Top 10 best known SW companies in Pakistan

Here are the 10 local Software development houses that come to mind if someone would ask me “name me , off the top of your balding head, 10 well known software companies in Pakistan today”

Please feel free to add names to this list through comments.

Here goes..All these companies have been around for 2 years or more.(not in set any order as such)
1. Techlogix

2. Inbox Technologies (ex- Threesixtydegreez, yes Inbox does SW now too)

3. Avanza Solutions

4. Mentor Graphics

5. Xavour

6. LMKR

7. Kalsoft

8. Five Rivers Tech

9. Netsol

10. Alchemy Technologies

Going Jamin (Looking for an Imate or Windows smartphone pda in karachi?)

Apparently alot of people have been searching the net for PDAs, specifically information on Imates and connected PDA phones,etc and ofcourse Im sure most of you have found nothing on the internet with regards to local pricing. So heres 2 places where you can go to get an idea of price:

1. Beliscity.com – http://beliscity.com/index.asp

2. Clifton Computers -phone: 021-5870778 (Call and ask for Saleem bhai, he can help you with models and pricing…one of the most well known IT shops in Karachi and they dont even have a website! Saleem bhai please make one and post your prices on it!!!)

BTW I hate the cheap and sloppy “Imate, do you?” slogan. Imate folks, you are ruining your branding with such cheap slogans for such a remarkable little gadget.

Who will lead Microsoft Pakistan?

Recently, Jawad Rehman, the country manager for Microsoft in Pakistan resigned from his post and reportedly going to the United States for his next assignment with Microsoft. For those of you in the know, I would like to hear from you on who you think would be the next country manager of Microsoft. Will it be someone from the ranks or will MS bring someone in for the Middle East region? or the US?

Jawad, I must add, in his tenure has done a great job in growing the local Microsoft operation to what it is today. He built a strong base , and Microsoft today also has very strong partners in this market. I would have liked to see its status change from a Liason office to a full branch operation, hopefully that will happen soon. A thank you, Good luck and God Speed to Jawad!

Wyse CEO visits Pakistan

For those of you who havent yet heard of Wyse, its the pioneer of a concept known at Thin computing, primarily based around a hardware device known as a thin client. Wyse today is a 600 million dollar plus company, represented locally by NC inc (National Computers), headed by Sami Askari. Im not going to go into details on thin clients, they are a field in their own, for those of you interested in the technology here is a good link to learn about them : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_client
Wyse and NC recently held a seminar in Karachi, with the ceo of Wyse John Kish as the main speaker. Saleem Rafiq, CIO of MCB also spoke. MCB is the largest customer for Wyse products in Pakistan.

Now to the point of the post . Just the fact that top management executives from the US IT industry are visiting Pakistan is a big deal, and this tells us that mature markets have started to look at us more and more as a location to do business. Mr Kish said that India was becoming expensive as an outsourcing destination (something we here love to hear) , and that Wyse is planning to use Pakistan as a support hub for its Thin clients installbase in the region, ie the Middle East and that they are looking to Pakistan as a destination for outsourcing software development. He would get a thumbs up from Clearcube, who has been doing this here for years. Clearcube, in alliance with Wyse, uses its thin clients as part of its desktop blade solutions.

Kudos for Wyse and NC for a great event! keep ‘em coming

i love epaper.dawn.com

Just a short post for today, this one is mostly for my friends and fellow Pakistanis abroad and who have broadband internet in their homes and offices here in Pakistan… Dawn recently released a epaper version of its daily printed Newspaper. Different from dawn.com, epaper.dawn.com is just like newsstand.com in the US and offers you the actual print version to read online! Its actually a pretty cool content management system in the backend (Would someone from the Dawn IT team like to comment here on how it works? ) . Its usually updated shortly after the print version hits the stands. Registration is free for now, get a login right away!

Go to :

http://epaper.dawn.com

How mature are you?!

Netsol, a Pakistan software and services company based in Islamabad recently have made public their status of CMMi Level 5. For the ceremony, there was, as usual, a large event with all the political personalities involved who came onto stage one by one and with the much repeated fanfare (maybe our politicians are CMMi level as well) and process congratulated Netsol on its achievement. Ofcourse Netsol didnt hold back either and its been giving full color Ads in national newspapers proclaiming its new status. Ofcourse you need to be aware that CMMi models are usually done through self appraisals to start, and usually certain divisions of a company work towards being “certified”. Its also upto the company to publish if they indeed are a CMMi level or not, so I dont know WHEN Netsol was CMMi 5 compliant, just that they announced it this week.

