The award of the certificate was marked by an impressive ceremony held at the office of Ministry of Information Technology here, in which the Minister for Information Technology, Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari, presented the certificate to Netsol's president, Salim Ghauri. Secretary IT Khalid Saeed, Pakistan Software Export Board Managing Director Dr Aamir Matin and Rayney Wong, lead assessor who led the assessment, were also present.
The Capability Maturity Model for Software (CMM or SW-CMM) is a model for judging the maturity of the software processes of an organisation and for identifying the key practices that are required to increase the maturity of these processes. The SW-CMM has been developed by the software community.
The SW-CMM has become a de facto standard for assessing and improving software processes. Through the SW-CMM, the SEI and community have established an effective means for modelling, defining, and measuring the maturity of the processes used by software professionals.
On this occasion, Awais Leghari said that Pakistan's IT sector, like the country's telecom sector, was poised for a revolution. "We firmly believe that within the next two years, Pakistan's IT sector would flourish and reach a stage where it would attract huge businesses from potential investors all over the world," he said.
He said Pakistan's IT sector "is already in the news" within the region and strong regional players like India were turning their attention to business opportunities available in Pakistan on the back of strength at macro-economic level.
"Let me tell you that within a month a large delegation of Indian Software House Association would visit Pakistan to look at business opportunities here, and we expect the visit would translate into potential business activities and mutual agreements between companies of the two countries," he said.
The Minister said that focus of the drive to expand the IT sector was to generate employment opportunities for the youth blessed with high professional and English language skills.