Tech and Telecom

Economic Instability: Is the Import of Services Under the Radar After Ban of Luxury Goods?

The key takeaway from the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war and the subsequent suspension of services to Russian businesses is that tensions in international relations of a country can result in the suspension of international products and services at any time.

Extending this situation to Pakistan, the government has taken bold, unpopular measures like a sharp increase in energy prices and a ban on imported luxury items to tackle the severe economic instability that troubles Pakistan today.

This brings the local providers of products and services into the limelight, providing them with an opportunity to fill the void created by the import ban and elbow their way into an otherwise highly competitive market.

Last year, the startup ecosystem experienced a boost in funding from international investors fueling its growth. These investors tend to procure services from international cloud service providers due to their previous experience.

Therefore, developers and SaaS providers serving the export market have been focused on global players as well.

The increase in the adoption of the cloud, which started with post-pandemic awareness about the benefits of cloud services, surged further with the recent boost in the startup ecosystem of Pakistan.

Local cloud service providers, on the other hand, also intensified their research and development efforts, working towards bringing the latest products along with improved services.

The products that have been recently introduced by local cloud services providers have reduced the gap that existed between international and local offerings.

Rapid is Pakistan’s first Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud service provider, established in 2011 with the objective to power mission-critical businesses.

Since then, it has been Pakistan’s trailblazer in offering cloud computing, networking services, and management tools for digitizing all areas of businesses and industry.

Keeping in mind the increasing need for speed and agility of innovation, Rapid has recently launched Cobolt (powered by OpenStack) equipped with advanced features like those offered by leading global cloud service providers.

These features enable the customer to manage their infrastructure through a simple and intuitive interface.

One of the key features of this newly launched product is Kubernetes as a Service, which enables developers to provision machines rapidly on-demand.

Faster deployment of resources also means business units can roll out and complete projects earlier than before with optimized costs.

Furthermore, Cobolt is also equipped with multi-cloud flexibility, which provides customers with ease in migration.

Shahzaib Khan, Commercial Head RapidCompute, said, “With the introduction of Cobolt, migration of workloads from international service providers to a local platform like Rapid has become much more convenient.”

He added, “Cobolt is Pakistan’s first cloud platform offering KaaS (Kubernetes as a Service), Database as a Service, Load Balancer as a service, Security Groups, and KeyPairs. Moreover, Cobolt has brought scalability of workloads along with faster time to market to the table.”

Shahzaib further stated, “Based on the current uncertainty that can be seen in Pakistan’s political and business environment, it is the right time to have a local service provider offering globally used features.”

Over the last few years, the company has thoroughly studied the strict guidelines set forth by the SBP, SECP, and regulating bodies, and in response has made its cloud ISO 27001:2013, ISO 27017:2015, ISO 27018:2019, and PCI-DSS 3.2.1 Certified, as well as being GDPR Compliant.

It is currently the only local cloud provider to do so. This has also helped Rapid in serving critical government institutions for whom information security and stability of services are critical.

The need for stronger security controls due to its mission-critical client base is catered to through its security services suite- Titanium™, which offers essential services such as SIEM, DDoS mitigation, threat management, penetration testing, WAF, and more.

Rapid continues to be one of the largest providers of cloud services to the government, financial sector, and large-scale enterprises. If you’re a business looking to shift to the cloud, you can get in touch with Rapid at info@rapidcompute.com.

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