Internet outages continue to plague the IT industry in Pakistan and with it throw the country off the global market of freelancers and businesses reliant on the cloud. In his interview, Umair Azam the CEO of Integration Xperts, one of the renowned cloud service providers in the country stressed the importance of upgrading the internet services in the country.
Moreover, as Azam responded, the ongoing internet outages are pretty severe and threatening the deadlines for Pakistani companies and freelancers and competitiveness. ‘Frequent interruption due to upgrade or cable issues create doubt about its capacity to remain competitive, let alone freelancers who might have their business shift to another country due to outage,’ he said.
This uncertainty also threatens the government’s IT sector development plans; Azam is skeptical that Pakistan can hit the target of boosting annual IT exports to $10bn or $15bn in such an environment. He pointed out that continuity is always a problem for businesses, large and small, when Internet service is interrupted especially for those related to online marketing and eCommerce.
Apart from the connectivity challenge, Azam said that Pakistan’s IT sector is still losing its skilled human resources through brain drain. He also mentioned that the education system fails to come up with qualified graduates who can effectively immobilize these gaps. “Around 70,000 IT graduates are produced in Pakistan every year, of which most cannot be placed in the job market as they are not equipped with what is required,” added Azam.
To overcome these challenges, Integration Xperts has tied up with AshreiTech to impart IT education to the 10000 students in the most advanced technologies and open the academies at Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad. Since its establishment in 2016, it has expanded rapidly, and its strategy for future expansion also involves the international market; it is targeting an IPO within the next three to four years.