PTCL to Offer 50 Mbps Internet Speed

An industry first, Pakistan’s PTCL will be using VDSL2 Bonding technology to provide existing digital subscriber line (DSL) customers with speeds up to 50 Mbps. The project leverages Alcatel-Lucent’s (Euro next Paris and NYSE: ALU) VDSL2 Bonding expertise and should be completed by the end of the second quarter of 2011.

VDSL2 Bonding takes two copper-based VDSL2 lines per subscriber and aggregates them – almost doubling the bandwidths available to existing customers, or expanding high-speed broadband access to areas that are underserved today. Using VDSL2 Bonding, service providers can extend the life of their existing copper infrastructure - supporting the delivery of bandwidth-intensive services such as triple-play voice, data and IPTV.

According to a recent study from market research firm IHS iSuppli, simultaneous access to applications such as peer-to-peer file sharing, online gaming, streaming audio, VoIP and IPTV will soon require bandwidths between 50 and 100Mbps. This fits exactly with VDSL2’s capabilities, especially when combined with innovations such as Bonding and Vectoring.

Commenting on this achievement President and CEO PTCL Walid Irshaid has stated “PTCL is the first service provider worldwide to deploy a commercial VDSL2 Bonding solution that aims at doubling the bandwidths provided to its existing customers. We are thus setting the trend in international telecoms, and are taking the broadband experience in Pakistan to the next level. Alcatel-Lucent’s VDSL2 Bonding technology and comprehensive services and network integration expertise is helping us to keep pace with the increasing bandwidth requirements of our customers, while capitalizing on the existing copper infrastructure. This will enable us to quickly deliver high-quality, high-speed and high-availability business and residential services – even in areas where it was not possible before.”

Alcatel-Lucent is providing PTCL with its Intelligent Services Access Manager (ISAM) IP access platform – which is the first platform to commercially support VDSL2 Bonding. Alcatel-Lucent will also supply Bonding-ready customer premises equipment (CPE). Alcatel-Lucent serves as the project’s master network integrator, and is providing a range of professional services – including project management, installation and commissioning, integration and technical support.

“We understand that service providers need the right tools to bridge the gap until fiber deployments have become ubiquitous. VDSL2 Bonding is an ideal approach: service providers like PTCL can almost double the speeds supported by their DSL infrastructure or expand their network’s reach. This makes it a fast and cost-effective approach to bridging the digital divide,” said Aadil Rauf CEO Alcatel-Lucent Pakistan Ltd. “This commercial VDSL2 Bonding project with PTCL marks the beginning of VDSL2 Bonding deployments outside of the US - where the technology is typically used to expand the reach of the copper network.”

Alcatel-Lucent is the driving force behind the world\'s most advanced VDSL2 roll-outs, with customers such as Belgacom, STC, Swisscom and Telekom Austria. Our VDSL2 solution has also been deployed by competitive operators, including M-net (Germany) and South Yorkshire Digital Region (UK).

About Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU)
The long-trusted partner of service providers, enterprises, strategic industries and governments around the world, Alcatel-Lucent is a leader in mobile, fixed, IP and Optics technologies, and a pioneer in applications and services. Alcatel-Lucent includes Bell Labs, one of the world\'s foremost centres of research and innovation in communications technology.
With operations in more than 130 countries and one of the most experienced global services organizations in the industry, Alcatel-Lucent is a local partner with global reach.
The Company achieved revenues of Euro 16 billion in 2010 and is incorporated in France and headquartered in Paris.

ORIX Leasing Pakistan Limited Selects Oracle Fusion Middleware Solution to Reduce Operational Difficultie

ORIX Leasing Pakistan Limited (OLP), one of Pakistan’s leading leasing companies, has selected Oracle Fusion Middleware components, including Oracle WebLogic Suite 11g.

When completed, the solution is expected to reduce its operational difficulties, allowing the company to do away with the need for manual configuring to indvidual user systems while further strengthening their IT infrastructure to allow their centralized applications to meet peak demand, provide 24/7 availability, and improve overall performance across their branches in Pakistan.

With Oracle Fusion Middleware components, ORIX Leasing is expecting to further increase its application performance, efficiency and speed by 150% while the system and data availability is expected to be increased by at least 100%.

