Thanks to Sabeen for letting me know of this video. Its a cool video animation about the Credit Crisis.
The Crisis of Credit Visualized Website is: http://www.crisisofcredit.com/
The High-Definition video can be seen on the website above. The low-res video is pasted below:
The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.
More and more people are ditching their paper based newspaper for the online edition. Slowly, but surely, the demise of the newspaper is coming. I’ve always held the belief that convenience based solutions will prosper and the old-school thought that “the newspaper will exist no matter what”, was being ignorant.
Family, friends and colleagues confirm they are reading the physical (paper) based version less and reading it online more. Why? Convenience and cost. Hmmm – didn’t I see that coming.
To get a better perspective, I decided to ask the newspaper deliveryman who drops-in the newspaper to my house, as to how things are? I wasn’t surprised. He cited sales are low. Very low. When a new house props up in the neighborhood, they (meaning various newspaper delivery agents) fight as to who will get to deliver the newspaper to that house. Competition is fierce. He says, people are now less willing to buy a newspaper as it is money wasted. One observation he cited was many-a-times when he goes to collect bills, he can see previous day’s newspaper still lying where he tossed it a day earlier. People are just not reading newspaper like they use to.
The classifieds sections have shrunk (contrary to popular belief). More people opt for online job portals rather than the jobs classified section of your local daily. The lifestyles and entertainment sections are picturesque at best and sometimes outdated/stale information.
The local news section – always seems outdated, in the world of 24/7 connectivity and the plethora of TV channel, I have always found the next day’s newspaper to be a summarized version of yesterday (which it is).
The new generation (80s born) rely solely online for their news. My generation (70s) born, I guess is divided. Today, when I look at a newspaper here are some of the things that I think (in no particular order):
1. Black ink on fingers
2. Wrapping paper
3. Free rubber band
4. Has anyone seen my TIME magazine that came with the newspaper
5. Shit – another wasted paper that I pay for – and I haven’t even opened it
6. I have to cancel the subscription
7. More rubbish
8. Old news
9. Did I mention wrapping paper?
10. Tenders and Procurement Notices
11. Pity they don’t carry the Bizarro cartoon series anymore
It will be safe to say, the newspaper may survive the next decade, but the transition to online primary medium is already underway.
David Gallo is sometimes called the ambassador of the underwater world. These two videos are eye-opening as to what exists in the world below… deep below. Absolutely astonishing. You MUST see these to videos.
Here is the more recent video…
The (2nd) set of Open Letters written to the CEO of Ebay and PayPal were delivered. See below for proof of delivery.
Letter Delivered to CEO of Ebay
Letter Delivered to CEO of PayPal
Dear Readers,
I need your help.
For years I have been writing to Ebay and PayPal to inquire as to why their services are not available in Pakistan. I have never received a reply from them. This year, I decided to pursue this more assertively. In January of this year I wrote a letter to the CEOs of Ebay and PayPal respectively (the contents of the letter can be read here). I waited for a month – no reply from them.
Just yesterday I wrote another letter to them. Let us see if second time is the charm.
However, what I need from you – is to spread the word – on your blog. The more you help in spreading this issue around – the more activists and lobbyist effort we can garner.
All I am asking you is for you to highlight the same in your own words (about the two letters I wrote) to your readers. Feel free to highlight the non-availability of both Ebay and Paypal in Pakistan as you feel fit. But highlight you must!
Feel free to cross-link to the two letters: (it is not mandatory that you do so, lest I be accused of increasing the back-links for my blog - back-linking won’t help me in any manner, since I do not run any advertisements on my website, hence traffic and popularity is not something I am seeking).
An Open Letter to John Donahoe, CEO of Ebay (Parent company of PayPal)
http://faisalkhan.com/?p=554
PayPal in Pakistan (Part II)
http://faisalkhan.com/?p=623
It is very easy to rant in this digital age… A lot of people have personally written emails to me, saying it won’t work. Citing many theories as to why PayPal / Ebay does not want to do business here in Pakistan. The Nay-sayers are plenty. But those are are willing to help and contribute towards this effort/initiative - outnumber the Nay-sayers by orders of magnitude.
