Great time for cloud computing in Pakistan, says Oracle

Country sales manager outlines benefits of adopting cloud services for more productivity

LAHORE: Pakistan’s information communications and technology (ICT) sector is an important business driver and has been ranked one of the largest contributors to the economy over the last decade.

The current technology landscape is rapidly evolving with the emergence of enterprise cloud offerings, which in turn is accelerating the pace of change and growth.

Along with technology, mobile phone usage in the country is showing a steady growth too. Mobile apps need to connect to corporate back-end systems because that is where data for the app is found.



“This is a great time for cloud in Pakistan,” said Oracle Country Sales Manager Pakistan and Afghanistan Waqas Hashmi.

He said cloud did not only provide access to big data or give corporations a deeper understanding of their customers and insight into how to best run their business but also benefit all types and sizes of companies. “Small companies can launch into the cloud immediately, gaining access to enterprise class solutions, while medium-sized businesses can get an integrated set of software in the cloud,” he said.

“There are lots of cloud vendors out there in the country. I think it is important for companies to thoroughly investigate upfront what they are getting, not only in terms of features but also in terms of fundamental aspects such as data security and management capabilities plus how this will fit in with the organisation’s existing IT capabilities,” replied Hashmi in response to written queries of The Express Tribune.

“Oracle really simplifies that journey by providing a fully functional, state-of-the-art big data platform, accessible either as an on-premise solution or in the cloud, to get companies up and running with big data and rapidly access the power of business analytics to gain insights and make better decisions,” he added.

“In fact, analytics, mobile and social, are all enabled in Oracle Cloud. These aspects are not secondary to enterprise applications; they need to be an integral part.”



SaaS or PaaS

As for which services would work well in the region, Hashmi said in the short term, the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) would continue to be the dominant cloud computing business offering as it enables organisations to harness modern enterprise applications for a range of activities from enterprise resource planning (ERP) to human resources, sales and marketing quickly and cost effectively.

“Using SaaS is a great start, but where companies gain real competitive differentiation and advantage is customising aspects of the applications to their own requirements,” he said. “While Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offers businesses some other key advantages, one critical area is the developing and testing of applications.

“In some cases, the provisioning, configuration and integration of a platform can take up the majority of an application production schedule and a significant part of the IT budget. PaaS, however, dramatically reduces this cost and lets applications get into the hands of testers and end-users nearly as fast as they can be developed.”

“In addition, PaaS also facilitates integrating cloud applications and data silos, and easier management across and switching between on-premise data centres and public cloud,” asserted Hashmi.

“Mobile connectivity is an integral part of PaaS that enables companies to quickly and easily build mobile apps tailored to their audience, connecting customers to those back-end systems transparently and securely,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 3^rd, 2016.

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