“The gradual migration from Linux to Windows means a more efficient development cycle, reduce the rollout time for new features and will allow us to be more aggressive in our expansion plans.”
Faisal Chohan, Ceo Cogilent Solutions
Being a web-based recruitment portal in Pakistan since 2002, BrightSpyre adds tremendous value to the Microsoft programs such as Microsoft Student-to-Business Program and MSDNAA and IT Academy by offerings its platform to reach out to the institutions. While Microsoft already enjoys a successful partnership with the educational institutions, a partnership with BrightSpyre will only help to up the level of interaction between Microsoft and individual students across the country.
The result? It’s a win-win for all parties involved.
Situation
Every Small and Medium Enterprise has similar challenges and shares the same objective: high productive have some very key objectives that they want to achieve:
Cogilent Solutions developed BrightSypre on an Open Source platform. The biggest challenge with open source is the lack of readily available products for services such as data replication, message queuing or system management. There are also risks associated with Open Source, which Cogilent Solutions was vulnerable to. Skeptical whether the Open Source solution could match BrightSpyre’s growing demand in terms of readiness, redundancy and reliability, Cogilent Solutions has been careful in its expansion plans. Furthermore, developing for MySQL was difficult because the tools available for it were made by different companies, were poorly integrated, and offered limited functionality. Changing the schema to support new features was time consuming and difficult, and resulted in unwieldy database structures.
Cogilent solution experienced connection errors with the solution that it traced to MySQL. The MySQL database was crashing on a frequent basis. The solution lacked support deletion triggers, an important feature that cogilent solutions needed to preserve data consistency in the database. And when the database returned error messages, they were vague and ineffectual. What’s more, cogilent solution wanted to integrate stored procedures into the solution. But stored procedures were new in MySQL and not, in their view, ready for commercial application.
Meanwhile, on the marketing side, the problems with MySQL made potential customers—particularly the large enterprise customers that cogilent solution prized—reluctant to consider the solution.
BrightSpyre is an online ERP solution for hiring automation solution for employers, headhunters and recruiters. Created by Cogilent Solutions, BrightSpyre was one of the first online job portals in Pakistan in 2002, and monetized the process to engage in a more result-oriented practice.
BrightSypre.Com has more than 325,000 registered job seekers and receives over 4 million hits each month, and has received over a total of 80 million hits since December 2006. The company has been around since 2002 and has the outreach into Microsoft Programs’ targeted communities.
Faisal Chohan, Ceo BrightSpyre says, “We have the expertise that gives corporations the ability to handle and organize the data that is coming through their website or portal, however I feel that we can bring a greater benefit by implementing our services with Microsoft’s IT Academy. This will not only help to decrease the massive information void between the academia and industries, but will also help to spread a very specific knowledge share amongst the skilled youth in Pakistan.”
Ahmed Jawad, Technical Lead on BrightSpyre says, “We started off on Open Source because we had an idea and we were eager to get it off the ground. Open Source was pretty much all we knew. But we are looking into a more result-oriented interface of migrating towards a Windows platform. It will take time, but with adequate testing, certain modules could successfully transfer.”
Industry profile
What used to be a niche in Pakistan, has become a relatively level playing field for everyone. Today, there are 4 large online job portals operating out of Pakistan, in addition to the numerous portals that are simply extending their reach to the local industry. BrightSpyre has been the pioneer in the industry and has managed to gain traction in a very challenging online business environment, very quickly.
There is a growing demand for certified and skilled software engineers in the local market because of the mushrooming of companies. With a similar country profile and demographic to that of India, opportunities for BPO, IT and IT-enabled services companies have burst open. With so many companies looking for skilled manpower on one side, and so many job seekers looking for suitable employment to match their needs, BrightSpyre launched its services at a very critical time.
Their online traffic continued to rise and Cogilent Solutions’ role became clear very quickly: to be the platform to coordinate the growth of the industry as well as the human resource.
Customer profile
BrightSpyre’s customer base is two-tiered – Through one model, they are interacting with individual consumers on a one-to-one basis through the BrightSpyre.com portal; secondly, they are developing a customized HR recruitment solution which can be integrated into a 3rd party, corporate website to boost their Hiring and Recruitment processes.
Launched in 2002, BrightSpyre has become Pakistan’s fastest growing online recruitment solution with 4 million hits per month and a global resume bank of more than 200,000 people. In addition to its own job portal, BrightSpyre powers the online job recruitment process for 11 large-scale companies by providing them with a solution which is integrated into their own website.
Solution
The business understanding between BrightSpyre and Microsoft Pakistan is multi-fold:
A phased, modular migration of the Brightspyre.com portal on Microsoft technologies
This will involve the development of the migration plan for BrightSpyre.com with the inclusion of the Microsoft Consulting service. After the completion of this plan and deployment timeline, Microsoft and Cogilent will work together for the actual migration.
Through Cogilent Solutions, Microsoft will be able to have access to an interactive environment whereby influencing a greater change amongst the university student communities. With this level of enablement, Microsoft will enrol Cogilent Solutions into the Microsoft Certified Partner program. Ahmed Jawad says, “This portion of our agreement will take the longest time because there are a lot of variables to maintain. But with a Migration Plan in place, we can at least begin to look into parts of the portal.”
Partnership in Microsoft Student to Business program
One of the greatest criticisms of the industry is the gap between the academia and the industry. The Microsoft Student-to-Business Program (S2B) bridges this gap. BrightSpyre’s involvement into the program will help to increase the engagement with selected universities. Together, both the partners will manage career guidance events by leveraging the presence of Microsoft Student Partners across various campuses.
A partnership with the industry association is critical for the success of any partnership. PASHA is the Pakistan Software Houses Association and is a stakeholder in programs to increase interactivity between the industry and the industry. By jointly facilitating job creation with the integration of the Internship Extension Program with S2B, a greater benefit will be achieved with the mileage that PASHA has within the industry, matching that with the traffic and coverage that BrightSpyre and Microsoft have in the academia.
MSDNAA and IT Academy partnership pilot to take place in local universities
The extension of the training program for students will include industry-relevant training by BrightSpyre. Students who have completed the training will be given preferred membership privileges on the BrightSpyre portal, greatly increasing the potential of landing a job. “It’s the perfect result-oriented benefit that the students are looking for. Not only are they acquiring skilled guidance how to be successful, they are also being given the platform which will facilitate their entry into the industry.” comments Faisal Chohan.
Benefit:
By merging the expertise that BrightSpyre has with a number of universities already a part of the MSDNAA and IT Academy, a greater population of users will have access to the awareness programs and opportunities that Microsoft has to offer through the interaction interactive that BrightSpyre will provide.
The benefit BrightSpyre will have in migrating from Linux to Microsoft will be something that will be assessed after the deployment.