“ORIX Pakistan is committed to enhancing its superior professional competencies through innovation and Oracle has been helping us over two decades in our quest through its large variety of diversified product solutions,” said Muhammad Moiz Uddin, Head of Information Systems Department, ORIX Leasing Pakistan Limited. “The unmatched robust integration and strong security features of Oracle’s solutions coupled with dedicated technical support we have been getting, has proved that we made the right decision to opt for Oracle Technology.”

Previously, ORIX Leasing was using redundant applications at their various geographical locations for load balancing, compromising the uniqueness and consistency of its applications across the organization.

“Getting access to realtime information is a necessity for businesses to cut costs, reduce risk and improve business insight,” said Sajid Akbar, Country Manager – Oracle Fusion Middleware, Pakistan and South Asia Growth Economies West. “We are confident that ORIX Leasing will streamline its processes and increase productivity using highly available and reliable platform powered by Oracle Fusion Middleware.”

Oracle WebLogic Suite 11g, is the foundation cornerstone upon which enterprise applications could be built for unmatched performance, scalability, efficiency, and manageability in a single, unified application server offering while also reducing the cost associated with diagnostics, configuration, and deployment on production servers.

ORIX Leasing is already benefiting from Oracle Database comprehensive features that allows for easy management of the most demanding online transaction processing and business intelligence applications.

ORIX Leasing has selected Oracle WebLogic Suite 11g to ensure better quality services with improved application performance and usage.

NetSol Signs Multimillion-Dollar Contract With TCS

NetSol Technologies has announced that it has signed a three-year, multimillion-dollar contract with TCS Private Ltd., Pakistan’s leading express and logistics provider, to develop a customized operations management IT solution.

The new solution will serve as the IT backbone for several of TCS’ core business divisions in Pakistan.

Under the terms of the contract, while NetSol will retain the global rights to market the logistics solution outside of Pakistan, both partners may later engage in a global joint venture leveraging NetSol’s technological expertise and TCS’ logistical domain and business process reengineering expertise.

NetSol will also remain the preferred technology partner for any new IT projects or functionalities initiated by TCS during the contract period.

A total of 20 domestic and international IT companies bid on the project. TCS chose three top contenders during the first stage of the selection process and ultimately decided to engage NetSol.

Operating over 3,500 locations worldwide, TCS (http://www.tcscouriers.com) handles approximately 100 million shipments per year for 6,600 corporate clients and thousands of retail customers.

Within Pakistan, TCS operates from over 1,800 locations and 422 state-of-the-art retail outlets utilizing dedicated chartered aircraft, including Boeing 727 and 737 airliners, as well as 225 satellite-tracked vehicles and 3,000 bicycle couriers.

European Tech Media Eulogizes Samsung’s Full HD 3D Smart TV

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., a global leader in digital media and digital convergence technologies, recently received praise from Europe’s leading Audio Visual Magazines for their Full HD 3D Smart TVs.

Top electronics and Audio Visual magazines in the UK like T3, What Hi Fi Vision & Sound, and CNET UK all gave Samsung’s Full HD 3D Smart TV 8000 series five stars in the areas of picture quality, design, 3D glasses, rear mounted downward firing stereo speakers, online functions and other features like Freeview HD, Freesat HD tuners, integrated Wi-Fi as well as Samsung’s new internet connected “Smart Hub” platform, which offers access to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Lovefilm, Your Video, Search All, and Samsung Apps.

CNET UK also awarded Samsung’s D7000 series perfect scores of 5 stars as well as Editor’s Choice Award previously.

Germany’s major AV test magazine, Video Home Vision, also delivered favorable reviews to Samsungs Full HD 3D 8000 TVs.

All the magazines extolled the brilliant engineering and the superb ‘One’ design concept noting that it employed greatly enhanced cutting-edge technology ensuring that they would soon be established as standards in this business.

They further went on to say that the LED backlighting can appear very uniformly on the ultra-slim 5mm thin screen providing greater image clarity.