I think we need to approach this with patience and without giving up hope. Dr. Ian Wilmut who first successfully cloned “Dolly” the sheep, got it right after 276 attempts. Imagine that - 276 attempts!!!
Being persistent pays off.
I am no Dr. Wilmut, and we certainly have no sheep to be cloned. But if it takes 276 attempts to get PayPal in Pakistan – why not!
A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.
An ancient Chinese proverb
I thank you in advance.
Regards,
FAISAL KHAN
Every now and then you come across a pleasant surprise. Today, was no exception. I was wondering what the Government is doing to enable Small & Medium Enterprises (aka Businesses) in Pakistan, embrace IT. I stumbled upon SMEDA’s Website. SMEDA is an acronym for Small & Medium Enterprises Development Authority. Their website – can be accessed here.
What intrigued me was this link on their main page – aptly titled SMEDA Accounting Package (SMAP). Turns out this is a complete accounting package that is developed by a company called Generix Solutions (out of Lahore) that is given away to anyone for FREE. Yes, folks, a complete accounting package – given away for free – presumably subsidized by SMEDA.
Whilst I am not endorsing the accounting software per se, I am endorsing curiosity. It is worthwhile to at least download this software try it out. A complete User Manual (PDF) is provided for, along with an FAQ section, and training schedule (which I thought was the right approach and earns SMEDA some brownie points in my books). I did feel the screenshots were missing, but hey, can’t have everything. SMEDA is not only providing the software for free, but is also supporting it to that enhancements, etc. are also provided for as and when the product matures or according to the changing environment.
What was frustrating was the user experience on the SMEDA website. They really need to revisit this again. I think it was a great effort by SMEDA to promote subsidized software for the small and medium businesses in Pakistan.
The features description of the software is listed below. Do go check it out. You just might end up liking it. The software runs on Windows. The downloading portion is pretty messed up (I would rather download ‘one’ file rather than multiple files, but I guess this has been done to serve the dial-up market as well). It would also be worthwhile for SMEDA to mention the total download size of each file.
Inventory Control
* Complete Product Details with Picture.
* Product Category, Size, Model, Brand, Make Details.
* Product Formulization & Replacement details.
* Supplier & Department Details.
* Product Multiple Locations & Tax Details.
* Product Costing Value & on Average Method.
* Product Quantity Bought/Sold/Returned/Scrap
* Product Batch No’s & Locations.
* Stock Valuation & Product Profit Period Wise
* Stock Value Automatically Computed &Depicted In Financials.
Financial Accounting
* Chart of Accounts.
* Financial Year Selection.
* Year Ending & Periods wise Analysis.
* Voucher Entries.
* General Journal & Day Books.
* General Ledger.
* Expense Analysis & Banks Reports.
* Trial Balance.
* Audit Trail.
* Cash Flow Statements.
* Balance Sheet & Profit and Loss.
Cash / Bank Management
* GL Payments.
* Supplier Payments.
* GL Receipts.
* Invoice and Customer wise individual Receipts.
* Inter-bank Or Inter Account Transfers
* Cash / Bank Accounts Detailed Activity
* Customer Receipts Slips.
* Supplier Payment Slips.
Data Backup and Security
* Backup of Data.
* Restore Data.
* User Creation wizard.
* Login Screen.
* Change Password.
* Modification in Entered Data.
Default Modules
* Default Accounts for Auto Transaction.
* Customer Defaults Settings.
* Supplier Defaults Settings.
* Product Defaults Settings.
* Sales Defaults Settings.
* Purchase Defaults Settings
Receivables and Sales
* Customer Info and Other Details.
* Customer Type & Credit Limits.
* Customer Department & Tax Details.
* Customer Aging Periods & Detail Ledger.
