Farooq Ahmed Jalali is EVP, South at Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL). He believes that business incubation is a unique and highly flexible combination of business development processes, infrastructure and people designed to nurture new and small businesses by helping them survive and grow through the difficult and vulnerable early stages of development. In a recent interview with Technology Times he briefed about PTCL’s focus on promoting digital creativity and innovation in Pakistani society.

PTCL's focus on promoting digital creativity and innovation in Pakistani society

PTCL’s partnership with Virtual University is much talked about digital partnership in the country in recent months, can you brief us on it?

Ignite, the national technology fund, of Ministry of IT and Telecom has launched Digiskills programme to impart training to one million youth, skilled professionals and freelancers. Ignite has awarded Digiskills training project to Virtual University of Pakistan and PTCL has been selected as strategic partner through MOU signed with VU. PTCL will assist VU for offering special facilities to the trainees under this program and providing the infrastructure support and digital technologies for this initiative. The program aims to developing specialized skills and imparting knowledge about various freelancing opportunities available internationally and locally.

Incubation Centers in digital world are much hyped area, can you enlighten about it, and what role PTCL is offering for this in Pakistan?

Business incubation is a unique and highly flexible combination of business development processes, infrastructure and people designed to nurture new and small businesses by helping them survive and grow through the difficult and vulnerable early stages of development. Incubation center provides a whole new startup ecosystem for the young and aspiring entrepreneurs.

Incubation centers provide a range of diversified solutions to individuals and business entities to perform their business activities with minimum overheads & maximum efficiency. These centers provide full range of IT and telecom services ranging from office space, physical infrastructure to high-speed internet, international connectivity, voice etc. It gives platform to young budding entrepreneurs to meet and learn from top industry leaders how to grow business. It also provides bespoke learning module, material and resources that helps startups to understand the modalities of setting up & grow business.

Digital lifestyle is a continuous process of Innovation & creativity. PTCL, being the backbone of IT and telecom sector in Pakistan, took the lead in this area of operations by entering into an agreement with KP government for the establishment of incubation centers. The infrastructural services provided by PTCL would help in transforming key sectors like health and education. Moreover, it would improve the lifestyle and contribution in GDP.

Owing to the Data security concerns that come with digitalization; what are the preventive initiatives that PTCL plans to take?

Serving the Enterprise segment, where security is the prime concern amongst our customers today, PTCL’s certified IaaS Platform guarantees provisioning of optimal locally hosted cloud service solutions for our customers. Our Cloud services are transforming organizations by virtue of migration towards state-of-the-art technologies resulting in improved efficiency that enables organizations to successfully outperform the competition. This certification is a major step towards PTCL’s quest to provide secure and reliable cloud solutions.

PTCL’s Data Centers are the only Tier-3 Certified facilities in the country, while our bandwidth is DDoS-protected, ensuring optimal security & integrity of users’ data at all times. Moreover, we have attained ISO 9001 & Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCIDSS) certification v3.2 for our Cloud (IAAS) offering, which is yet another milestone for PTCL’s Cloud Services, assuring our clientele security compliance as per international standards.

PTCL entered into a partnership with Microsoft, tell us something about it, and how would it complement PTCL’s current offerings?

PTCL has stepped forward to bring one-window solutions, from serving connectivity needs to becoming an end-to-end business partner for IT requirements of the local market. Facilitating organizations to achieve their objectives, PTCL recognizes that every business is different, and each cloud deployment requires customization with elements that make the overall solution unique to the customer, thereby befitting individual business strategies. To enhance our Cloud Services portfolio, PTCL has signed a Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) partnership and Service Provider Licensing Agreement (SPLA) with Microsoft.

Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider Program will allow PTCL to offer an array of services using Microsoft Cloud inclusive of Microsoft Office 365, Azure, Dynamics 365, Enterprise Mobility Suite, Power BI, Windows & other value-added services across Pakistan. Microsoft Service Provider Licensing agreement (SPLA) will enable PTCL to offer Microsoft’s updated service portfolio across its own in-country Cloud platform on a flexible billing model.