Amazon officially enters Pakistan with web services

[Syed1]

https://profit.pakistantoday.com.pk/2020/08/07/amazon-officially-enters-pakistan-with-web-services/

SINGAPORE: Having registered a local office under the name AMZ Data Services Pakistan (Pvt) Ltd, Amazon is forming a team for Amazon Web Services (AWS) in Pakistan, to drive the adoption of cloud computing.

The move comes two weeks after the technology company experienced a disruption worldwide, which largely impacted parts of the US and Pakistan as a whole.

According to the SECP database, the Pakistan office is led by Paul Andrew Macpherson as the CEO while Shoaib Munir is a director along with Macpherson.

Speaking to Profit under the condition of anonymity, a spokesperson from Amazon shared that the technology leader is currently seeking a public policy specialist for Pakistan, with a focus on driving AWS cloud computing solution adoption. The role focuses on removing regulatory and political blockers to cloud adoption.

This is a common approach among technology companies when entering small markets, with Bytedance doing the same in June by hiring Hassan Arshad as the head of public policy to work with the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) to stall a ban of the TikTok app.

As for AWS in Pakistan, the “Framework on IT Governance and Risk Management in Financial Institutions” by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) directed banks to utilise cloud computing technology under the condition that systems and service providers shall be located in Pakistan along with all physical servers and services. Under this rule, AWS would need to set up its own data center and cloud server in the country.

According to the e-commerce policy framework of Pakistan, the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication are in the process of formulating Pakistan’s first cloud policy, while the Draft Data Protection Act is at an advanced stage of consultations. The latter draft, which also concerns Amazon, addresses issues concerning data protection in e-commerce.

AWS hopes to work with relevant government departments in Pakistan as they develop and revise policies related to the digital economy, including cloud-first policies, data protection regulations, outsourcing guidelines, cybersecurity policies, tax policy, and over the top regulations. They will also proactively build relationships with key policymakers, politicians, and influencers.

Tiny tiny first step.

 

[Syed1]

For the uninitiated, AWS is the largest cloud service in the world. Chances are most of the web pages you visit on a day to day basis are hosted by Amazon.


Although AWS did lose out to Microsoft Azure for US government's massive multi billion dollar contract.

 

[JaDed]

For the uninitiated, AWS is the largest cloud service in the world. Chances are most of the web pages you visit on a day to day basis are hosted by Amazon.


Although AWS did lose out to Microsoft Azure for US government's massive multi billion dollar contract.

Judge temporarily blocks Microsoft Pentagon cloud contract after Amazon suit

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/13/amazon-gets-restraining-order-to-block-microsoft-work-on-pentagon-jedi.html

 

[Syed1]

Judge temporarily blocks Microsoft Pentagon cloud contract after Amazon suit

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/13/amazon-gets-restraining-order-to-block-microsoft-work-on-pentagon-jedi.html

LOL I thought judge getting bought off was just a desi problem

 

[JaDed]

Didn't Pak have any of its own already? Amazon could had just come in bought that off.. making whoever it was super rich.(along with the investors).

I googled and saw Cheetay such a catchy name but looks like more along the lines of UberEats.. which would eventually come and buy it off..

 

[JaDed]

Congrats, I know many in Chennai working in Amazon as well as Hyderabad. Unless Amazon is blocked there is no way to compete against it so better to just allow it and create jobs for economy.

Digital is the future if this boat is missed there will only be catching upto play, good on the leadership.

Pakistan is in the right spot to get Huawei investment(for obvious reasons) and quick setup of net which could unleash so much also considering it is smaller in size(to India) its easy to get the entire country online.

 

[JaDed]

LOL I thought judge getting bought off was just a desi problem

My assumption is Microsoft lobbied the current establishment and Amazon got furious (As it was a huge contract).

Even in the current tech hearing Apple,Amazon,Google,Facebook were called for anti-trust not Microsoft (Although they went through this in 90's in a much more scrutinizing way).

 

[Syed1]

My assumption is Microsoft lobbied the current establishment and Amazon got furious (As it was a huge contract).

