and South Africa. This is an arena where commercial and government entities need to work together to build a coherent, stable IT infrastructure to tap foreign markets and local talent. In a related story, local company ZRG International will provide call center solutions for Maersk Pakistan. ZRG provides call center solutions built upon Open Standards-Based technology from Intel’s Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) technology.

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Ministry of IT approves Rs 38.4 million project for IT Services Academy in Lahore

Tuesday, April 26th, 2005

Business Recorder reports: “The Ministry of Information Technology has approved a project worth Rs 39.458 million for the IT Services Academy in Lahore”. The 2 year project is prepared by the Electronic Government Directorate (EGD). The 2004-05 Projects page does not have any details on this yet. Some already implemented projects include Salary Disbursment through ATMS. It would be nice to see other solid work coming out of this department.