A must attend for technogeeks and startup wannabees. Shoaib Abbasi is a 20 year veteran of Oracle corporation and is currenty the CEO of Informatica. Follow the link below to Jawwad’s Blog where he has posted details
Five Rivers Technology, based out of Lahore was recently best known for its outsourcing projects with US based clients such as Clearcube and Barz. What they might be known for henceforth is the Sirius Handheld computer. The first of its kind, this locally built PDA (a feat that is by no means trivial) support both English and Urdu and is ultra low-cost (as it says on the website). Now I dont know what the cost is, but its definitely going to be cheaper than Palm, PocketPC and Symbol PDAs.
This is not the PDA that will replace your Imate Jam or Palm treo, but its uses are immense in the fields of rural education and logistics/delivery. Lets take the delivery companies for example.
Ever noticed how when the Fedex guy or DHL guy comes hes holding that device that looks like a small computer with a electronic pen and a keyboard? Those are essentially field PDAs,most of them are built by a US company known as Symbol. TCS has started field testing Symbol PDAs as well, but they remain expensive in Pakistan, each running anywhere above Rs 45,000 plus. Maybe they should contact Fiver Rivers and try the Sirius out for the same task 
Picture below of the Sirius
Fiver Rivers Home page here:
I will be out on Monday and Tuesday, so my next post will be on Wednesday. I am writing about Microsoft’s new smartphone idea for the world’s poor, its could be one of those epic ideas that change the world..so dont forget to check back here Wednesday!
PSEB (Pakistans software export board) recently posted on its website that Pakistani IT exports have reached 72 million dollars. Out of which 63% (ie about 43 million dollars) is pure software export. Which means the revenue software companies have been able to make by selling our software coding skills abroad. Keeping aside the fact that most of this business is supported by Pakistanis abroad (such as the management teams of Techlogix and Folio3, which are doing great work in Pakistan), 43 million dollars is a pittance really. And last year this number was much less, so atleast there is an improvement.
But does it really matter in terms of the world’s overall market, where we compete for work with other countries ? are we anywhere worth mentioning yet as a prime outsourcing destination?
Forget India, everyone mentions India. Take Israel, for example. Pakistan doesnt recognize it as a country but how many Pakistanis know that Israel’s software exports are over 3 billion dollars a year ? let me put that in a numbers:
Pakistan: Population: 150,000,000 (est.)
Software export revenue : $ 43,000,000
Israel: Population : 6,276,883 (est)
Software export revenue : $ 3,000,000,000
Basically, PSEB, stop patting yourselves on the back and roll up your sleeves. We have tons of catching up to do. Maybe we should also work on bettering our IT instiutions as a start. Maybe we should study how the succesful ones (India, South Korea, Israel, etc) did it and try to put those plans in action.
PSEB Link :
http://www.pseb.org.pk/newsdetail.php?newsid=93&PHPSESSID=9fc4213e0a7b92f2d9f48e3e5f043d3d
Over the last year, there has been considerable focus on Server Blades in the local Pakistani Market. Companies with more than 12-15 servers have started looking at server consolidation strategies and in most cases have selected either IBM, Intel or HP based blade systems. IBM and Intel lead the market locally with HP coming in a distant third, the only implementation ive heard of so far has been in Mueller and Philips. I would never go with an HP bladecenter anyway.
IBM on the other hand has gained momentum in the higher-end blade market and now has several implementations, Union Bank, Maersk Sealine, TCS, and Hinopak being few of the names that have IBM Blade installations. Intel is working on capturing the low-cost market, notably PAF has several Intel blades now in their IT setup. By design, most Blade systems incorporate a SAN storage array in their designs too…
Desktops blades on the other hand havent yet had a good run in the local market. Treet corporation is the only company that i heard about last year running the Clearcube Desktop Blade solution. Clearcube is very successful in Europe and the US but i think our market might be too young for such a solution. Thin clients though are on the liftoff pad and are taking off. more on thin client in another post.
Wikipedia has a great page on Blade systems and what they are /what they do :
There might be an Apple store now in karachi (finally on zamzama) but who needs to buy a mac mini when you have the Inbox Mini PC? Literally the same size and homegrown, the Inbox MiniPC is the cutest local desi pc around with performance to spare. It does have a fan in it though, so you will hear a slight hum if u put your ear to it..something you cant hear in the MAC mini. I keep wanting to have in my drawing room just to play music and share funny videos with friends… Read more…
| Welcome to IT tazee |
| Now that ive vented on the PK government for the fact i cant use blogger, let me tell you what this blog is all about…. Welcome to IT tazee, a personal, daily blog where I post happenings in the IT industry in Pakistan and around the world. Most of what i intend to post will be news that will have an impact on our industry locally, other stuff would just be the “good to know” part. Stick around and check back often, you might find something useful  M |
The Pakistani government, in its infinite wisdowm imposed a 15% GST tax recently on every computer hardware component being shipped into this country as of July 1st 2006. But the PTA did ask PTCL to reduce the bandwidth rates. Not bad eh, bandwidth costs (which in Pakistan are the highest in Asia, effectively blocking a .com revolution) might come down but we’ll pay the difference and more because of our new 15% tax. But then I guess someone in Islamabad is really keen to keep the computer out of reach of the common man.Not that thats been a difficult task….
and why am I on wordperss and not Blogger? Our Pakistani government blocked (censored) blogger and blogspot.com a few months ago. So basically, no one in Pakistan can read a blog published on Blogger, or so they thought.
To access Blogger, use www.anonymizer.com , basically its a neat service that lets you surf without leaving your bread crumb trail of an IP address.
so…ha! there! (i guess now they will try to block anonymizer.com)
For all the government’s talk about IT being this country’s savior, there is no action, in fact negative action to support it and no significant demand creation locally so far. All talk and no action, nothing new there.