Even in the current tech hearing Apple,Amazon,Google,Facebook were called for anti-trust not Microsoft (Although they went through this in 90's in a much more scrutinizing way).

Also US government is pushing Microsoft to buy out Tik Tok. MS seems to be quite close to US establishment.

 

[Syed1]

Congrats, I know many in Chennai working in Amazon as well as Hyderabad. Unless Amazon is blocked there is no way to compete against it so better to just allow it and create jobs for economy.

Digital is the future if this boat is missed there will only be catching upto play, good on the leadership.

Pakistan is in the right spot to get Huawei investment(for obvious reasons) and quick setup of net which could unleash so much also considering it is smaller in size(to India) its easy to get the entire country online.

India is a massive market for private cloud services, like industries aiming to implement IoT etc that is AWS and others being big there is expected.


Here AWS is entering so that it can win government contracts because govt is now pushing for more digitization in its operations.

 

[Slog]

As a tech noob can someone explain how this works?

If it’s a cloud service why does the company (AWS) need to physically be in Pakistan to get business and offer services in the country?

Also will this have any link to the traditional amazon online marketplace services? Could they be offered in pak as a result of this?

 

[Syed1]

As a tech noob can someone explain how this works?

If it’s a cloud service why does the company (AWS) need to physically be in Pakistan to get business and offer services in the country?

Also will this have any link to the traditional amazon online marketplace services? Could they be offered in pak as a result of this?

I'll try and explain as best as I can then maybe more learned people like [MENTION=137142]JaDed[/MENTION] can add

1. They are opening an office to possibly have a skeleton force for lobbying and winning contracts
2. Cloud services do require a lot of backend work to set up the APIs, storage, database etc. Basically the infrastructure on which your website or network stands. It can be done remotely as well, but maybe Amazon will lobby that give us contract we will do work here and hence bring jobs.
3. AWS is completely a different line of business compared to Amazon marketplace. Maybe if AWS gets alot of business then Amazon will also be interested.
4. The reason Amazon isn't there is because of FATF and weak money laundering laws. Otherwise Amazon recently allowed Pakistanis to open their stores on Amazon, one kid made $40k in a month.

 

[JaDed]

Adding to Syed1's points technical wise, it also matter how its routed and where the backbone is, which makes a lot of difference in latency.

from 15:50 in the below video it will give an idea, considering Pak is close to India, it would actually have great performance to services it chooses.(GCP still has latency as per below video but they are working on routing and imo will be better in future coz backbone methodology)

 

[JaDed]

A sales team is required everywhere along with the Delivery team,most Cloud providers (GCP,Amazon,Azure) have already completed the development of the product but how they sell it depends upon below:

- Ability to support the IT teams implementing (a reason why Google has so many cloud consultant jobs in last 6 months and growing)

- Ability to educate the IT teams on implementation this is massive and even the best IT architects need help in education on how to implement, from what I have been informed Enterprise level Google has done the best job internally so if they are able to impart that "knowledge of cloud implementation" they have huge chance of success (in USA).

Pakistan already has good IT Freelancers and upcoming consultancies, implementing projects should be easier.

Searching for case studies this is one without much technical details already done in Pak.

https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/daraz/

As the sixth-most-populated country in the world, Pakistan presents a large customer base for retail operations. Launched in 2012, Daraz offers a diverse assortment of products to online shoppers in Pakistan and four additional South Asian markets: Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. The e-commerce provider is focused on providing a superior customer experience, including a user-friendly interface and comprehensive customer care. With 2 million products, 30,000 sellers, and 5 million customers, Daraz has become a household name in the region.

 

[Abdullah719]

4. The reason Amazon isn’t there is because of FATF and weak money laundering laws.

When is PayPal coming

 

[jusarrived]

A sales team is required everywhere along with the Delivery team,most Cloud providers (GCP,Amazon,Azure) have already completed the development of the product but how they sell it depends upon below:

- Ability to support the IT teams implementing (a reason why Google has so many cloud consultant jobs in last 6 months and growing)

- Ability to educate the IT teams on implementation this is massive and even the best IT architects need help in education on how to implement, from what I have been informed Enterprise level Google has done the best job internally so if they are able to impart that "knowledge of cloud implementation" they have huge chance of success (in USA).

