Navid Qazi is Cisco Systems' Country General Manager for Pakistan. Navid is an electrical engineer with over 20 years of experience in emerging markets. He has formerly been associated with leading technology firms including Siemens and Nortel. Navid has been with Cisco for the last ten years during which the local industry witnessed adoption of modern telecom infrastructure starting in 2000. He has been leading Cisco's Pakistan operation for the past four years.
BR Research recently sat down with Navid Qazi in Islamabad to discuss ICT industry issues. Some of the thematic excerpts, relating to overall environment, appeared in Business Recorder's pioneering ICT publication, the ICT Review 2014 (released on December 16, 2014). Following are selected, remaining excerpts from that sit-down which mostly revolve around understanding Cisco's approach towards ICTs:
BR Research: Software is gradually replacing the functionalities hardware could do. Being largely a network equipment provider, how has CISCO been preparing for that shift? Navid Qazi: It's a very interesting discussion. Cisco has been known for packaged networking products - eg routers, switches, CPEs, etc. Those products have hardware components as well as software components. Intelligence has always been in the software, and hardware supports that. With new technologies - cloud computing being one of them - and with the emergence of software-designed networking and network function virtualisation, the ICT industry globally is arriving on a common platform where standardised products and standardised software can be interoperable.
But for specialised, large networks, there is still a growing need for specialised packaged solutions with robust hardware design to support the scale. I will give you an example. Today, Pakistan is throwing some 300Gbps of data traffic back to the internet backbone every day. That volume is probably doubling every year. Now that's a very serious amount of traffic, even though our broadband market is still in its infancy. Now you have to ensure that the hardware is robust enough to support the software being used in this connectivity - that is both serious and mission critical.
BRR: We hear a lot of buzz around Internet of Everything (IoE). What is Cisco's view on this? NQ: There is a real need to leverage ICTs to catalyse delivery of basic citizen services such as healthcare, education and public safety and security. ICTs offer a particular transformation from standpoint of delivery of services to remote areas. We demonstrated these industry-leading capabilities to Pakistan's ICT trade delegation in a demonstration at our San Jose headquarters.
ICT solutions are also helping to make industrial/operational environment more efficient. There is a lot of good work happening in this space with integrated R&D across Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT). We call this Internet of Everything (IoE), a true game-changer concept that technology players are converging around across different sectors.
This is one of Cisco's key priorities going forward. We are doing massive R&D in conjunction with our global partners, the likes of GE, Philips, AMD, Honeywell, Itron just to name a few. We are talking about billions of devices getting connected to Internet, using analytics to automate operational decisions. This will also have a massive positive impact on quality of life.
BRR: You mentioned Pakistan's ICT delegation's visit to the Silicon Valley. You hosted them along with your Cisco counterparts. What was the key message after the deliberations?
NQ: Whenever Pakistan is mapped on international ICT or competitiveness indices, it is usually in the company of Sub-Saharan African countries. I think that's unfair. But as much as I feel that Pakistan belongs to a different league, I also feel that there are issues that need to be fixed. In our opinion, as a company, when comparing with other regional markets, Pakistan needs to accelerate investment in its ICT infrastructure. The consensus among global policymaking and consulting community is that to increase annual GDP growth by one percent, you need to increase telecom infrastructure investment by at least 10 percent.
Pakistan is a country with large population and large size, so the wireless technologies can really leapfrog fixed technologies. But the serious, large businesses and processes require investment in fixed infrastructure expansion like fiber/copper for robust connectivity. Countries in Middle East have leapfrogged Pakistan because of their fixed-line investment. Fixed-line infrastructure is pivotal to support business-grade connectivity. Those investments will catalyse capex spend of the industry, which will, of course, increase business volumes for large tech companies such as Cisco.
BRR: How big is the fixed infrastructure limitation?
NQ: The number of fixed-line subscribers is currently half of what they used to be six years ago. It should have been at least 5 million houses and locations connected thus far to build the critical mass. Right now, only 1.2 million fixed broadband subscriptions are out there when it should have been over 5 million by now. I understand that fixed broadband is ideal for a household and not an individual so we need to look at the potential number of households. These days a decent-quality broadband connection is available for a thousand rupees per month. Coming from a semi-rural background, I can tell you that that's not a lot of money; folks are spending more or less the same on a Chicken Karhai on the roadside.
The upcoming telecom policy must allude to such an environment. We need to improve on that collectively. Then there is a need to broaden the definition of under-served areas. To me, a slum in Karachi or Lahore is also an under-served area. I think that the right stakeholders are not talking to the right consumers. A hospital may want to increase its outreach to rural areas for business reasons but it may not have the technology paradigm or logistics or understanding to do that. Then there are universities that want to expand to rural areas but are unsure whether technology can positively enable that. Fixed infrastructure can enable the needed solutions in those areas.
BRR: Cisco has manufacturing facilities in many locations. Does manufacturing here in Pakistan offer a prospect for Cisco?
NQ: In the very near future, manufacturing ICT products will not be advantageous for the Pakistani market, in my personal opinion. Manufacturing here would require optimum business environment, scale and costs of input. My feeling is that Pakistan's services' value addition through skilled workforce in the software and consulting space offers a better promise than manufacturing.
BRR: You mentioned Pakistan's "phenomenal IT talent" earlier (for more on that, read Navid Qazi's interview on page 13 of BR's ICT Review at http://www.brecorder.com/ict2014). How is Cisco contributing towards investments in technology skill-set and trainings in Pakistan?
NQ: We have been proactively working in the area of skill development and job creation. Cisco's flagship Network Academy Program (globally referred to as NetAcad) is amongst the largest skill-development programs in the world. Over 5 million students have benefited from this program globally. We don't do that for profit, in a way it is part of CSR. We in-still market-oriented ICT trainings through this program that prepare students for industry standard certification
We started that program a while ago in Pakistan as we saw a huge skill gap in the local industry. The ICT infrastructure is moving towards IP Technologies and we did not have enough trained resources. We currently have a network of almost 100 Network Academies across public and private sector. Over 20,000 students have benefited from this program including, approximately, 10 percent are female students. The training prepares them for globally-marketable CCNA, CCNP and CCIE certifications. A sizeable number of these professionals then go on to regional and international markets and contribute towards Pakistan's foreign exchange remittances. As a case in point, an experienced CCIE certified resource can get north of $100,000 per annum in global markets.
We will need more of these resources as real sectors like education, health, manufacturing and public safety port their infrastructure on technology platforms. The NetAcad program has evolved over time to support this and include new technologies in the curriculum.
BRR: Since Cisco's Pakistan offices are also supporting some of Cisco's global operations, what are the ways through which the local talent is trained?
NQ: We have a truly globalized environment and our people travel regularly to regional and global offices for business interaction as well as training. Then our TelePresence service, which is an immersive HD Videocon facility is connected with 1100 locations globally, also lends support in our local team's global interactions, knowledge-sharing and training. Even our headquarters in San Jose, California has quite a few Pakistani people working on the tech-side of business. So the environment is such that we are part of the global operations as well.
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