Huawei, PTCL sign 40G Readiness and ASON-based DWDM Contract

Huawei Technologies Co. Limited, a leader in providing next-generation telecommunications network solutions for operators around the world, has signed a strategic contract with PTCL, the largest telecommunications company in Pakistan.

According to the agreement, Huawei will build a complete nationwide LH DWDM network for PTCL by replacing the existing outdated 10G DWDM. This will introduce Pakistan to cutting-edge 40G/wavelength (readiness) and ASON technology in its nationwide DWDM backbone network to help PTCL transfer to IP time with unlimited bandwidth-providing capability.

Mr. Li Zhiqiang, Executive Director, Huawei, and Mr. Muhammad Nasrullah, Executive Vice President, PTCL, were present at the contract-signing ceremony.

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Mr. Hong Xiao Yi, General Manager Huawei Shaking hand with Mr. Muhammad Nasrullah, Executive VP, PTCL after the exchange of Contract documents. Mr Li Zhiqiang, Executive Director, Huawei, Mr. Sagheer uddin, Chief Engineer, PTCL and Mr. Muhammad Zahid Abbas, Vice Director, Huawei are also seen.

About Huawei
Huawei Technologies is a leader in providing next-generation telecommunications networks, and now serves 35 of the world's top 50 operators, along with over one billion users worldwide. The company is committed to providing innovative and customized products, services and solutions to create long-term value and growth potential for its customers. For more information, please visit www.huawei.com

About PTCL
Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) is Pakistan's most reliable and largest converged-services carrier, which provides all telecommunications services from basic voice telephony to data, Internet, video-conferencing and carrier services to consumers and businesses all over the country. For more information, please visit www.ptcl.com.pk
 

IBM Pakistan expands its KidSmart Early Learning Program in Pakistan

This is IBM’s third consecutive successful year in rolling out its worldwide KidSmart program in Pakistan. It is now partnering with various NGOS in donating these innovative learning units to Government schools.

IBM Pakistan recently donated four KidSmart Units to the Edhi Foundation at its Bilquis Edhi Female Child Home. IBM Pakistan is also expanding this program in Islamabad, where it has donated these early learning units to Kaghan Memorial Trust.

Each IBM KidSmart Early Learning Centre consists of colourful and durable 'Little Tikes' desk and bench seats for children working in groups of two or three, with award-wining educational software, and a colour printer. The centres are supported by a Teachers' Guide, online training, and a multilingual website for teachers and parents. Teachers who have been involved in this program can participate in collaborative professional development, web-based tools which support effective communications and collaboration.

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Saher Sohail, Communication Analyst, IBM Pakistan handling over the agreements to Haleema Edhi at Edhi Foundation

About IBM KidSmart
For further information, please visit http://www.ibm.com/pk/

 

BrightSpyre launches Job Portal for Pakistan’s Disabled Community

BrightSpyre, together with the Special Talent Exchange Program (STEP), a cross-disability organization, has taken an initiative to launch Pakistan's first-ever disability job board. This board is especially designed for disabled persons in order to facilitate and provide them with equal job opportunities.

The job board was launched to mark the International Day of Persons with Disabilities on Tuesday, 2nd December 2008. STEP organized the event, with the Minister for Social Welfare and Special Education, Samina Khalid Ghurki, as the chief guest. Over 350 participants, including 250 persons with disabilities, attended the ceremony, which was held at the auditorium of the Pakistan National Council of the Arts (PNCA). The event featured a theatre performance by disabled persons, a presentation by a role model, entitled 'Disability is a Social Issue', and the launch of a video documentary.

Mr. Atif Sheikh, President, STEP, appreciated BrightSpyre’s initiative of launching the job board during the International Day of Persons with Disabilities.

STEP is a cross-disability organization, working for the empowerment of disabled persons through capacity building and advocacy. It is engaged in leadership, ICT and independent living training of disabled persons.


Mybank contact center solution by ZRG provides more value to customers

MyBank, one of the fast growing banks of the country has launched a state-of-the-art contact center using technology provided by ZRG International, nation’s contact technology expert company. The project is aimed at providing quality services to the customers of Mybank enhancing the opportunities of customer services so that the Bank can launch and support a wide range of innovative services and facilities for the customers.