* Customer Analysis Summary & Time Taken to Payable Invoices.
* Sales, Service & Return Invoices.
* Cash & Credit Sales, Sales by Product serial Nos.
* Sales Tax Computation, Discounts & Taxes.
* Automatic Updating Customer Balance, Inventory & Financials.
* Quotations & Sales Performa.
* No Individual Account In Chart Of Account for Each Customer.
* Receivables Value Automatically Computed & Depicted In Financials.
Production Management
* Material Issue Note.
* Finished Goods Receive Note.
* Batch wise Processing.
* Processing Cost & Comparison Sheets.
* Auto Inventory Updating.
* Batch wise Balance Report.
* Completed/Incomplete Batch’s Reports.
Payable and Purchases
* Supplier Info & Other Details.
* Supplier Terms & Credit Limits.
* Supplier Department & Tax Details.
* Supplier Summary & Detail Ledger.
* Supplier Analysis Summary & Others.
* Purchase, Service & Return Invoices.
* Automatic Supplier, Inventory & Financial Updating.
* Product Purchases by Serial No’s.
* LC Costing & Tracking.
* Auto Calculation of Purchase Cost.
* Payments Overdue/Advance.
* Cash/Credit Purchases.
* Supplier Ageing
* No Individual Account In Chart Of Account for Each Supplier.
* Payables Value Automatically Computed & Depicted In Financials
Other Features
* Fully integrated system.
* Sample Chart of Accounts for more than 100 Business’s.
* Over 200 standard reports.
* Extensive Sample Company (Demo) Data.
* Compatibility with old versions.
* No Stationery required.
* Separate Sales Tax Computation according to Pakistan’s Tax Department requirements.
* Comprehensive context sensitive Help
* Supported Operating Systems Win98, WinNT, Win200/XP
I love Vintage Jazz. For some reason PTA had asked ISPs to block www.Live365.com - perhaps one of the most famous Internet Radio Stations aggregation websites on the Internet. I then found out this was because the Balachistan Liberation Army (BLA) had a couple of radio broadcasts on it (not anymore) and the government wanted to suppress it. A pity really as a lot of the Internet users in Pakistan were missing out on a great source of music.
No matter what your taste or mood, I am sure Live365 has a radio station just for you. The sound quality is amazing and if you spend a little bit of money (why not spend money on yourself), you can get the commercial-free subscription for it. Very much recommended.
PTCL is still blocking the site. However, ISPs that route traffic through TWA can still access the website. One of the most favorite radio station stream that I listen to is Bop-City Vintage Jazz.
The Web Widget is below - and you can click and listen to it.
You just HAVE to see this - the last person coming in for prayers, literally trips everyone like dominos
Earlier this year, I sent a letter to the CEO of Ebay (Ebay is the parent company of PayPal), and to the CEO of PayPal itself.
The contents of the letter can be viewed here. The delivery snapshots as provided by Fedex can be seen below.
Proof of Delivery receipt for Letter to CEO of Ebay: John Donahoe
Proof of Delivery receipt for Letter to CEO of PayPal: Scott Thompson
I have not received any reply so far (which was quite disappointing).
So, yet again, I am writing another letter to them. Contents of which can be seen below.
________________________
February 12, 2009
John Donahoe
President and CEO
eBay Inc.
2145 Hamilton Avenue
San Jose, CA 95125
USA
Subject: PayPal for Pakistan
Dear Mr. Donahoe,
I am writing to you to inquire as to why Ebay and Paypal services are not available in Pakistan. It is very disheartening to note that whilst countries like Angola, Yemen, Uganda, Madagascar, Jordan, Kuwait and Rwanda (to name a few) can enjoy the benefits of PayPal, Why is Pakistan left out?
Pakistan is home to 17+ Million users of the Internet. Mobile users are hovering around the 80+ Million mark. The population is 160 Million. Our banking system is robust and seasoned, whilst our digital infrastructure is top-notch, having many firsts (for example: we have the world largest Wimax deployment).