Pakistan already has good IT Freelancers and upcoming consultancies, implementing projects should be easier.

Searching for case studies this is one without much technical details already done in Pak.

https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/daraz/

As the sixth-most-populated country in the world, Pakistan presents a large customer base for retail operations. Launched in 2012, Daraz offers a diverse assortment of products to online shoppers in Pakistan and four additional South Asian markets: Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. The e-commerce provider is focused on providing a superior customer experience, including a user-friendly interface and comprehensive customer care. With 2 million products, 30,000 sellers, and 5 million customers, Daraz has become a household name in the region.

MS will eventually overtake , neither Amazon or Google can compete with them in Cloud services even though both are far ahead in innovation . The biggest advantage MS has over these two is their existing relationship with big companies . There is no company which is not already using a MS product . AWS and google are preferred by startups , but big money is with Fortune 1000 companies.

 

[JaDed]

MS will eventually overtake , neither Amazon or Google can compete with them in Cloud services even though both are far ahead in innovation . The biggest advantage MS has over these two is their existing relationship with big companies . There is no company which is not already using a MS product . AWS and google are preferred by startups , but big money is with Fortune 1000 companies.

Google and MS also have similar cloud architecture(backbone oriented). MS has lot of money and endless influence , you could be right considering how well Azure has done since 2015 but I would still wait...

IBM and Microsoft were huge but still never became big in Integration-ESB etc..and companies like Mulesoft, Tibco, Pega did similarly in traditional DB,NoSQL etc although I do see Azure trying to be the implementation of no SQL document oriented DBs(Couchbase, Mongo).

If Amazon or Google can't compete with Microsoft then no one can.

 

[jusarrived]

A sales team is required everywhere along with the Delivery team,most Cloud providers (GCP,Amazon,Azure) have already completed the development of the product but how they sell it depends upon below:

- Ability to support the IT teams implementing (a reason why Google has so many cloud consultant jobs in last 6 months and growing)

- Ability to educate the IT teams on implementation this is massive and even the best IT architects need help in education on how to implement, from what I have been informed Enterprise level Google has done the best job internally so if they are able to impart that "knowledge of cloud implementation" they have huge chance of success (in USA).

Pakistan already has good IT Freelancers and upcoming consultancies, implementing projects should be easier.

Searching for case studies this is one without much technical details already done in Pak.

https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/daraz/

As the sixth-most-populated country in the world, Pakistan presents a large customer base for retail operations. Launched in 2012, Daraz offers a diverse assortment of products to online shoppers in Pakistan and four additional South Asian markets: Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. The e-commerce provider is focused on providing a superior customer experience, including a user-friendly interface and comprehensive customer care. With 2 million products, 30,000 sellers, and 5 million customers, Daraz has become a household name in the region.

As a tech noob can someone explain how this works?

If it’s a cloud service why does the company (AWS) need to physically be in Pakistan to get business and offer services in the country?

Also will this have any link to the traditional amazon online marketplace services? Could they be offered in pak as a result of this?

Sensitive data related to Banking , financial , govt , defence etc can’t be hosted anywhere , most countries won’t allow it and in some cases like EU for eg has GDPR , even an automobile company hosting simple things like mail servers on cloud becomes extremely tricky . This is why Cloud service providers have Data Centers all across the globe and there is always a latency factor too.

 

[JaDed]

Sensitive data related to Banking , financial , govt , defence etc can’t be hosted anywhere , most countries won’t allow it and in some cases like EU for eg has GDPR , even an automobile company hosting simple things like mail servers on cloud becomes extremely tricky . This is why Cloud service providers have Data Centers all across the globe and there is always a latency factor too.

A lot of such companies look towards Hybrid cloud model in that case, from what I see Cloudera actually is implementing that model.