In this case, Netsol’s lahore development center was recognized. To illustrate, take a larger company. Take IBM. Different divisions of IBM in different regions, say Global services in the US and Global services in Australia, might have different CMMi Levels. Much like ISO, a consultant approve by Carnegie’ SEI will come and do an appraisal and then give you a level (1-5).

Also, Kudos to our government for supporting the initiative. (See… I give them credit when its due!)
So, the real question is, do we really care? is it really important? Well, actually it is. The Capability Maturity Model, a very hot topic in software engineering nowadays is a concept that comes from the SEI institute within Carnegie Mellon University (where yours truly was admitted but didnt go…cause UT is better!! Go Longhorns! lol ). Essentially, the idea behind it is process improvement for business benefit, which can be specifically applied to software houses. Who all uses it as a guideline? Infosys, Wipro, IBM, HP, Nasa, Accenture, JP Morgan, Intel, Nokia, General Dynamics (these guys make the F16 and al its software) and the list goes on.

Who all is CMMi Level 5? To name a few, IBM Global services, Infosys, HP, CSC, Logica CMG,Accenture, Motorola,Cognizant, and again the list goes on.

Im no CMM expert, but what i am told by people performing these processes, CMMi level 3 is the sign of a pretty decent company..there is massive benefit in going from 0 to 3, and from 3 to 5 the process improvement/benefits are not as apparent as when you go from 0 to 3, (but hey, what do i know, wink).

Whats interesting is that most of the fast growing outsourcing Indian firms, ie Cognizant, Tata, Satyam,etc are all CMMi5 compliant already.Mindtree probably is too. Hmmm. We have one. hmmmm. Will the next CMMi 5 company please stand up? please stand up!

Info on the CMM model : http://www.sei.cmu.edu/cmmi/general/general.html

Netsol : Netsoltek.com

Wateen’s Promise…

Wateen is laying the foundations for one of the largest WiMAX delployements in the world here in Pakistan. WiMAX is a protocol similar to wi-fi, but over much large distances, usually 11 miles or more from a single base station. My friend and fellow writer Osama recently wrote about Wateen telecom, and he makes some interesting points. Read his take on Wateen at :

http://greenwhite.wordpress.com/2006/08/14/pitstops-and-hotels-for-telecom-traffic/

Karachi Submerged….

Im skipping writing about IT news today. I got home at 9pm, soaked, battered, bruised, I had to park my car in clifton (i hope i remember where it is) since there was too much water collecting on the roads to drive through. Then I had to walk 40 minutes in a knee-deep, flash flood that resembled the start of Hurricane Katrina to get home. And since i also fell into a gutter that didnt have its manhole cover on (which are stolen frequently..i got out of the gutter with some effort) I ended up in am emergency room an hour after i got home with my cousin for vaccine shots. Im not the only one suffering though. Hundreds of people today have not been able to get home, are stuck at offices, or on the road which is completely blocked. Electricity is barely available, I hope it doesnt go out before this post goes online, both my UPS’es are only at half-power. Its amazing really, one bad spell of rain and everything comes to a standstill.

One interesting thing I did notice while I was wading through the water to get home. We , as a country dont know how to scale infrastructure. Not just in the Software industry, where you will not find any software company with more than 200 people,e xcept at Systems (pvt) ltd which has 1000 people globally[ Thanks for the info on that one Amir!] . Most  SW companies have 15-30 employees each. There is a similar case in almost every other facet of infrastructure and knowledge building, if you go by comparative scale. We as a nation need to train our managers how to scale operations and learn to build and maintain large capacity..be it roads, electricity or human resources… well first we need alot more good managers

Ah there’s my Data center (or is it?)

As a follow up on my EGD Federal Data Center post, a few days ago, the folks at e-government released an RFP (request for proposal), and the intent is to outsource the Data center and operations to a third party private IT firm. To quote the web page : “Electronic Government Directorate, Ministry of Information Technology invites bids from the IT companies, with established Internet Data Centre facilities in Islamabad, for the hosting of FGDC on turnkey basis.” They want a solution that will scale to about 2000 users.

