Welcome!

Cloud Expo Authors: Jim Shepherd, Walter Hinton, Jonathan Gershater, Shawn Douglass, Dana Gardner

Related Topics: Cloud Expo

Cloud Expo: Article

Pointwest Delivers IT Services to Philippines and the World

Company Offers Everything from COBOL to Glassfish and Beyond

I found myself sitting at a table with Renato "Rene" Quizon (pictured below), Executive Director of Business Development at Pointwest, during a recent business summit in Manila that featured a guest appearance by Philippine President Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III. The President was there to congratulate the growing IT services community and announce an educational fund to help develop the business further.

After we exchanged some local political gossip (which will remain strictly confidential), Rene invited me over to the company's office the following week.

Strolling in Makati
Soon enough, I was traipsing down Makati's Paseo de Roxas one early afternoon to visit Pointwest's headquarters.

I either stroll, traipse, or sometimes amble throughout Southeast Asia, having learned long ago not to move too fast in the tropical heat. But this area, part of the country's primary central business district, crackles with energy during the day, as a small army of a youngish workforce strives to lift this developing nation.

Pointwest has more than 700 employees - most of them located in Makati, Metro Manila, with two satellite offices in the US - and provides sophisticated IT services to clients in the airline, financial services, healthcare, utilities and retail industries. It has partnerships with IBM and Microsoft - as well as several international chambers of commerce - and delivers specific technology practices for Microsoft, Java, mainframe/ legacy, and enterprise IT testing.

Pointwest has grown to its present level from 60 employees in 2003. Today, it uses what it calls a matrix-driven model to deliver a variety of services domain specializations. The firm also gets a quarter of its business from Pharmacy Health Information Management services as part of the Philippines' world-leading $11 billion in BPO revenue.

Locally Owned and Managed
Pointwest is "a 100% Filipino global IT service company providing world-class IT and BPO services," as Rene proudly states, and recently won an ICT Philippines award as best mid-sized local BPO company.

Together with Ma. Cristina "Beng" Coronel, president, Josefina "Jowee" Reyes, Executive Director for Administration and Finance, and US-based VPs Lucila "Lucy" Flores and Corazon "Cora" Agbayani, he leads fellow IT professionals who share the same passion and belief in creating a unique Filipino brand name for the IT outsourcing industry.

During our conversation, he explained to me that although the company hires entry-level programmers, QA engineers, and testers, to be sure, it focuses on developing them into systems engineers, designers, developers, and architects. "We are a place where you can build a career," he said.

The company's roster of skills includes all the languages, frameworks, and environments one can name. Rene gave me a detailed, two-page list of them to prove the point. Looking for JBoss? Ibatis? Glassfish? Netweaver? Maximo? You'll find them, along with at least 100 other common and less-common skills.

"We also hire young COBOL programmers," Rene said with a smile - yes, as everyone in the IT business knows, this is still a valued skill in many instances.

New employees attend a rigorous, weeks-long bootcamp to get up to speed on the company's processes, client requirements, and whatever skill sets they may need.

High-Level View
At the higher level, Pointwest throws out terms such as "above- and below-the-wing services," a reference to its airline business. "When you check into a flight on one of the top three US airlines," Rene said, "our work is embedded in everything from your frequent traveler number to security to delivering your bags."

The company also provides services to one of the Philippines' "Big Three" banks, specifically in the form of a marvelous kiosk-based customer-service system at all the branches that I've found provides a lot of convenience and saves a lot of time in a country where manual, paper-based procedures are still common.

Fairly recently, the IT firm delivered an online event booking system in the form of an ASP service in the cloud, enabling small to mid-size non-profits, their Australian client's target market, an easier and cheaper alternative.

The Future
Metro Manila has the second-highest city GDP in Southeast Asia region, trailing only Singapore. Makati's Starbucks-to-person ratio is the equal of San Francisco or New York. Big, global brands such as Accenture, KPMG, and Convergys have located tens of thousands of employees here.

Yet the future of the country depends in large measure on homegrown companies such as Pointwest that leverage the energy of this populous nation of 90 million people (and counting). Rene doesn't like to speculate publicly on specific company targets, but said "we've come a long way, and we intend to continue to grow and develop along with the IT services economy in the Philippines."

