Farooq Hasan Sikander carries with him 31 years of successful experience providing fiscal, strategic and operations leadership in uniquely challenging situations. Presently, he has been appointed as Chief Executive, Hascombe Business Solutions (Pvt) Ltd. He is dynamic results-oriented leader and possesses superior interpersonal skills and capable of resolving complex business issues. Ha has also worked as Chief Operating Officer, CubeXS Weatherly Pvt Ltd, Karachi. He is the recipient of a number of awards including Gold Medal by Export Promotion Bureau, Chief of the Air Staffs Commendation Certificates and Special Green Endorsements by Chief of the Air Staff

Technology Times: Tell us about your professional career?

Farooq H. Sikander: I hold Masters Degree in Business Administration with 32 years of successful experience providing fiscal, strategic and operations leadership in uniquely challenging situations. Presently appointed as Chief Operating Officer at CubeXS Weatherly Pvt. Ltd, managing business development, operations and maintenance of Tier IV compliant Data Center in Pakistan. I have rich experience in design and development of data centres and implementation of IT projects. Previously as CEO of Hascombe Business Solutions (Private) Limited, I have managed office automation products, self-service banking solutions and surveillance projects. I have initiated Cloud Services, Document Archiving and Management, Mobile Commerce and Security Solutions as new business units. I have experience in development and implementation of Quality Management Systems and ISO 9000 certification.

Brief us about CubeXS Weatherly, its vision and core values and history of the organization?

CubeXS (Pvt.) Limited, an Internet Service Provider, was formed in 1997 to serve Enterprise customers nationwide. The company provided Internet Bandwidth through Fiber, DSL, Wireless and Dialup lines. In 2006, the Weatherly Companies and CubeXS jointly established the first Tier IV complaint Data Center in Pakistan, CubeXS Weatherly (Private) Limited. Since inception many large local and global clients have also put their trust in Cube XS Weatherly services. These relationships have been reinforced through long-term contracts and round-the-clock services offered by our dedicated team of experts. In 2011 CubeXS enhanced its technology team to develop and implement Public and Private Cloud, Cloud Storage, Hosted Services and Infrastructure Virtualization on an Open Source and VMWare Platform. The team also provides services for solution design and implementation.

How do you see the scope in market of Pakistan?

Whenever there is an economic crisis, it gives rebirth to outsourcing services and no upfront investment projects. We are very confident that our Cloud Services, based on Pay-As-You Go model, not only support the corporate sector but also we offer an affordable service for the individuals.

How do you define the first ever Tier IV compliant Data Center in Pakistan established by your organization?

The datacentre was primarily built upon a viable business case for providing datacentre related services to a Fortune 500 telecomm company. The facility was built on standards and specifications approved by this anchor client.

CubeXS Weatherly (Private) Limited designed and built a hardened, Class “A”, the first ever Tier IV compliant Data Center in Pakistan. We deliver managed services and solutions to our enterprise customers. All CubeXS facilities are engineered to 99.995 per cent service availability to deliver highly reliable and scalable power, environmental control and physical security.

Our state-of-the-art Data Center is engineered to utilize fully redundant industrial diesel-powered generators, uninterruptible power supplies, custom designed power distribution units and truly redundant industrial grade air-cooled environment control plants, which provide highly available power and cooling system. Combined with physical and information security, the facility provides a highly secure and hardened environment that supports mission critical business services. It provides an ideal environment for Co-location and DR site.

What are the major products and services you offer to the customers in Pakistan?

Co-location: CubeXS Weatherly provides co-location space for your Primary/DR site. We provide an advanced fully meshed network infrastructure to integrate your IT environment into our data center quickly and cost effectively. To facilitate the customer, we have multiple carriers of Fiber and Wireless for Metropolitan Area Network and Satellite broadband solution for nationwide connectivity.

Business Continuity Office Space: CubeXS Weatherly provides an alternate office workspace for your employees in the event of a disaster at one of your critical offices. Besides access to our secure Data Center, clients get furnished office space including PC, telephone, copier, fax machine, conference room and other communications facilities that allow clients to quickly resume their business.

CubeXS Public Cloud: CubeXS Cloud Servers are highly configurable, secure, virtual machines that provide granular control and allow easy customization. Our secure virtual machines are hosted on enterprise-class public cloud and are built on the hardware from leading vendors. CubeXS Cloud Servers support MS Windows and Linux operating systems and can be deployed and managed either through the administrative UI or through corresponding functions of the APIs.

Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS): CubeXS offers a comprehensive selection of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) environments to best fit the specific needs of your applications. Depending on your needs, you can choose the right solution for your application for higher efficiency and performance rather than force-fitting your application into a cloud.

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS): Regardless of what specific application you might be evaluating, you stand to benefit from our SaaS in many ways like: Save Money, Lower IT Costs, Pay-As-You-Go, Economies of Scale, Save Time, Technology Budgets on Competitive Advantage rather than Infrastructure, Gain Immediate Access to the Latest Innovations, and Enhanced Technical Support.

CubeXS Private Cloud: CubeXS Private Cloud solution is an all inclusive solution which includes provision, setup, perpetual licensing, monitoring and complete management of the cluster thereby guaranteeing enhanced security, improved back-up options, experienced technical support for maintenance, reliable equipment and zero downtime. This is a virtual, fully managed, encapsulated private cloud environment that can be installed at your datacenter or at CubeXS facility.

Infrastructure Virtualization: Infrastructure Virtualization is one of the most significant developments in Business Technology. By using technology from industrys leading providers like VMware, Microsoft, Citrix and Open Source models, CubeXS helps the customers move away from the one server – one application paradigm to create a complete virtual solution with optimum use of server hardware, processor speeds, software, applications and storage systems. We also focus on an optimized disaster recovery. CubeXS Virtualization customers typically save 50-70 per cent on overall IT costs by consolidating resources, that’s at least half of the current IT costs.

What is the Disaster Recovery solution?

CubeXS Weatherly offers innovative, cost-effective IT Disaster Recovery (DR) solutions for large and mid-sized organizations that need DR capabilities. What makes CubeXS Weatherly unique is that we offer one of the most cost effective DR solution sets in the industry, enabling you to deliver IT Disaster Recovery at the right price and the right recovery times to meet your organization’s needs.

We also offer DR Solution on our Public Cloud, which include data backup and replication. In solutions the client does not require investing in hardware/software.

Do you offer after-sales service to the customers?

We have 24×7 online technical support available on our site to support our customers.

Can you name key customers and recommendations of some?

We are focused on serving enterprise clients having mission-critical e-business and IT operations. We provide technology know-how, hardware and software and reliable services to our clients. Some our prestigious clients include: United Bank Limited, Pakistan Petroleum Limited, National Bank of Pakistan, Burj Bank, ORIX Leasing, and PICIC.

What is Cloud Storage application?

CubeXS Cloud Storage is a secure, encrypted, API-based SAN/Object storage solution that allows secure storage and retrieval of data from anywhere with Internet connectivity. Files are securely stored in encrypted format and are accessible via SSL-encrypted API calls.

What are your future plans to penetrate in Pakistani market?

We will be offering more Value Added Services and keep pace with technology to make it viable for our market.

How you promote products and solutions to get desired market share?

Marketing activities are in concentrated with different categories like: Sales Team, Website, Contact Campaigns, Media Advertising, Trade Shows, and Telemarketing Campaign.

Any challenges faced your organization in establishing operations?

Building up a dedicated team and selecting the right technology was the biggest challenge in launching the first Self Serviced Public Cloud in Pakistan.

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