Held in Karachi in April, the event followed the Aptec subsidiary’s launch in the Saudi market in March. Track Distribution now covers the Middle East, Pakistan, Turkey and Africa.
The one-day seminar was opened by Aptec’s Group vice president Essam Baghdady. Executive speakers from Cisco Pakistan included Aadil Ishfaq, Regional Channel Manger at Cisco Pakistan, who received the channel partners at the PC hotel.
Essam Baghdady went through industry trends and market evolution both worldwide and regionally.
“2009 saw the IT market contracting worldwide by 3% while European recession was hit even harder with the IT market in Europe contracting by 6% – the hardest hit region. The Middle East and Africa on the other hand saw a 4% growth in spite of the worldwide recession. On a positive note the IT spending, according to researchers and analysts, hit the bottom in 2009,” commented Baghdady .
“Pakistan showed promising indications and the potential growth outlook with the ICT sector is estimated at US$12.8 billion in 2009 “he added.
Promising trends in the IT market in Pakistan are an expected growth of 35% year-on-year as of 2010; over 150.000 IT professionals employed in the channel; an access of 45% growth in the software exports; over 2400 cities and towns connected to Internet; over 1500 IT companies working in Pakistan; and services and software exports estimated at US$ 1.4 billion.
Resellers were given presentation on how they can tackle operational issues and how best they can utilise the Cisco Channel Partner programs, Youssef Khan, Territory Marketing Manager, explained the Channel, answering quires about the day to day issues on order processing, logistics, availabilities, etc faced by partners in Pakistan. Followed by Hammad Shaukat, Systems engineer Unified Communications, who provided valuable insight of the market along with Cisco new product lines and updates.
Track launched a Mega promotion for its Pakistan customers at the event, similar to one launched for its partner in Saudi Arabia in March.. The promotion will see top Pakistan resellers win a fully paid trip to Dubai at Gitex 2010 and luxury weekend stay at mountain resort in Pakistan from a few to choose on. “First 10 partners who place order with us before May 15 also tend to win 1% back of the invoice value,” said Rizwan Ahmed, Country Manager – Track Pakistan while explain about the promo.
Essam Baghdady concluded: “Our partnership model focus on optimising availability and ease of transacting business. We therefore stress on partner planning, enablement and joint campaigns. Investment in additional services and technologies can add value to our partner’s offers,”
Following the Karachi event the Track team visited Islamabad and Lahore to meet with resellers in those two growing and vital cities of Pakistan.
Regional networking distributor, Track Distribution, part of the Aptec group, and Cisco jointly celebrated the first anniversary of Track?s direct Pakistan involvement by inviting more than 70 partner/resellers to the ?Track Cisco Forum?.