My current company(Healthcare) has no plans of moving the data to complete cloud they are looking for Onpremise but again in 4-5 years lol (unfortunate).

 

[jusarrived]

Google and MS also have similar cloud architecture(backbone oriented). MS has lot of money and endless influence , you could be right considering how well Azure has done since 2015 but I would still wait...

IBM and Microsoft were huge but still never became big in Integration-ESB etc..and companies like Mulesoft, Tibco, Pega did similarly in traditional DB,NoSQL etc although I do see Azure trying to be the implementation of no SQL document oriented DBs(Couchbase, Mongo).

If Amazon or Google can't compete with Microsoft then no one can.

I am not arguing which is better , infact I started with Amazon and in a lot of aspects they are way ahead Google is again up there . IBM just messed it up . Oracle too cocky .
MS just knows how to repackage exiting products , making it user friendly and more importantly sell these products .
I spend most of my time analysing our cloud spending , guess where most of our money goes ? Storage .
Point being , it’s these core services like Windows , SQL server , storage which make money for these companies . This is where MS has a massive advantage and they have made great progress in past few years , SAP on widows was unthinkable few years back , same with SQL server ..a mongo or cosmos DB have very little use cases in large corporations, so they will not be game changers imo .

 

[King_Kohli]

Congrats, I know many in Chennai working in Amazon as well as Hyderabad. Unless Amazon is blocked there is no way to compete against it so better to just allow it and create jobs for economy.

Digital is the future if this boat is missed there will only be catching upto play, good on the leadership.

Pakistan is in the right spot to get Huawei investment(for obvious reasons) and quick setup of net which could unleash so much also considering it is smaller in size(to India) its easy to get the entire country online.

Amazon Hyderabad is largest Campus in world, spread over 9.5 acres,will house more than 15,000 employees out of the over 62,000 members of the India team.

Amazon invested significantly in India across 30 office spaces, the AWS (Amazon Web Services) APAC (Asia Pacific) Region in Mumbai, 50 fulfillment centers in 13 states, as well as hundreds of delivery stations and sort centers, creating nearly 200,000 jobs in India.

 

[jusarrived]

A lot of such companies look towards Hybrid cloud model in that case, from what I see Cloudera actually is implementing that model.

My current company(Healthcare) has no plans of moving the data to complete cloud they are looking for Onpremise but again in 4-5 years lol (unfortunate).

Cloud is very expensive , there is a misconception that it’s cheap . It does cut your spending in 3-4 years time , but in current situation while every one is trying to save money it’s not a bad idea to hold of the migrations for few years , but on the other hand it makes your life easier as everything can be managed remotely

 

[King_Kohli]

Cloud is very expensive , there is a misconception that it’s cheap . It does cut your spending in 3-4 years time , but in current situation while every one is trying to save money it’s not a bad idea to hold of the migrations for few years , but on the other hand it makes your life easier as everything can be managed remotely

What about IBM, Oracle and SAP cloud market?
I know SAP is not doing well.

 

[JaDed]

I am not arguing which is better , infact I started with Amazon and in a lot of aspects they are way ahead Google is again up there . IBM just messed it up . Oracle too cocky .
MS just knows how to repackage exiting products , making it user friendly and more importantly sell these products .
I spend most of my time analysing our cloud spending , guess where most of our money goes ? Storage .
Point being , it’s these core services like Windows , SQL server , storage which make money for these companies . This is where MS has a massive advantage and they have made great progress in past few years , SAP on widows was unthinkable few years back , same with SQL server ..a mongo or cosmos DB have very little use cases in large corporations, so they will not be game changers imo .

Maybe from a Horizontal perspective , my point is if that was always a reason why isn't SQL server default choice for all Fortune 1000 companies with MS products or why is dot net not default framework.

Anyhow let me not derail the thread further.

 

[hoshiarpurexpress]

Google and MS also have similar cloud architecture(backbone oriented). MS has lot of money and endless influence , you could be right considering how well Azure has done since 2015 but I would still wait...