“Samsung’s Smart TVs have garnered praise one after another from world’s renowned AV media. The fact that Samsung’s unrivaled technology and outstanding designs have won praises not only from customers, but also experts, is very notable,” said Mr. Hee Chang Yee, Managing Director Samsung Pakistan. “In order to ensure that our customers enjoy Smart TVs in easier and more convenient ways, Samsung Electronics will continue to make our utmost efforts to present a wide range of content to the market.”

TeleCON 2011 begins in Islamabad on April 12

Pakistan’s premier annual telecom and IT event, the 4TH Pakistan Telecommunication Conference (TeleCON 2011) is taking place on April 12 at the Islamabad Club. Organized in collaboration with the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) and the Pakistan Software Houses Association (P@SHA), the conference will be attended by expert opinion formers from the two sectors.

Muhammad Yaseen, Chairman PTA will be delivering the keynote address before the start of the day-long meeting which will include threadbare debates in three interactive sessions, namely (1) Regulatory – Technology & Economic Challenges, (2) Information Technology – Mobile Applications and (3) The Mandate on 3-G or 4-G technology. The closing session will be a Panel Discussion on the topic of ‘Global Telecom & IT Trends – What should be the Pakistan Model?’

Representatives of the Ministry of Telecommunication & IT and the Ministry of Science & Technology have confirmed their participation to share their views on the ensuing challenges in the industry.

Menin Rodrigues, Chairman of TeleCON 2011 and President & CEO, Shamrock Communications (Pvt) Limited while dilating on the outcomes of the conference says, “TeleCON 2011, the fourth in a series of annual conferences in the telecom sector, promises to initiate discussions on technology & economic challenges, tackle some of the long-standing industry issues and take decisive steps in regulatory matters. The response from the industry’s leading organizations and experts has been good and we look forward to a highly invigorating conference.”

TeleCON 2011 has been designed to generate and discuss the evolving telecom & IT paradigm to accelerate national progress. Key decision makers from the local and international arena will seek expansions in cellular possibilities, mobile facilities and powerful applications, while exploring the next level of accurate, speedy and secure connectivity.

Pakistan a Lucrative Market for Cloud Services: Oracle

Mr. Kaleem Chaudhry is Regional Director, Enterprise Technology for Oracle Asia Pacific, where he leads a team of enterprise architects focused on providing architecture advisory to IT and business executives.

He supports strategic customer and partner/alliance engagements and is a frequent speaker at industry events on IT trends, Grid computing and infrastructure optimization techniques.

Recently Mr. Chaudhry was here in Pakistan for ‘Enterprise Cloud Summit’, when ProPakistani got a chance to get his views on Oracle’s Cloud Computing solutions – here is what he says:

Defined as the delivery of software and hardware as a service over the Internet, cloud computing is convenient, easy to access and low-cost platform for enterprisers and high-end professionals of different sectors.

Kaleem Chaudhry said that Oracle is enhancing its sophistication to the end users and cloud is the latest innovation for that journey.

He elaborated that there are two types of clouds – private and public. A private cloud runs within the firewall of an enterprise and is for the exclusive use of that enterprise. The system helps multiple users to share same working environment within organization and among multiple organizations.

While on other hands, he said, Public Cloud offers a platform under supervision of third party vendors, where multiple enterprises can use the shared infrastructure. For instance, different apparel makers connect with a private cloud having applications of their requirement. In the Public Cloud, the equipment is managed by service providers for multiple users.

He told us that Oracle offers solution not only for private and public clouds but also for hybrid cloud. Oracle platform offers various technologies in the data center in a way that multiple users of enterprises can access and share the application mutually. In addition, Oracle also offers an arrangement where a third party vendor buys infrastructure and helps other firms to work with it.

Both private and public cloud computing provide great computing efficiency, elasticity, scalability and the availability, thanks to an underlying Grid Computing architecture. Public clouds are typically faster and cheaper to get started and simpler to manage, while private clouds provide greater control over security, compliance and quality of service, are easier to integrate with in-house IT, and are potentially lower cost over the long term.

He explained that an enterprise can save its expenses significantly with 35 percent deduction in operation expenses, 44 percent cost reduction in electricity charges and 85 percent saving in physical cost with the accessibility to Oracle clouds.