ZRG Contact Center solution is a highly scalable, multi-channel solution that provides agents with a 360-degree customer view across a wide array of communication channels including voice, e-mail, web-chat, fax, and interactive voice response (IVR), enabling organizations to communicate more seamlessly and effectively with their customers.

Mybank has launched a series of facilitators like Online banking, High profit yielding Deposit Schemes, GPRS enabled banking, ATM, Agriculture finance scheme etc. Mybank was using PABX system but with the increase in product menu and customer demand, it became essential for the bank to invest in contact center solution.

At the Inauguration ceremony Mr. Syed Nazir Hussain, SVP, Head of operations Division of MyBank stated, “The cutting edge Contact Center solution provided by ZRG will not only improve our performance, services and availability to our valuable and prospect customers but also help us to look forward with confidence.”

Mr. Arif Butt, CTO, ZRG International commented, “It is delightful to have MyBank in the list of our successful deployments; this appreciative incentive will give MyBank the opportunity to serve its customers in a better way. We believe that our technology and experience will help MyBank to improve its strong market position and quality of customer services.”

 
The picture shows (from right to left ) Mr. Arif Butt, Chief Technology Officer, ZRG International, Mr. Syed Nazir Hussain, SVP, Head of operations Division My Bank , Mr. Ali Shamim, Head of Business development, ZRG International along with their respective team members during the Inauguration ceremony of contact center.

 

About MyBank
Mybank limited was incorporated in 1992 as a commercial bank and recognizes as a fast growing bank with over 80 branches across the nation. The Bank’s vision is to become the leading private commercial bank. Mybank mission includes having a diversified customer base and to serve the market through innovative banking solutions therefore the bank has taken a number of initiatives to excel in the area of Information Technology. Currently MyBank is enjoying ‘A’ for the medium to long term and ‘A-1’ for the short term entity ratings by Pakistan Credit Rating Agency Limited.
 
About ZRG International
ZRG International (Pvt) Limited is a leading Telecom solutions providing company with a strong focus on Customer Interaction and Contact Management Systems. ZRG’s business objective is to help clients achieve their customer acquisition, service, development, and profit and retention goals. ZRG assists its customers in meeting the expectations of their own customers and in maximizing the return on investment in technology. ZRG is operating in Pakistan since 1994 in a highly focused and committed manner and holds the largest share in the call center market in Pakistan ZRG is the first company to export advanced contact center solutions and CTI systems to the international market. For more information about ZRG, visit www.zrg.com

Business Beam signs consultancy services agreement with Atlas Engineering

Business Beam (Pvt.) Limited, one of the pioneers in introducing the discipline of Business Continuity Management in Pakistan, has signed an agreement with Atlas Engineering Limited (formerly Allwin Engineering Industries Limited) for Business Continuity Planning and IT policies’ development consultancy services. This will help Atlas Engineering ensure that mission-critical processes continue in case of a major or minor disruption.


About Business Beam:
Business Beam is one of the leading consultancy and training organizations in Pakistan. Business Beam facilitates enterprise-wide deployment of process improvement, quality management, information security, and business continuity initiatives to knowledge organizations using various models / techniques including Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI), Business Continuity Management, ISO 9000 Quality Management System (QMS), ISO 27001 Information Security Management System (ISMS), ISO 20000 IT Service Management System (ITSMS), Customer Operations Performance Center (COPC) and Six Sigma. Business Beam also offers a wide range of hands-on performance enhancement training courses and workshops. More than 2000 delegates from 175+ organizations have attended its various training sessions. 

About Atlas Engineering
Atlas Engineering is one of the largest and oldest manufacturers of automotive parts and components in the private sector in Pakistan.

 

NetSol Technologies to acquire US Firm

NetSol Technologies Inc. “NetSol” (NasdaqCM: NTWK - News) (DIFX: NTWK), an IT firm providing global business services and enterprise application solutions to private and public sector organizations worldwide, has announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Ciena Solutions LLC, a leading provider of SAP integration management services headquartered in Los Angeles, California with a branch office in San Ramon, California.

NetSol will acquire Ciena Solutions for a combination of cash and restricted stock. Ciena Solutions is profitable and experienced double-digit growth in revenues and profits in the past year.

Commenting on the occasion, Salim Ghauri, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of NetSol Technologies stated, “I am excited to launch a vibrant and global SAP practice through the acquisition of Ciena Solutions. This marks another major milestone in our growth strategy, and provides an entry into one of the largest markets for IT solutions and services within the industry. This agreement reflects the latest step toward in our expansion plans in the U.S. market.”

