PTCL teams up with IBM to launch public cloud services in Pakistan

PTCL have reached an agreement with IBM Italia SpA over jointly launching public cloud services in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: PTCL have reached an agreement with IBM to jointly launch public cloud services in Pakistan.

After several meetings in Islamabad, the deal was finally announced on Monday. Under the agreement, IBM cloud platform will offer several services, including "Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) with Virtual Private Servers (VPS) as well as Backup Disaster Recovery Site (DRS)" .The IBM turnkey solution will be hosted at PTCL’s state-of-the-art Data Centers in Lahore and Karachi for corporate customers.



For those unfamiliar with cloud, it is an online space where the service provider makes resources, such as applications and storage, available over the internet for the general public.

The primary benefit of the cloud model is that it can save organisations countless gigabytes of storage space by providing all the necessary applications as well as storage space online. Although this isn’t the first development of such cloud services in Pakistan, it will most certainly be the largest as PTCL is the largest internet service provider in the country while IBM is a tech giant in its own right.

"The PTCL- IBM Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) agreement is an important step forward in our efforts to create greater value, not only for our customers but the entire enterprise segment," said Kamal Ahmed, Chief Digital and Corporate Services Officer PTCL.



The agreement can be seen as a blessing by large enterprises, seeking to update their IT systems and access innovative solutions which will be provided by the new power duo IBM and PTCL. A safe and secure local cloud platform can help companies innovate in numerous ways, from data storage to specialised applications, the possibilities are endless.

PTCL already has many large and medium size enterprises as corporate customers and hence, there will be a large demand for their cloud services soon after its launch.

“Cloud is changing the IT landscape across the world. This collaboration brings a reliable in country Public Cloud service built on the well-established capabilities of IBM and PTCL. IBM is a global leader in IaaS due to the differentiation it provides in key areas like Security, Flexibility and Innovation. Now enterprises can focus more on their core business as IBM and PTCL can take care of their infrastructure needs with world-class technology, connectivity and processes,” Ghazanfar Ali, General Manager IBM Pakistan, said.

One sure result of this deal is that the landscape of IT in businesses in Pakistan is about to see a real overhaul and upgrade.