IBM and Microsoft were huge but still never became big in Integration-ESB etc..and companies like Mulesoft, Tibco, Pega did similarly in traditional DB,NoSQL etc although I do see Azure trying to be the implementation of no SQL document oriented DBs(Couchbase, Mongo).

If Amazon or Google can't compete with Microsoft then no one can.

As someone who has worked in Microsoft (ex employee now) and on its Azure product... I thing Amazon has leapfrogged other cloud providers by a lot. Microsoft clearly has focus and money, plus existing enterprise user base to market and sell/push azure. But Amazon is adding new services at a rapid pace.
For example if Azure adds 5 services in a 6 month period, Amazon releases close to 100 new services.

In my humble opinion, Amazon has beaten Microsoft, and Google, well you can just laugh now at Google's attempt to push GCP.

 

[sjahmed23]

As someone who has worked in Microsoft (ex employee now) and on its Azure product... I thing Amazon has leapfrogged other cloud providers by a lot. Microsoft clearly has focus and money, plus existing enterprise user base to market and sell/push azure. But Amazon is adding new services at a rapid pace.
For example if Azure adds 5 services in a 6 month period, Amazon releases close to 100 new services.

In my humble opinion, Amazon has beaten Microsoft, and Google, well you can just laugh now at Google's attempt to push GCP.

Amazon is doing freaky things with AWS. I was talking with a friend who works for a mortagage company and he was telling me how his company's management doesn't trust AWS because Amazon uses AWS to steal business ideas. Not sure what all that means but it's pretty interesting, didn't netflix host on AWS then a few years later Amazon comes out with Amazon prime video?

My point is, I think a lot of companies are weary of Amazon stealing ideas to launch the next "prime service" and Amazon has bad reputation in that regard.

 

[prakash]

It is a small first step but don't read too much into it. .I don't think AWS will ever launch a AWS region in Pakistan. There is not much cloud business in Pakistan to warrant a region. Chances of that happening is close to zero. With nearby regions in Mumbai and Bahrain, Pakistan is fully covered. Last I checked, Pakistan does not even have an AWS Edge location. It is possible AWS is considering an Edge location in Karachi. To give you a perspective, there are 50+ Edges in Asia with Japan(17) and India(14) having the most. As an analogy, think Edge as a small local office and Region as a regional headquarters.

The reason being Pakistan is not in the middle of global data trunk route. The deep see cables (that provide fast internet) run directly from Dubai to Mumbai and from Chennai to Singapore. It is prudent for cloud service providers to have their edges along the trunk route.

 

[Itachi]

I am not arguing which is better , infact I started with Amazon and in a lot of aspects they are way ahead Google is again up there . IBM just messed it up . Oracle too cocky .
MS just knows how to repackage exiting products , making it user friendly and more importantly sell these products .
I spend most of my time analysing our cloud spending , guess where most of our money goes ? Storage .
Point being , it’s these core services like Windows , SQL server , storage which make money for these companies . This is where MS has a massive advantage and they have made great progress in past few years , SAP on widows was unthinkable few years back , same with SQL server ..a mongo or cosmos DB have very little use cases in large corporations, so they will not be game changers imo .

Sql is getting faded out. It will be there in big companies because it will be a too big task to migrate to nosql. Not because it was better.

But they will be implementing an exit strategy by then.

 

[Itachi]

Amazon is doing freaky things with AWS. I was talking with a friend who works for a mortagage company and he was telling me how his company's management doesn't trust AWS because Amazon uses AWS to steal business ideas. Not sure what all that means but it's pretty interesting, didn't netflix host on AWS then a few years later Amazon comes out with Amazon prime video?

My point is, I think a lot of companies are weary of Amazon stealing ideas to launch the next "prime service" and Amazon has bad reputation in that regard.

Lol conspiracy theories. There will be billions of scripts in AWS cloud. No body has the time, resources to look through those codes and implement it.

It will be far easier to start from scratch.