For years I have personally been writing to Ebay/PayPal, but have never received a reply, which in this day and age, is quite disappointing.
The main objective of this letter to know (not superficially, but in detail) what is preventing the inclusion of Pakistan in the countries where PayPal / Ebay services can be offered.
A lot many professional organizations in Pakistan are willing to lend support to the cause, should Ebay/PayPal require so.
If there are any policy or government issues preventing your organization from doing business here, kindly do highlight the same so that at the very least we can start addressing the issue.
I just want to be able to have an eBay and a PayPal account from Pakistan. In the event you want to reach me, the easiest way is via email, my personal email address is babushka99@gmail.com and official email address is faisal@nacspl.com
Regards,
FAISAL KHAN
CEO
Net Access Communication Systems (Private) Limited
CC: Mr. Scott Thompson, President, PayPal.
How do you get a fat girl into bed?
(scroll down for answer)…
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Piece of cake!
muwahahahaha!!!!!
Picture this - the Host of Top Gear takes on the Germans… in Double-Decker racing. The cars are stacked on top of each other (as you can see from the video still below). The bottom car has acceleration, brakes and gears, but no steering wheel. The car on the top has steering wheel only, but no brakes, acceleration and gears. So its a symphony of sorts between the two drivers.
Factor in a one-armed driver for the Brits, some British accents and a German woman in a crash helmet screaming in German. It can only get interesting.
Bill & Melinda Gates (C) Oprah's Website.
You may have hated him at Microsoft, or have loved him. But after working 30-Years in Microsoft, Bill Gates (Wiki, Official Bio from Microsoft, Bio at Gates Foundation) is now working full-time in the Gates Foundation, along with his wife Melinda Gates. Inspired by Warren Buffet and his Annual Letter to Shareholders, Bill Gates has decided to do the same.
It is an excellent read. It is quite long. You can either read it here online, or download it here (20 Pages, 4.6MB PDF). If nothing else, it will give you some form of semblance as to what Bill Gates has decided to do with his life - work for humanity.
Peter Schiff (Wiki) is an American economic commentator, author and licensed stock broker who currently serves as president of Euro Pacific Capital.
He correctly predicted the crash / downturn in the Economy - 2 years ago and see how they mocked him. Look who’s laughing now.
Peter Schiff Was Right 2006 - 2007 (2nd Edition)
Here is Peter Schiff predicting what will happen once Barak Obama wins! Only History will tell if he was right or wrong.
10/28/08 Peter Schiff predicts doomed economy under Obama
While so much emphasis has been stressed on the bad mortgages and home-loans, another wave of bad loans is coming.
Before I elaborate, let me quickly summarize. There was excess liquidity in the market, money was made available to almost anyone, people started getting 2nd and 3rd mortgages (when they really could not afford more than one). As everyone was out hunting for properties to invest, home prices soared. Wall Street got into the action. Hedge funds, money market funds, and God knows anything that could be carved out of such a booming-liquid-money-house-based-mortgage-lending-economy, was carved. The bubble burst. Then the downfall happened of which we all know about.
I am no economist – not even close. But for over 10+ years, I’ve kept a VERY close eye on a very specific segment of commercial real-estate: data-centers.
As more and more people get laid off, companies will continue to cut down costs. As costs are cut down, office/building expansion, etc. are also cut down. When people are out of a job, credit card defaults are bound to happen. When people don’t spend money, commercial businesses will get hit… and that is the Second Wave.
Soon enough you will see a lot of commercial building loans go into default. Right now we’ve been seeing home-loans gone bad, I bet you will be seeing commercial loans go bad pretty soon.
For any reversal of fortune, the first step is the slowdown, which we have already experienced, the send step is the stopping – which we are experiencing right now. The third would be the reversal itself. This I believe has started quietly. Nothing big yet, but this commercial default snowball is now becoming bigger and bigger.
Datacenters expansion by Google and Microsoft for example have been stalled. More and more emphasis is being applied now to pack more servers/gear into the same available space (blade servers, cloud computing, etc.)
