IT Stagnation and Copyright

amam_786 · 10-10-2003, 03:30 PM

I am of the view that IT profession is smelling like a rotten egg in Pakistan, due to stagnation. This stagnation is caused by low demand and high supply of IT professionals.
The high supply partially resulted from low cost pirated softwares which made it possible for IT collges to attract students by keeping the cost of IT studies low. A large no software avilable to students so they instead of developing their experties in a specific field they just tasted a bite of every software and qualified for jack of all is jack of none.

On demand side due to availability of free pirated softwares there was no need to hire a team of IT professinals by Small businesses. even if a software is needed by an enterprise it can hire only one or two IT professinals for two to three months to prepare an application. These engineers prepare this application by just using a pirated tool thus again not creating a big demand.
International market also demands applications developed on licensed tools.

I asked some of the IT graduates that why they do not attempt to make a software of their own and sell it. They say, "who will buy it? it will be pirated and will be sold for free."

Do you agree with me?

Edited by - amam_786 on Oct 11 2003 094156 AM

jbladeus · 10-10-2003, 05:03 PM

Hi Amam

Although i totally agree with your views that the local software insudtry has suffered much because of piracy of intellectual property, but there is an upside to it also.

Why dont our ppl look out to export our services abroad? I mean the local demand for software would never had been enough to satisfy the supply in the first place. This is where we have failed miserably, that is in marketing our huge supply of talent and our work abroad.

India too had, and still has a huge software piracy industry, but they have learnt to sell their services to the outside world.

Btw... why do all of our ppl take IT as only software development. Why do we see our IT experts as only software programmers? Out of India's 12 billion $ IT exports last year, only 3 billion $ were software exports. The rest were mostly BPO services like call centers, online payroll processing and bookkeeping services etc.

We too should seek similar ventures for export. This is where the main business is. Currently there is a global market of around 400 billion USD for BPO services which is growing by leaps and bounds as western companies realise that its lesser hassle and increased productivity as a result of outsourcing your back office processes.

How much share of this global pie can we take?

________________________
Arrrgh... it sure's gonna be mighty rough sailin' today ... mates!

zubair · 10-14-2003, 04:48 AM

Hi
Exporting software is easy to say but next to impossible in Pakistan. problems include extensive regulation by PTCL, lack of Fibre optics (back bone of IT exports), lack of infrastructure. Some companies have done it in pakistan, but they are now experiencing problems as well due to low growth overseas.

You are correct, india did it..... but they only provided easy access to infrastructure and the rest was taken care of by the private sector.,.,,,,,,,,
Thanks

irfanahmedmeer · 10-14-2003, 07:09 PM

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote>quote<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>
Hi
Exporting software is easy to say but next to impossible in Pakistan. problems include extensive regulation by PTCL, lack of Fibre optics (back bone of IT exports), lack of infrastructure. Some companies have done it in pakistan, but they are now experiencing problems as well due to low growth overseas.

You are correct, india did it..... but they only provided easy access to infrastructure and the rest was taken care of by the private sector.,.,,,,,,,,
Thanks

<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote>

Well you are right government can only provide the infrastructure is our government providing this infrastructure? If yes than how successfull they have been in it?

Irfan

jbladeus · 10-14-2003, 11:44 PM

One has to give credit where its due. I applied for a high-bandwidth connection for my business and i got it in a week's time. So i will not complain much about it. The only problem we get is the breakdowns in the service which have started in the last few months.

There hasnt been any slowdown in the BPO market in the last 5 years. Infact the business is booming. The sad part is that most of the business is being taken up by Indians, Philipinoes and the eastern european firms.

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote>quote<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>You are correct, india did it..... but they only provided easy access to infrastructure and the rest was taken care of by the private sector<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote>

The government in India, or for that matter any IT-enabled country, does not provide the infrastructure, it only regulates and oversees the processes. Its the private sector which sets up the infrastructure required to setup online businesses and BPO services. Its nearly a year since the monopoly of PTCL was broken in Pakistan, but how many investors have entered the infrastructure-providing industry??

NONE!!!

Who is to blame? The government or the greedy investor?

________________________
Arrrgh... it sure's gonna be mighty rough sailin' today ... mates!

irfanahmedmeer · 10-15-2003, 03:48 AM

Well I seem to agree with guybrush that lot of our peaple keep blaming everything on government, while they themselve try to do nothing about it.

Our attitude that if we are doing some thing useful than government they doing a big favour to government and govt should leave everything and be to thier service

One more thing I would like to say, earlier in the disscussion it was disscussed that there are lot of students with IT knoldge of every area and have no specific specialization. I think lot of those peaple are bieng cheated the institutes are only intrested in money usually. On the part of student they think IT is comming thing and they can get a better position in life if they get IT education. many of these guys can not afford to pay much and they try get it as cheap as possible. Ithink best thing a government and the private investers can do is to help these guys in thier quality education this will help them too.

Irfan

zubair · 10-22-2003, 04:33 AM

Several points needs addressing for the guidance of those who are planning a career in Technology exports in the light of last few posts

1. I have known of no private firm in the world who has developed the infrastructure in a Country. It has always been the public sector who provides the infrastructure. However, only very recently, cross country infrastructures are taken up by private companies, but please have a look at these companies, these are companies with muti billion pound balance sheets. In Pakistan, there is no such company in existence at this time, so lets be realistic and ask the govt. to come forward for infrastucture.

2. Its good that one can get broadband with in hours, but who installed the fibre optic or cooper for this. The private sector or the Govt? answer is Govt. without this infrastrucute you would not get broadband in hours.

PTCL and BPO
If anybody is actively damaging the prospects of BPO, itâs the PTCL. You might not have had the experience of implementing VoIP or mission critical applications using PTCL networks. PTCL doesnot allow such implementations. Why? Cuz it dilutes their own revenues,

this is such a forum that I do expect peopel to be wise enough not to speak on verbal notes or isolated experiences. Unless you have been a part of this industry trying to implement new solutions, you wont know where do we stand in the international arena and yes praise be to the GOVT.

I didnot try to undermine the Govt. or anybody on this forum, but I tried to give an honest and sincere opinion. Its my duty to inform you of the true situation, whether you take a note or not is up to you.

Thanks
zubair