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General
When a 19th century romantic French writer by the name of Victor Hugo said “Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come” he obviously could not envision Pakistani bureaucracy. Not only can it reduce an idea to nothing more than its meager skeletal remains squirming in its own vile, it too often does.
Come 2004, the IT bubble is about to burst in a military run, democratic, American influenced politically independent subcontinent country by the name of Pakistan. It is here in our story that along comes an idea. It is a simple idea yet revolutionary in every way, the idea to prepare this country for the…
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Events General
The past whole week I was really excited about going to the exhibition on 5th and 6th at expo center Lahore since the theme read “home expo and super car expo”. I was counting on seeing some innovative home solutions, fancy cars and a lot of appliances for both. As I entered the arena, an ear piercing heavy bike engine race greeted me. Oh wow nice, we have bikes here too… and lots of them, but let’s see if we have the actual products that are expected.
First cars!! Honda Launched its new City Aspire at the event. This attracted a lot of young crowd who wanted to check it…
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General
NOTE: This is a sponsored post
Football. The most popular sport in the world. That may be hard to believe, we being a die-hard cricket nation, but there are many amongst us who get their blood pumping whenever our favorite team kicks some balls (pun intended). There’s excitement in the air, and the airwaves for that matter, when Spanish rivals Real Madrid and Barcelona are about to have a face-off on the field. Manchester United or Chelsea? The answer could incite either jeers or cheers, depending on who you’re surrounded by. It feels like you belong to an exclusive club really, not to mention how convenient it is to…
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Coffee Session General
There are two main things that are currently causing out growth in ICT to stall. One is the lack of original ideas, so most of the entrepreneurs either copy what is already around internationally or locally (same ideas of online shopping, online bidding) we still have not hit the jackpot with someone creating some thing like instagram or drawsomething and being acquired by one of the big names.
The second issue always lamented by entrepreneurs is lack of any funding sources in Pakistan. Over the years we have seen efforts being made to create funds which would help but what ended happening that most of these funds either did…
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Coffee Session General
We all know about the 7 layers of the OSI model. This is the framework by which computer networks are defined. Starting with the physical layer, going through the transport layer and finally culminating in the application layer where end user applications reside. I believe that this should be redefined to include and additional layer – the Social Layer. From the current vantage point, the Social Layer lies right above the Application layer – hence it is served by the Application layer.
The 90s witnessed a boom in what is now referred to as web 1.0. This consisted of static applications hosted over the web. Static applications meant that…
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General Mobile Apps Software & I.T.
Pakistani IT industry has been progressing rapidly over the last few years. It is heartening to see that the industry players are innovating and working in different areas to establish their expertise.
Recently, TenPearls, one of the leading IT companies of Pakistan, launched “Carumba!”, a 3D car racing game for iPhone and iPad. Carumba! has been designed and developed by TenPearls’ innovation labs. Launched as a free game, Carumba! allows users to earn coins during the race, and redeem them to unlock other cars and tracks or to get additional nitro boosts. It has also been integrated with Apple’s Game Center.
The game has received very good response from…
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Events General
‘Rethinking Pakistan’ [and my expression goes LOL and I will explain why] was the theme of the conference which took place at margalla hills Islamabad on March 31st 2011 organized by TEDx, lets just summarize here what TEDx is; before we further dig into the “theme” and happenings of this conference.
TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) and ’x’ denotes the independently organized events under the TED umbrella, mission is “Ideas worth spreading” and this events basically brings together individuals, communities and organizations with the opportunity to excite dialogue through TED-like experiences at the local level (geographically). The programs combine live presenters, performers and pre-recorded talks from some of the most brilliant…
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Announcements Events General
ICT R&D Fund aims to provide graduating students a chance to really make their final projects counts. I have always felt that students in their final year some times product excellent products which due to lack of any infrastructure and proper guidance plus funding just go in the Universities Libraries.
Seems ICT R & D fund is giving these students a chance to take their projects to the next level by acquiring funding, if you are a final year student doing a project all you need is to get this form filled and submitted through your head of department .
Last date for submission for forms is 31st…
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Coffee Session General
I wanted to discuss the Thiel Fellowship and sort of run the idea among our readership to figure out if it was justified or not. Bay Area hedge fund manager Peter Thiel started a Fellowship program in his name about a year ago trying to capitalize not on start ups, but the smart kids who may actually come up with the next billion dollar idea.
Let there be no mistake. Innovation solves problems. Bankers, lawyers and hot shot executives are good for only one thing: managing an existing infrastructure. It is the innovators who turn existing ideas on to their heads and enable breakthroughs. Considering the point above, it…
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9:18 pm
I dont know the exact difference between cloud computing and SaaS – the articles didnt really help either – Babar could you explain a bit more?
9:33 pm
SaaS was meant for businesses. Need CRM? Use salesforce for $100/user/year.
Cloud is for you and me to try out that great idea for which you need servers/storage but don’t want any strings attached.
As the WIRED article says:
” Key in your Amazon ID and password and behold: a data center’s worth of computing power carved into megabyte-sized chunks and wired straight to your desktop. Clones of that HP tower cost 10 cents per hour — 10 cents! “
12:16 am
I didn’t understand your question, so apologies if this reply is completely out of whack..
so cloud computing is hot these days, we have been looking into the Amazon services for our venture. The biggest issue with setting up a cloud service in Pakistan is unreliability, simply there are too many risk factors involved that would make the cost very high to provide quality service.