Go-green options are huge. Large datacenters can get connected to grid in excess of 50Megawatts. Some exceed 100Megawatts. All signs and indications right now in the commercial datacenter markets is of a steep slowdown. Those with a lot of liquidity, are on a buying spree to grab land which is being offered at an unprecedented low rate. As we are now an electronic economy, this commercial vertical is seeing a lot of consolidation happen. The real-world brick-and-mortar companies are shuttering down a whole lot faster than you and I can fathom. Circuit City – gone bust! More and more are coming. Coffee sales at Starbucks have gone down significantly – imagine what the neighborhood coffee shop is experiencing. Casinos are laying off people. Which in turn affects the rental market in Las Vegas, which affects the new housing projects that are coming up – when the market goes under, a commercial default is imminent.
Look at all the advertisements of all the grand-land projects that use to come out in Dawn. All gone now. No more double-full page advertisements. All gone. Come to think of it – I hardly see any new tower coming up. Those that are already in the build – have slowed down. The Centaurus in Islamabad is in trouble. So is the Grand Hyatt Project in Islamabad. By trouble – it’s always financial. Commercial office and residential projects in Karachi are equally affected. Whatever happened to Emaar’s expansion plans – on hold I bet.
Year 2009 is not going to be easy by any ways or means. For Pakistan, it will be a whole lot tougher. Water shortage will have a serious impact on agriculture this year. Note it down. I will revisit and put a “told-you-so” in the comments a few months from now. Electricity woes will be almost unbearable come this summer. A lot more projects within Pakistan will be facing serious crisis as the months progress. I wish I had some good news, but the fact of the matter is – people are just not prepared for the storm that is coming.
It happens to me many times a week. Sitting with friends or family, every now and then they would ask “What business should we get in to?” The answer would all depend on my mood. If I feeling like yakking, I’d throw many ideas back at them (depending upon their background skills, and how much money they want to invest). Sometimes, I just stay quiet.
Of late, an idea has been boiling over… data-vaults. Ever since we started work on our data-center, I have quietly been working in parallel to establish a reliable data-vault in Pakistan. Data-vaulting is sometimes mistaken to the commonly referred phrase as “online-backup”. Online backup happens to be one of a facets of data-vaulting. In its simplest of terms, data-vaulting simply implies a commercial service where data (off-site/backup, etc.) resides. In Pakistan, such a service commercially is not yet offered. Why? I really cannot answer, but I feel the issue may be of privacy, confidence, neutrality, etc. Somehow we feel more secure in zipping our files and uploading them to ancillary Google Mail accounts or with X-Drive and the likes, rather than storing it locally. It is definitely an issue of trust and educating the end-user on the myriad of options available.
I digressed, I want to come back to the business idea. If a commercial data-vaulting service would be available in Pakistan (InshahAllah it will be soon). Then the most logical business to get into is scanning and digital archiving. Before you lose interest and cite that already many such companies exist – then at the risk of boring you further, allow me to highlight some important points:
- Data-scanning & archiving companies do exist – can you name one immediately right on the top of your head? You probably cannot! I can’t either
- Such scanning companies simply do not market or brand themselves
The companies that I do know of, specialize in large scale, and are fixated on the financial sector-
- Small & Medium Businesses – who caters to them?
- Daily scanning service (i.e. pick up say 200 or so sheets, scan them, tag them and return them) - such services are not available
- In-house / in-sourcing – having someone to come in – scan, tag, file and go – such service options again are not available
Most of the time – companies simply require a ‘scan’ that is “tagged” correctly. OCR is really a waste-of-time and money. Today – a huge variety of planetary, flat-bed, book, and paper-feed scanners exist that can make PDFs of scanned images, tagging and emailing very easy – why isn’t someone capitalizing on this?
Each year - in my small company, we have to file away – 1000s of pages, usually between 40-80 box files. I wish I could have this scanned. Why doesn’t someone do this for a price that is low (yet profitable)?