Quoting from the RFP :

“The Data Centre should possess “Statement on Auditing Standards No. 70 (SAS-70)” for the data centre. Also the Data Centre should be certified by SysTrust, TruSecure or ISO17799 for its physical and logical security standards.”

I dont know of any company with a decent sized data center facility with a 7799 certificate in Pakistan!!! The only company that even comes barely close to this is LMKR, really. And all of their infrastructure is used to store the data from their PetroBank Project, they dont have much excess capacity, nor are they certified by SysTrust. And maybe, just maybe, IBM could invest in a Data center if it wanted the project badly, since they have been trying to get this project for awhile now, but Im not too sure they would be interested if its less than a million dollars anyway. What I am saying is, if a private firm wants this project, they will have to build a million dollar (Im estimating here) data center themselves and rent it out. Would you, as a CEO of an IT firm consider the Government of Pakistan to be that solid a customer to put up all that investment up front? If you know of anyone who would, do let me know via comment or email.

Now, first of all, I dont see why our government with 13 billion dollars in reserves cannot dish out a few million (ok just one million dollars, that would get you a decent, small data center facility) for its own facility. Ok, lets say they are cheap and they dont want to. fine. consider this :: As a citizen how do you feel if data related to your life is kept at some company’s facility, where its not really protected by any laws? I dont care if the company has all the right security certificates, what I care about is a private entity having control of information of my dealings with government agencies. Whose to say someone cant walk in with a 100 gb USB hard drive, download the information and then sell it? and screw you and me in the process? And all this just to save some money? To that I say to the government: cut a dollar in tax from all of us in Karachi, ISB and Lahore and please build your own Data center. I’m sure we’ll all gladly pay 60 rupees once a year to see our dealings with you are housed at the right place , relatively more secure.

We in Pakistan havent yet felt the pain of identity theft, massive intrusive direct marketing , and information selling for massive profit. This happens on the internet each time you register for a “free” service, but we dont seem to care there either…I would like your comments on what you think about this, your history of government dealings/transactions being stored at a private company’s premises ?

The Skinny on Max.com DSL

First of all, i have to apologize for the delay…last few days Ive been sort of out of it..but nevertheless,I am back! (no, not in the Terminator voice..)

I’ve gotten quite a few emails asking me about the latest entrant into the ISP fray, this little company known as Maxcom. (http://www.max.com.pk/). Guess what! Im a maxcom customer…and they ahvent paid me a cent for this post…(actually no one pays me for my posts..which is why I can say what I want..and instill fear in IT companies!! just kidding)

Advertising a great deal, a free modem and a 128k connection for Rs 1800 month, after a little checking, I decided to dump my useless Worldcall connection (which was worse than dialup btw) and try out Max.com .Though now alot of my peers tell me that Worldcall has gotten a lot better…my take is since a lot of people dumped them, that reduced the network clogging and server crashes, lol . The one thing i learned from the worldcall experience : never get an internet connection from a company that makes its money by selling cable TV. Stick with an ISP, get the one that’s 20% more expensive , and the service will live up to your expectations.

So how has the “Maxcom” experience been so far ? I would have gone with cybernet, which I think is the best ISP in Pakistan really, but they didn’t give me the free modem and I didn’t feel like dishing out 6000 rupees for one. The modem i got from max.com though looked very used, and doesnt do more than 10 mbps, which means its also old. No matter, the connection itself is stable, and for the last 2 months or so I’ve only had to reset my modem twice… and gotten a stable 11k/sec down min. at all times… all for RS 1800/month. Not too cheap, but well worth the service. Not bad at all, as long as Max.com keeps it quality this good, and cybernet still charges for modems, I’ll stick with Max.com Try it out, tell me what you think.. they have a slick website too.

A note on broadband in Pakistan:

Broadband in Pakistan, remains mostly a pipe dream, with companies advertising measly connection speeds as “broadband” and unlimited Internet. The truth is that as long as PTCL does not reduce bandwidth rates, and the ISPs are forced to pass those savings onto customers, we as consumers will never get real broadband at large. At a time when the rest of the world is moving to Wi-Fi in Parks and skyscrapers and where a 1.5 mbps downlink to a home user is common, Pakistanis are still paying out of their noses for 128k connections, and without broadband we are chugging in 3 wheeled wheelchairs while the rest of the world is making the sprint with Nike’s on.