Gartner report places Pakistan in First Category countries for Offshore Services
Posted on Jan 11, 2008 03:10 AM -0500
Gartner, the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company, has placed Pakistan amongst the top countries of the world in terms of suitability for offshore outsourcing.
Pakistan has been recognized by the global community as ‘Market Leaders and Challengers’ and has been placed in the First Category countries in 2007. In 2006, Pakistan was placed in the Third Category countries. This was stated by Mr. Yusuf Hussain, MD of PSEB in a press statement.
Gartner, in its recent report ’Analysis of Pakistan as an Offshore Service Location’, said the major factor behind the progressing status of Pakistan is the lower cost of salaries and better infrastructure advantages than other offshore destinations. “The salaries of IT professionals in Pakistan are approximately 30% lower than those in India, while telecommunication costs are also low as compared to any other offshore locations, which make Pakistan an attractive outsourcing destination.”
Based on a total of ten criteria, including language, government support, labour pool, infrastructure, education system, cost, political and economic environment, cultural compatibility, global and legal maturity, data and intellectual property security and privacy, Gartner rated Pakistan as ‘very good’ in cost, ‘good’ in language and ‘fair’ in most of the areas despite the prevailing political environment.
According to Gartner research report, Government of Pakistan has devised a comprehensive national IT policy, designed to encourage the private sector. In order to drive development, plans are underway to develop new IT parks in major cities while 750,000 square feet of space in PSEB-designated parks has already been leased to IT companies. One of the things that the study outlined however was the need for the government to take concrete steps to improve the brand image of Pakistan as an offshore destination.
It may be mentioned here that a number of Pakistani IT companies have developed world class softwares in areas such as car leasing, enterprise application integration, mortgage lien processing, stock market order management, mobile convergence, data and web content management for some of the top most corporations of the world.
Assigning a ‘good’ rating in language, the Gartner research underlines that with “English as a widely spoken language in the urban areas, Pakistan can also be leveraged for Arabic language support to Middle Eastern countries.” Observing that Pakistan’s IT revenue grew 59% in 2006.
According to PSEB, the Pakistani IT industry is worth over $2.8 billion, including annual exports exceeding $1.4 billion, Pakistan is eyeing to increase the size of this sector to over US$ 11 billion by 2011.
Gartner Inc. is the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company and delivers the technology-related insight necessary for the investors to make the right decisions. Being the indispensable partner to 60,000 clients in 10,000 distinct organizations, Gartner was founded in 1979, with headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, U.S.A., and has 3,900 associates, including 1,200 research analysts and consultants in 75 countries.
