Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) and IBM Italia S.p.A (Pakistan) are set to launch public cloud services in Pakistan. PTCL, recognized as Pakistan’s “largest converged services carrier”, offers a wide range of services, including internet access and video-conferencing options alongside a “complete range of infrastructure services to other carriers, operators and enterprise customers all over the country”. Together the companies will offer a “turnkey solution” that was developed by IBM and which will be available through PTCL’s data centers in Lahore and Karachi.
The companies will be targeting their new offerings at corporate customers and PTCL will offer a number of services using IBM’s cloud platform. These include Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) alongside Virtual Private Servers (VPS), Disaster Recovery Site (DRS) options, and Backup and Storage-as-a Service options. PTCL will also offer web hosting and Compute-on-Demand solutions.
PTCL’s Chief Digital and Corporate Services Officer, Kamal Ahmed, explained :
The PTCL-IBM Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) agreement is an important step forward in our efforts to create greater value, not only for our customers but the entire enterprise segment. Corporate customers and SMEs will now have best-in-class cloud services to benefit from. We believe that this initiative will be a strong catalyst in development of the ICT sector in Pakistan.
IBM Pakistan’s General Manager, Ghazanfar Ali, commented :
(The) cloud is changing the IT landscape across the world. This collaboration brings a reliable in country Public Cloud service built on the well-established capabilities of IBM and PTCL. IBM is a global leader in IaaS due to the differentiation it provides in key areas like Security, Flexibility and Innovation. Now enterprises can focus more on their core business as IBM and PTCL can take care of their infrastructure needs with world-class technology, connectivity and processes.