 

[JaDed]

Amazon is doing freaky things with AWS. I was talking with a friend who works for a mortagage company and he was telling me how his company's management doesn't trust AWS because Amazon uses AWS to steal business ideas. Not sure what all that means but it's pretty interesting, didn't netflix host on AWS then a few years later Amazon comes out with Amazon prime video?

My point is, I think a lot of companies are weary of Amazon stealing ideas to launch the next "prime service" and Amazon has bad reputation in that regard.

You are giving an incorrect example.
The example you are looking for is Open Source DB and management services that changed their license requirements just because of AWS developing exactly similar tools.

[MENTION=152959]hoshiarpurexpress[/MENTION] [MENTION=90888]Itachi[/MENTION]

I don't want to sound obnoxious but there is a reason why AWS has issues with trust in the Open source community while there is more trust towards Google and Azure.

They have been copying or ripping Open Source tools/services esp w.r.t Open source DB.

https://onezero.medium.com/open-source-betrayed-industry-leaders-accuse-amazon-of-playing-a-rigged-game-with-aws-67177bc748b7

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/15/technology/amazon-aws-cloud-competition.html


AWS' response:

https://www.techradar.com/news/aws-denies-claims-it-steals-features-from-open-source-software

 

[Itachi]

[MENTION=137142]JaDed[/MENTION]: that's actually a very weak claim for the fact that, an open source can change the license which will prevent corporations from using them in commercial products. If they do, sue them.

Imho, Instead of changing the license, pushing parts of codes behind a pay wall in otherwise open source software platform while blaming others isn't the way forward.

A simple example, mongodb is open sourced. But mongodb atlas isn't and you'll have pay for the services that aren't part of Mongo yet it is deeply integrated with it. But in order to use mongodb, you don't need to pay. You are only paying for the extras.

Its not out of practice for open source projects to go in to this route. But pushing vital codes behind pay wall will always be a big no.

There's hardly a open source project now a days who doesn't have a corporate as a vital contributor. And the corporates will look after their interest.

 

[SensiblePakFan]

Lets hope they stay discouraged.

 

[JaDed]

[MENTION=137142]JaDed[/MENTION]: that's actually a very weak claim for the fact that, an open source can change the license which will prevent corporations from using them in commercial products. If they do, sue them.

Imho, Instead of changing the license, pushing parts of codes behind a pay wall in otherwise open source software platform while blaming others isn't the way forward.

A simple example, mongodb is open sourced. But mongodb atlas isn't and you'll have pay for the services that aren't part of Mongo yet it is deeply integrated with it. But in order to use mongodb, you don't need to pay. You are only paying for the extras.

Its not out of practice for open source projects to go in to this route. But pushing vital codes behind pay wall will always be a big no.

There's hardly a open source project now a days who doesn't have a corporate as a vital contributor. And the corporates will look after their interest.

Open source projects do have vital contributions from Corporates like Fb,Google,Yahoo .

But other companies esp AWS is bundling Open Source managed services built after years of work and charging customers for it and without contributing much back to Open Source community that is the reason for anger among ELastic, Mongo etc and its growing also OSI has become a joke.

Look what Google did with Kubernetes(revolution) and look what AWS, doing the opposite.

 

[hoshiarpurexpress]

Sql is getting faded out. It will be there in big companies because it will be a too big task to migrate to nosql. Not because it was better.

But they will be implementing an exit strategy by then.

Man SQL vs NoSQL again. SQL is not bad. NoSqL is not applicable to every use case in the world.
SQL has its uses and will always remain relevant.
These days so called experts are making nosql a hammer with which to nail every problem.
Its like Agile. Not every project needs agile.

 

[Abdullah719]

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Amazon has registered an office in Pakistan under the name Amazon Data Services Pakistan (Pvt) Ltd. According to records of the SECP (Securities & Exchange Commission of Pakistan), Amazon’s Pakistan office will be led by Paul Andrew Macpherson, who will be the CEO</p>— Bilal I Gilani (@bilalgilani) <a href="https://twitter.com/bilalgilani/status/1294239490320539648?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 14, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>