Karachi, September 14, 2020: “Today, many organizations in Pakistan are operating in an unprecedented business environment, beyond the scenarios covered in most business continuity plans. In such a situation, companies need new solutions to ensure resilience, recover quickly, and remain operational beyond the present disruptions.” This was stated by Amer Khan, Senior Sales Director, Technology Business, Oracle Pakistan Systems Private Limited.
“Over the last few years, we have seen an accelerated interest in technology adoption by companies in our region, with them using different on-prem and cloud solutions to meet their business needs. These include the region’s top organizations in almost every vertical, including financial services, telecom, retail and manufacturing.”
Talking about businesses in Pakistan in terms of technology adoption, Amer said that emerging economies are typically thought of as being risk-averse and late adopters of technology. However, organizations in Pakistan have been among the early adopters of the new technologies.
Oracle has been operating in Pakistan since 1997, helping more than 1000 Pakistani businesses, government departments, non-government organizations, and educational institutions, including Telenor Pakistan, Indus Hospital, Allied Bank, Goto.com.pk, United Bank, Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital, Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) and many others.
The local value added Oracle partners have helped them adopt integrated information technology infrastructures to achieve higher work efficiencies.
For example, LUMS did a lift and shift of their PeopleSoft workload to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. With savings of 20 percent compared with other public cloud alternatives, the university can now scale their infrastructure on demand while also gaining considerable performance improvements.
Telenor Pakistan, one of the largest cellular services providers in Pakistan, is using Oracle Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) to automate business processes to improve productivity, reduce costs and improve controls.
Additionally, Oracle’s integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) was also implemented to help simplify integration between the company’s new and existing applications and data sources which ensured Telenor can continue utilizing existing IT assets, irrespective of environment or technology.
Another example is of Allied Bank, one of the largest banks in Pakistan. It is using Oracle Big Data Appliance, which is a flexible, high performance, secure, and multi-purpose, pre-integrated Engineered System. The bank has been using it to process unstructured data and get meaningful insights for data-driven decisions and provide its customers with value-added services.
Commenting on the new business environment in these unusual times, he said: “We are in the midst of a critical situation. Fewer companies are looking to embark on a full digital transformation. Instead, projects are more in the now, and are driven by questions like: Should I invest now or should I save cash? How do I ensure the safety of my employees and yet keep the business going?. In my opinion, these unusual times need exceptional leadership and requires bold measures to reach out to customers, mitigate risks, and act in volatile situations.”
He further said that, “Many of the organizations we’re speaking to have realized that they need greater contingency than they ever felt necessary and future-proof their current IT operations. The cloud presents itself as an attractive and flexible option for organizations to help with these requirements, while also accelerating other essential areas like automation.”
He stated that, “As trusted advisors and strategic partners guiding organizations through this uncertainty, Oracle has been providing options to customers navigating the current situation, helping set them up for a faster rebound,” adding that Oracle’s 40-year journey is all about helping customers take their data and make it meaningful, while at the same time making the processes of managing and securing that data as simple as possible.
“Whatever digital journey our customers decide to take, we are looking to be there for them, as a partner of choice, helping them benefit from all of the advantages our autonomous technology brings: lower costs, better security and management, and higher performance,” he concluded.
