Updates from quratulain
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Qurratulain Akhtar
9:43 am on May 28, 2008
Tags: offshore outsourcing, Outsourcing, Pakistan (2), software development
Offshore outsourcing being one of the most effective tools for reducing costs of production, is much in demand in growing markets like USA. Out of all others, Software Development outsourcing is much saught after. The reasons of this increasing trend of outsourcing may include a variety, but unavailability of skilled resources at affordable cost is the main issue. Global outsourcing is expected to outgrow 8.1% more in the year 2008, as reported by Gartner Research. This growth in the outsourcing has lead the IT industry of developing countries grow at much faster rate. India has initially been the sole emerging IT outsourcing hub, bus as Gartner researches report, by this year India will start facing competition, as many other countries will emerge as challengers for it.
Pakistan is one of those challengers, with growing IT resources. Approximately 1110,000 IT graduates are currently working in Pakistan and 110 IT universities are producing about 20,000 IT graduates each year (PSEB Overview). The trend of hiring fresh graduates and training them is also getting popular in organizations associated with outsourcing here. This is, I think a better strategy to control costs and increase quality and efficiency. One another reason for Pakistan being emerged as a challenger for India is the rapid growth in IT sector, especially the infrastructure, i.e. software parks (currently there are 11 such parks), supporting government policies, increased number of people with good command over English etc.
Cost effectiveness has once been the only advantage Pakistani software development sector had over other countries. But now Pakistan is among those few countries who provide end-to-end solutions, and this is not only developing a sound base for Pakistan to become more suitable outsourcing hub, but also providing the outsourcers a complete range of solutions. Provision of end-to-end solutions demands effective client relationship and standardization of technology as its pillars, and in past few years Pakistan has made a good record in both the areas. Lack of physical infrastructure have been a hurdle for Pakistan for sometime, but with the emergence of remote infrastructure management, the core issues are getting solved in a very decent manner.
More than this there are young startups coming up with and working on new ideas, i.e. some activities at Startup Insiders show a healthy development. Besides that the major advantages the Pakistani IT resources have include: excellent command over spoken English and written communication, less turnover, and growing opportunities. And above all, the increasing interest of investors from Silicon Valley is what makes Pakistan’s Software Development board more appropriate place to work at!
Now when the development environment in Pakistan is so encouraging, why not to outsource software development here!
Qurratulain Akhtar
7:15 am on May 6, 2008
Tags: authourity blogging, Blogging, career development
Recently We’d introduced ZEDCO (Zigron Education Company) in Zigron Inc aiming to promote career development and professional educational activities within the organization. In this regard, we’ll have a series of presentations, orientations and discussions. Both the technical and business ends will equally be involved, and all the activities will be given coverage on Zigron Blog as well.
In this context the first presentation I’d on Friday, May 02, 2008, was about blogging and career development. The theme of presentation was to identify the ways blogging helps professionals to excel in career in modern times. Below is the slideshow that supported the visual part of my presentation.
I’m not sure about the level of success of the presentation, but the question answers session came up with some thought provoking questions, out of which blogging ethics was one I found worth answering, and worth discussing here. The question was basically, ‘how to stand different in blogosphere, when almost six out ten bloggers are concerned with paid blogging?’
Well, this is the most important question, especially when blogging itself is on the go to become one of the biggest industries in the World Wide Web. When we talk about any particular industry, the survival of any firm and or its lead is maintained only by its consumers’ trust. This consumer trust further consists of many factors, including demand, quality product, building strong relationships with end user, successful marketing campaigns etc, and each factor has its core importance.
Now taking the same scenario in blogging, if you write what people search for, build relationships with your readers and are loyal to them they’ll definitely trust you. The thing that the research is paid or volunteer becomes the secondary factor. Standing different in blogosphere is all about your uniqueness, your innovative ideas with which you develop a readership, and it’s your success to have people who trust you.
The innovations in Web 2.0 aim to enhance user experience, but from marketing perspective there are some issues. Since we develop the applications for users and one of the major medium for content to travel to user is web search, so of course it cannot be ignored. Talking specifically about AJAX, it’s helping to improve the user experience. But AJAX is also criticized for being SEO non friendly. It’s true that AJAX and SEO on their extremes cannot be combined as the major Search Engines are still operating in 1.0 environment, while AJAX is all about Web 2.0. Since there’s always a mid way and there must be one for SEO and AJAX. If we identify that mid way at the initial stage of development process, we can have good optimization along with development, and can save time.
What actually brings a user to a web page is keyword, so let’s start with it. Having keywords in titles, and Meta tags will do quite good, and best if keyword is a part of URL. Simple URL is ideal from both users’ perspective as well as Search Engine. It’ll be easier for user to remember the URL and Search Engine to crawl.
Let’s say we’ve a URL structure like http://example.com/portalconsumerhomecb?portalID=138. Search Engine bots as they are quite intelligent and will crawl, but will not show the in relevant keyword’s search. On the other hand user will not be able to remember such a long URL, instead a simple one like http://example.com/mobile-games/ will work perfect. This simple URL structure will need mod_rewrite. Now Search Engine will index and rank the particular webpage for particular searches.
If you’re done with this, it’s almost 50% of the optimization, the rest is to have enough quality inbound links.
Google announced 
