Pakistan Telecommunications Company Limited (PTCL), has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Convo Corporation, a leader in Enterprise Social Collaboration Platforms based out of Silicon Valley. This partnership aims to bring the next-generation employee collaboration and communication solution to Pakistan, which is designed for enterprises especially those who have a vast frontline workforce. As per a recent study, such collaboration tools can boost the productivity of employees by 25%. On the occasion, Osman Rashid, CEO, Convo, said, “PTCL can now offer a localized software and infrastructure collaboration to enterprises in Pakistan that have mission critical requirements. For instance, in the case of the banking sector, due to recent regulations set by State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) that requires banks to host all their data and subsequent related products, in a cloud infrastructure that is based within the country. PTCL can thus provide this next-generation enterprise wide collaboration platform to all the banks in line with SBP regulations.” This collaboration offers a first-of-its-kind Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) based Enterprise Social Collaboration Platform that is entirely hosted in Pakistan. Enterprises in Pakistan will now have both options, whereby they can either have the solution hosted in a Pakistan-based cloud or on the premises. On the occasion, Saad Muzaffar Warraich, Chief Technology & Information Officer, PTCL, said, “We, at PTCL, see great value of platforms like Convo in the future, whereby our huge workforce around the country will be able to connect via their smartphones anywhere, anytime. This has the potential to bring increased operational efficiencies, greater visibility, control and a reduced response time from our field operations.” Convo provides rich collaboration capabilities, simplified and optimized workforce interactions that can really benefit companies with many non-desk employees, who rely on mobile communications, geographically distributed business, networks that need centralized synchronization and companies that require coordination to achieve standardization. Globally governments are setting regulations to protect consumer and citizen data. Banks, tele-communication companies, healthcare companies, public bodies and consumer enterprises now prefer to host their consumer data inside their country of operations. PTCL and Convo partnership allows to fulfill such regulations and secure citizens’ data within Pakistan. Published in Daily Times, November 15th 2018.