Ciena Solutions provides consulting and staffing services focused on the SAP application suite, with core competencies in the SAP R/3 (ECC) system, NetWeaver including Business Intelligence, Exchange Infrastructure (XI), Portals, and MDM, and mySAP Business Suite applications including Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM). In addition, Ciena Solutions has developed software technology complementary to the SAP platform for which it maintains intellectual property rights and is a Business Objects Solutions Provider partner. Ciena Solutions’ clients include leading companies such as Axeda, Healthnet, SAP America, SGL Carbon, Southern California Edison and Ticketmaster.
 

PixSense Wins APICTA Award for Best Digital Media and Entertainment Application

PixSense, a global leader in multimedia and web-convergence solutions, has announced that its Preserve, Share, Publish (PSP) platform has been selected as the best digital media and entertainment application in the 2008 Asia Pacific ICT Alliance Awards (APICTA). Out of 126 nominations received from 11 different countries in the Asia Pacific region, APICTA chose PixSense’s unique mobile media-sharing technology as the most innovative in the Information Communication Technology (ICT) sector.

PixSense’s PSP Platform, available on various mobile networks throughout Asia and Europe, enables mobile operators to offer subscribers an easy way of sharing full-resolution videos and photographs between any mobile device, while minimizing mobile data usage and its costs. The PSP’s patent-pending bio-compression technology compresses media file sizes by up to 90% without any visual loss of image quality, and allows users to share media on major social web destinations, including Facebook, MySpace and Flickr, with just one click.

“We are honored to have received a top position at the APICTA Awards, as this award recognizes our cutting-edge PSP Platform in the ICT industry," said R. Paul Singh, President and CEO of PixSense. “We are proud of our mobile media-sharing technology and how we can provide our customers with this unique cost-saving solution.”

The APICTA Awards is an international program initiated to increase and promote ICT advancements within its respective member economies, which include Australia, Brunei, China, Hong Kong, India, Korea, Macau, Malaysia, Myanmar, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam. The Digital Media and Entertainment award is presented to the most ground-breaking nomination in the field of creative content development for media, entertainment and infotainment.

PixSense’s APICTA win marks the third significant award the company has been recognized with in the past month. In early November, PixSense announced that its PSP was named one of the 'Most Innovative Carrier Infrastructure or Platform' technologies in the GSMA Mobile Innovation Global Competition, and a week later it won a Mobile Star Award from MobileVillage

About PixSense
Founded in 2005 and headquartered in Santa Clara, California, PixSense is a mobile P2P media-sharing platform. PixSense’s technology includes patent-pending, on-device media-compression technology and network-optimization technology that ensures fast transfers and significantly reduces costs to both end-users and wireless operators. With offices in China, India, and Pakistan, PixSense has deployed their product with leading mobile operators worldwide. PixSense is funded by ATA Ventures, Innovacom, and Qualcomm Ventures. For more information, please visit http://www.pixsense.com/
 

Towerbank engages Ultimus for mission-critical BPM

Ultimus, Inc., developer of one of the most widely-deployed Business Process Management (BPM) software suites in the world, has announced its growing success in enabling banking institutions to optimize and improve processes with its BPM solutions. The reality of today’s economic conditions drives the need for the kind of productivity and time to market Ultimus, Inc., developer of one of the most widely-deployed Business Process Management (BPM) software suites in the world, has announced its growing success in enabling banking institutions to optimize and improve processes with its BPM solutions. The reality of today’s economic conditions drives the need for the kind of productivity and time to market and, most importantly, cross-company visibility that BPM brings to on organization.

Like many banks around the world, Panama-based Towerbank International is turning to BPM as a means to achieve customer focus and a more efficient and cost-effective operation. Founded in 1971, Towerbank specializes in corporate and private banking, providing personalized service for clients in Panama and abroad. The bank is dedicated to leveraging the latest generation of IT tools to develop and support internal processes that increase efficiency, facilitate development of new products and services, and produce a high degree of information visibility for key decision-making.

As part of this strategy, Towerbank is designing a new paperless customer service model and has engaged Ultimus to develop a combination of mission-critical and back-office processes to support that model. The first processes developed include credit card purchases and approvals, new account openings, fixed-time deposits, claims management and accounts maintenance. “Ultimus has been a key partner in helping us design our goal of paperless customer service,” said José Campa, CEO, Towerbank International. “By automating key business processes, we not only enable our paperless processes and approval, but also improve efficiencies and performance in a number of areas including the front office.”