If some company were to set rates like these below – I promise I will be your first customer:
0-10 pages: Rs. 5/page
11-50 pages: Rs 4/page
51-500 pages: Rs. 3/page
500-1000 pages: Rs 2.50/page
1000+ pages Rs. 2/page
This is for scanned file only.
For Tagging & PDF creation – you can add Rs. 1 to the rate. With camera based scanners like say Atiz or other planetary scanners, the scanning process is mere seconds with a high-resolution image thrown out.
The process should be simple, at the end-of the day, we seal everything in a courier bag, which is then transported to the scanning facility. Next day, you scan, tag and upload the file and send the papers back to us. Yes, there will be an additional cost for online storage, but that will be minuscule considering how economical digital storage is.
I can almost guarantee 1,000 pages per day of business just by thinking how much our company and some other small businesses I know can use this.
I hope someone who reads this – would genuinely pursue this idea. If you need any additional help/guidance from the research work I have done on this, by all means contact me.
Salman had just picked up his wife Shazia and their new baby and Mother-in-Law from the hospital and brought them home. It was not long before Shazia and her Mother suggested that Salman should try his hand at changing the diaper. “I’m busy,” he said, “I promise I’ll do the next one.”
The next time soon came around so with the Mother-in-Law standing by her saide, Shazia asked him again. Salman looked at wife and said, innocently, “I didn’t mean the next diaper, I meant the next baby.”
What do boys love best - guns, cars and women. Here is a great video of a bunch of bikini clad women, shooting some of the most amazing firepower you can get your hands on. Most of them miss by a mile, Some even lose their balance. Perhaps the best is the sniper-style lie-low 50-caliber rifle shot! Amazing shots!
Get your beer out when seeing this video!
Sexy Girls Shooting Guns - Click here for another funny movie.
As per Internet World Stats - Pakistan’s Internet usage is now at 17.5 Million users. In Year 2000 it was 133,900. This would represent a growth of 12,970% - pretty darn impressive. (Source)
Whilst everyone is writing about Obama, I decided to share something that is on the humorous side of things. The new world order that is coming….
As we plan to have (InshahAllah) various small data-center locations all over Pakistan, there arose a question as to what to name them? In the West, datacenters have a very tech name associated with them, like Digital Realty, Equinix’s IBX (Internet Business Exchange), Datamart, Databank, etc. We wanted to be different. Not just for the sake of being different, but different as in authentic and ethnic.
So, we have decided to name our small data-centers after the Karakoram Range, in particular the peaks. The First one we are initiating is going to be called K2 (i.e Mount Godwin Austin), and henceforth as we keep naming them, we will keep assigning the names of the Karakoram peaks to them.
The reasoning behind naming them after our majestic mountain peaks is because they are one great asset of this country. They are our primary water supply, they can easily be cited as the nature’s greatest wonders, and also offer us various forms of natural protection. The same sense goes into our data-center. It’s our (i.e. our company’s) greatest asset, it’s our valued resource and in some manner, our peak.
So – with this – once the data-center is ready for business, we shall aptly christen it as K2.
Saw this on Daily Wireless website. Just HAD to share. Great feel good ad - better known as the T-Mobile Dance.
Cure Auto Insurance advertisement (yes, its a legitimate ad). I just thought it was cool.
Every now and then – I like to buy ‘things’ from abroad. Sometimes it is books, but most of the time it is hobby or computer parts related.
Of late we have been sourcing equipment for the data center. Having servers, routers, parts, accessories, cables, drives, processors, switches, firewalls, power plugs, etc. picked up from various countries and cities across the world. The ONLY company worth mentioning is Fedex. We initiated a Fedex corporate account a couple of months back. It has been nothing short of a lifesaver for us. For example when we were buying KVM switches, from a small distributor in Texas. We did a wire-transfer for the money, and for equipment pickup – we simply gave our Fedex number to the company. It was as simple as that. No need to make an invoice, no other details. Simply provide the Fedex number. The Fedex man arrives, picks up the goods, and labels them, etc. and delivers them to our door step in Karachi. If customs clearance is required – that too is taken care of by our local clearing agent.