5:17 am
Ah – so its more like infrastructure-as-a-service…. but that would make this similar to any regular hosting provider, except that the model is cents per hour?
10:10 am
Bhatti, you made it sound too easy!
I ran a feasibility of a service similar to Amazon’s S3 in Pakistan and cost of the infrastructure, research, development and finally marketing made ROI a distant dream.
Only issue in Pakistan not instability of things but also why would international clientele consider my service based in Pakistan to how will I convince Pakistan’s very few small high tech ventures to move to my services!
10:53 am
Cloud computing would be a great oppurtunity in both of the sence. Rather you are a subscriber (Consumer) like grabing some space from their Data Center. At the same time you can be provider.
Let’s take an example of CubeXs Weatherly, if i am not wrong, they are the only few tier 4 data center in Pakistan, and they even hosted services for AT&T, and many other local & foriegn enterprises.
So its a great deal in both of the cases.
11:54 am
As far as penetration of cloud computing is concerned, it will not be for the masses for now considering the telecom infrastructure in Pakistan.
However, we’re working on an interesting piece of software which can be an essential component for cloud computing. Our solution lets you store your data in a structured form.
We’re working on an online flexible but structured information storage engine which can be accessed via a simple REST API. Its same way as Amazon S3 but the concept is different.
The engine is called Dedomenon and the development work is at http://www.dedomenon.org. This is being used at a production site also at http://www.myowndb.com
Yet we are working so its a work in progress and we’re hopeful that it will be an awesome component for a cloud computing environment
3:55 pm
Won’t work.
3:56 pm
Won’t work. Idea is good though.
4:06 pm
UJMi, Cloud computing can have a positive ROI in a place like Pakistan if built on cheap hardware but effective parallelization (sort of how google initially started). What kind of hardware were you assuming in your feasibility?
Osama, the difference between conventional hosting and cloud hosting is scalability. Even the most powerful dedicated host will crash if your website goes from a 100 users to a million users overnight. A cloud can automatically adjust for traffic spikes by allocating parallel hardware resources to a website.
8:18 pm
Amazon made it work because a)it had to do it for its own business and b)it had the scale and c)cleverness.
I was thinking that startups in Pakistan can use this for quick ramp up. The service can be anywhere — as long as the connectivity speed and reliability is there.
From a business point of view — its more tricky to do it inside Pakistan. However someone in Dubai or Mumbai could do it and serve the Asian market.
10:11 am
Wajahat. CubeXs Weatherly is a venture of Weatherly group of USA. I am sure they can go on with such risky ventures any time. And after all they already have the prime sector in hosted data services on their client list, namely the banks.
Yasser. Well about the Google model of using normal PCs to do all the work can surely work, paying for even high ended servers is not a problem. One of the easiest thing to do would be to buy or rent second hand server equipment from some American company (like Canvas). But point is ROI doesn’t stay comfortable when you look at the side of expenses.
For just one example, if we get a power outage, which we will (6 hour in Islamabad and I heard 10-12 hours in Karachi) we are talking about using power backup for that time. On power backup imagine using a generator which is supposed to run complete building Air conditioning, network equipment along with building maintenance system on 80+ Rupees per liter Petrol or ~60 Rs Diesel! This small thing will make monthly expenses go sky rocket, which will require offsetting by a thick business pipeline which sadly at least I don’t see in Pakistan at the moment or even 2 year down the line at least.
Babar. Actually Amazon with its S3 has only given the redundant datacenter facilities they had to the clients. So its like maximizing profits from even the skin of goat.
Since now we are not talking about such a business in Pakistan, I think Pakistani startups can stick with S3 without worrying about the stress on pocket.
About having it in Dubai. Network cost in Dubai prohibits such ventures.
2:16 am
Here’s a related post:
http://gigaom.com/2008/09/05/forrester-defines-the-cloud-but-we-beg-to-differ/
9:05 pm
Well, I believe Cloud exist in pakistan and working successfully.
we can see rozee.pk and pakwheels.com as Saas cloud .
5:26 am
Cloud Computing or Cloud Services I can’t say much about. However, SaaS is quite a possibility. I have been with a number of companies in Pakistan who had good communications infrastructure through which they were connecting.
@Corona: Working out feasibilities on paper is good and all, but in my experience, those are too generic. Basic rule of thumb, if you haven’t tried it, don’t derail other people’s efforts/attempts.
@Babar: It’s interesting how everyone quotes Amazon, but they forget the key part of Amazon business. When they were in the initial investment phase, their business plan clearly stated that they will go in a loss for the first 10 years. That means what to an investor? Would you invest in a company who does that.
2:50 pm
We are using Amazon S3, EC2, EBS and other amazon services for our website http://bismillah.com (Unique Email Service)
It won’t be possible to provide such service at a cheaper rate (at this time) for any company in Pakistani market.
$50 a month (windows 2008 server) is the cheapest for any dedicated server with all the possibilities of scaling easily and rapidly. And thats what amazon provide at this time. Plus documentation and community support is amazing. Linux server are much more cheaper.
2:53 pm
most of the hosting companies doesn’t support VP environment because of the security issues and Amazon has inhouse developed their solutions to tackle these issues.