“One of the greatest promises of BPM is its ability to eliminate the need for so much paperwork, while increasing the efficiency and visibility of key business processes,” added Christopher Heivly, executive vice president, Ultimus. “The financial vertical is laden with process-driven applications and compliance hurdles, making BPM an ideal fit for fast-growing banks like Towerbank International.” Towerbank joins the growing list of international financial institutions turning to Ultimus to optimize banking processes, including First National Bank of Arizona, Mercantil Commercebank, Global Bank of Panama, and Banco Nacional de Panama.

 

Punjab Government benefits from Teradata’s E-Governance Solution

The Chief Minister Punjab, Muhammad Shahbaz Sharif met senior Teradata executives at the CM Secretariat for a briefing regarding the “Punjab Government Enterprise Data Warehouse” project.

The Punjab Government has been automated on Teradata’s state-of-the-art data warehousing and business intelligence solution under the E-Government initiative of the Information Technology Department since late 2007. Teradata’s unified work environment directly enhances the efficient functioning between various departments and functions of the Punjab Government.

Mr. Khuram Rahat, Managing Director, Teradata Pakistan, and the Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Teradata, Mr. Stephen Brobst briefed the Chief Minister about the development and benefits of the Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) project. He elaborated on the productivity and efficient governance aspects of Teradata’s Business Intelligence solution. Teradata’s Data Warehousing unifies the data sources from various government departments, and Teradata Business Intelligence displays the related data across various departments in meaningful and decision-supporting reports to the Punjab Government’s officials.

Teradata’s officials also highlighted the new initiatives taken under the EDW project, and presented a project roadmap to meet the Punjab Government’s growing good governance needs.

Managing Director, Teradata Pakistan, Mr. Khuram Rahat said, “Teradata is the global leader in data warehousing solutions for better business intelligence. Teradata’s Enterprise Data Warehousing Solutions cut operational costs, accelerate processing, reduce duplication of effort, support collaboration, and raise an organization’s productivity at all levels. Teradata Pakistan is honored to have been chosen as a strategic partner by the Punjab Government to meet its e-governance needs.”

Teradata Pakistan has been a partner of choice for the Government of Pakistan’s major good governance initiatives, including the data warehousing solution deployed by the National Database Registration Authority (NADRA), the national repository for the National Identity Cards (NICs) of Pakistani nationals. This service is already benefiting many government departments such as the traffic police, the passport office and others in meeting the Government’s public servicing needs efficiently and effectively.
 

About Teradata
Teradata Corporation (NYSE: TDC) is the world’s largest company solely focused on raising intelligence through data warehousing and enterprise analytics. Teradata is present in more than 60 countries and on the Web at http://www.teradata.com

 

LMKR signs MoU with Microsoft Pakistan

Microsoft Pakistan and LMKR have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to provide process efficiency solutions to a host of industry segments. Through this MoU, LMKR aims to help enterprises and organizations improve team collaboration, streamline software development activities, engage in process improvement initiatives, and enforce KPI-based management controls to achieve higher efficiency and productivity levels. LMKR has successfully achieved CMMi level 3 using Microsoft’s tools and frameworks, and hopes to replicate this level of success for other enterprises as well.
 
Atif R. Khan, Chairman and CEO, LMKR; Kamal Ahmad, Country Manager, Microsoft Pakistan; Shabana Khan, President, LMKR; Naveed Bajwa, Manager for Developer Platforms, Microsoft Pakistan; and Naumann Yousef, Manager IT, LMKR, were present at the signing ceremony.
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Inbox to provide IBM products to PIA

Inbox Business Technologies has signed an agreement with Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) to provide the IBM System Z10 Business Class mainframe server and DS8300 storage solution. This is the first deal of its kind by an authorized IBM Business Partner in Pakistan.
 
Based on its current growth and future plans, PIA was in the process of implementing ERP services at its office. This solution will help PIA manage its highly complex business processes effectively; increase the productivity of its resources, and its operational capacity.


e-Creatorz develops recruitment portal for US-based The Engineers Group Inc.

e-Creatorz has developed a recruitment portal for The Engineers’ Group, Inc. (TEGi), USA.