The popularity of ready on demand access to IT environment is vital for entrepreneurs that comes without procuring expensive equipment and deployment of physical network.

Commenting on the the potential of Cloud Computing in Pakistan he said that it is growing tremendously with prevailing trend of using cutting-edge technology in the business model of medium and large enterprises.

Public cloud allows them to have access to highly advance technological and sophisticated environment without any upfront cost.

He told us that Oracle has handsome customer base in Pakistan, which always welcome our new technology because of reliability and quality of service.

Telecom, media and banking sectors possess exceptional potential to utilize cutting-edge technologies in their businesses. Oracle is at forefront to provide them high class services in accordance with the need of these sectors at most affordable charges.

There are well-known banks, cellular phone companies, government entities and manufacturing units in the country, majority of them including Pakistan Mobile Communications (Pvt.) Ltd. (Ufone), Pakistan Telecom Mobile Ltd. (Mobilink), Pakistan Telecommunications Ltd., Telenor Pakistan (Pvt.) Ltd., Warid Telecom (Pvt.) Ltd., Wateen Telecom (Pvt.) Ltd., Wi-Tribe Pakistan Ltd., are already using Oracle’s cloud infrastructure for database and business applications.

Mr. Chaudhry said that Oracle recently organized a ‘Data Centre Summit’ where a key level participation of officials from multinationals, banking and telecom sectors and manufacturers were seen, which showed the level of interest of the Pakistan firms towards the emerging technologies and application trends.

He emphasized that in today’s world, Cloud Computing is very essential technology. Pakistan is a growing economy with a lot of opportunities in its dense markets, in connection to which Oracle also finds a lucrative opportunity in the country because technology is a core foundation of every business in Pakistan.

Talking about IT Human Resources in Pakistan, Kaleem said that from his interaction with people at various local events he feels that Pakistan has been producing highly skilled IT professionals, which is evident from the advanced IT infrastructure in Pakistani firms. Pakistani professionals perform their task tremendously at world class organizations and they are playing a key role at Oracle also.

There is lot of potential in the educational institutions of Pakistan and it can produce brilliant IT professionals. The growing population depicts the growth of human resource also and more skilled workers will be the part of different organizations in the future.

wi-tribe Partners with SOFTEC 2011

With an aim to promote innovation in the local I.T. industry, wi-tribe has extended its full support towards this year’s SOFTEC ’11 by sponsoring the two-day I.T. event held at FAST National University (FAST-NU), Lahore.

This year marks the 15th National and 6th International SOFTEC Event.

SOFTEC has earned the reputation of becoming one of Pakistan’s largest annual I.T. extravaganza. Since its advent with a single competition in 1995, SOFTEC has grown yearly, now boasting of nearly a dozen different competitions and exhibitions.

The event will comprise mainly of various competitions under the categories of software, gaming, Interface, etc., along with software and engineering project exhibits. The event would also include a sponsor’s enclosure, kids’ corner, along with a food court.

Commenting on wi-tribe’s collaboration with SOFTEC ’11, VP Sales & Marketing, wi-tribe Pakistan, Wahib Aslam said,

“wi-tribe is proud to sponsor SOFTEC ’11. I really admire how so many capable students of FAST-NU have managed to create a national icon out of this event, exploring the potential of I.T. in Pakistan, while bringing innovation to the industry.

It is wonderful to see that this has become an international event attracting the countries best-in-class I.T. developers and promoters alike. SOFTEC has established ground-breaking technologies for the promotion of the local I.T. industry and wi-tribe is eager to take it to the next level of evolution.”

Oracle organized a seminar on ‘Enterprise Content Management for Applications’ in Pakistan

Oracle recently organized a seminar on ‘Enterprise Content Management for Applications’ in Pakistan. Oracle Enterprise Content Management Suite 11g delivers the industry’s best performance and scalability. Its unified repository can support high-volume content ingestion applications, such as invoice processing, and high-volume content delivery applications, such as e-commerce sites. Seen in the picture: Sajid Akbar, Country Sales Manager – Oracle Fusion Middleware, Pakistan and SAGE West (7th from right) and Rahmat Ullah Quadri , Director General, Ora-Tech Systems (4th from left) along with other Oracle Executives and Guest at the event.