The whole process is so simple. Yes, it is expensive, but Fedex today has by far the best coverage. I use to think DHL and TNT were the prevailing tigers of Asia, but that is not so true anymore. DHL, when we wanted to open a corporate account with them in Pakistan, just kept on giving us the run-around, today the sales guy is coming. Tomorrow the sales guy is coming. I mean I literally had to call up their office so many times, citing I want to become a corporate customer. I guess we were not important enough. With Fedex, - everything was SO professional. Next day their sales rep came to us. Explained to us the entire process and we were up and running within a couple of days. I haven’t looked back since. We’ve even had shipments weighing up to 250Kgs be picked up and delivered. Such is the cool efficiency of Fedex.
I wish other courier companies can also get their act together like this. A good example is to use a friend to call their own companies and initiate a sales query and see how your own team responds. I will admit one thing for sure, I NEVER was a fan of Fedex. I thought DHL was the coolest company in the world to work with, however, all that changed with one experience.
After having been in business of Managed Hosting for 12+ years, we have finally decided to open a data-center in Karachi. In about 10 days or so, we will officially be launching our Tier 2 (2 1/2 if I can say so) data center in Karachi. It is actually a Tier III equivalent facility, but Tier III requires raised flooring, which is a concept in itself that is now fading. Having said that, we are opening approximately 1,000 sq. feet of space initially (which would equate to about 30-34 racks), and will be expanding that to 4,000 sq. feet, spread out in various parts of the city for DR/BC purpose. The off-site locations will also be containing fully mirrored communication gear, and one specific location will be undisclosed where the data-vault would be housed.
Currently there is a lot of equipment by Arbor, Foundry, Cisco, HP, Dell, Sun, F5 Networks, APC, Barracuda, Juniper, Extreme, Alteon (Nortel), and many other vendors that is being implemented. About 75% of the equipment has been imported and installed, whilst the remaining 25% is slowing trickling in via air/sea or being customs cleared.
The unique thing about our data center is as follows:
o We are carrier neutral
o We have our own set of IPs (lots of them, so we can assign you dedicated IPs without that hefty price tag)
o We have-made/are-making arrangements by privately peering with many of the leading ISPs in Pakistan - so local access of the data will be immensely fast
o We offer fully managed servers and services - that is from hardware to parts, communication gear, switches, load-balancers, firewalls, etc. everything is offered from the inventory that is IN-STOCK
o We will be offering real-time data-backup facilities with 1+1 redundancy (on and off location)
o We have multiple redundant links with BGP running
o We are in the process of having multiple fiber routes installed
o We have exclusive transit arrangement with Limelight networks to transport content on to their CDN (Content Delivery Network)
o Hosting/Colocation is ALL that we do, so we do not compete - we compliment
o We are in the process of having completed relationship with Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, SAP and others to offer hosted solutions
o We are working with various software companies in Pakistan to offer SaaS (Software-As-A-Service) Model
o We plant to service clients from small web hosting (starting at Rs. 1,995/Year) to large clients who want to run Hosted Oracle Financial solutions. We provide all the hardware and take care of it.
o Our goal is simple - provide an SLA and latency guarantee.
A lot more is coming. I just wanted to ‘announce’ what we are launching. I shall be posting more details like pictures and services offering as the days progress.
A few days ago, I embarked on my annual routine of writing to Ebay and PayPal - asking them why their services are not being offered in Pakistan? I have been doing this for a couple of years now.
This year, I decided to write a letter and write to the very top, i.e. the two CEOs of Ebay and PayPal, John Donahoe & Scott Thompson.
Rather than just email, I decided to formally send a letter and Fedex’d it to them. The letters were delivered yesterday. Now it is a wait and see - as to what they will say.
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