More Stories By Roger Strukhoff

Roger Strukhoff is Executive Director of the Tau Institute (@TauDir), focused on global ICT research, including the growth of cloud computing. Offices are located in Illinois and Makati City, Philippines. He also writes for Cloud Computing Journal, Computerworld Philippines, and CloudEcosystem.com. He holds a BA from Knox College, Technical Certificate from UC-Berkeley, and MBA from Cal State (Hayward).

Comments (0)

Share your thoughts on this story.

Add your comment
You must be signed in to add a comment. Sign-in | Register

In accordance with our Comment Policy, we encourage comments that are on topic, relevant and to-the-point. We will remove comments that include profanity, personal attacks, racial slurs, threats of violence, or other inappropriate material that violates our Terms and Conditions, and will block users who make repeated violations. We ask all readers to expect diversity of opinion and to treat one another with dignity and respect.


Cloud Expo Breaking News
“I believe it is incumbent on the Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) and/or System Integrators (SIs) to understand the regulatory and compliance-related issues that their customers face,” noted Manjula Talreja, VP of Global Cloud Business Development at Cisco, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “Of course these issues are different in each industry and in each country.” Cloud Computing Journal: The move to cloud isn't about saving money, it is about saving time - ...
“Regulations and compliance are key trust topics with regards to cloud solutions and technology,” noted Sven Denecken, Vice President, Strategy and Co-Innovation Cloud Solutions, SAP AG, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “But it is also more than security of access – it is portability of data and a clear definition of where the data resides.” Cloud Computing Journal: The move to cloud isn't about saving money, it is about saving time – agree or disagree? Sve...
Many organizations want to expand upon the IaaS foundation to deliver cloud services in all forms – software, mobility, infrastructure and IT. Understanding the strategy, planning process and tools for this transformation will help catalyze changes in the way the business operates and deliver real value.
WSO2 on Thursday announced that WSO2 Vice President of Technology Evangelism Chris Haddad and SUSE Business Development Manager Frank Rego will lead a joint presentation at 12 International Cloud Expo. The session, "Bridging IaaS and PaaS to Deliver the Service-Oriented Data Center," is part of the event's Enterprise Cloud Computing Track on Thursday, June 13, 2013. The Cloud Expo conference is being held June 10-13, 2013 at the Javits Center in New York City. Bridging IaaS and PaaS to Deliver ...
IT has more opportunities than ever before with the growth in users, devices, data and secure cloud services. This creates not only a more enriching experience for users, but more opportunities for businesses. The key to capitalizing on these opportunities is to have the right tools in place to help scale operations. In his Day 3 Keynote at 12th Cloud Expo | Cloud Expo New York [June 10-13, 2013], Intel's Rob Crooke will describe the range of products that Intel provides to support different usa...
Quantum Corp., a proven global expert in data protection and Big Data management, has announced that Senior Vice President of Cloud Solutions Henrik Rosendahl will present a session exploring the future of cloud data protection and the impact of data reduction technologies on cloud storage at the 12th International Cloud Expo. The conference takes place June 10-13 at the Javits Center in New York City. Rosendahl will explore trends in cloud-based backup and disaster recovery (DR) and how curre...
One of the cloud’s biggest draws is the capability to virtualize computing resources, allowing it to be consumed with the click of a mouse. But behind that simple click is an enormous infrastructure challenge that has recently been cited as a major cause for slower enterprise adoption. Enterprises can better prepare for this shift and take full advantage of future computing benefits. Between architecture design and migration planning, the road can be long, so what do you do with your talent? I...
In the old world of IT, if you didn't have hardware capacity or the budget to buy more, your project was dead in the water. Budget constraints can leave some of the best, most creative and most ingenious innovations on the cutting room floor. It’s a true dilemma for developers and innovators – why spend the time creating, when a project could be abandoned in a blink? That was the old world. In the new world of IT, developers rule. They have access to resources they can spin up instantly. A hyb...
INetU, the industry's experts in complex hosting and a global provider of business-centric managed cloud and application hosting, has announced that Cloud Architect Rich Hand will be presenting "Private Cloud, Public Cloud - Is There a Third Option?" at the 12th International Cloud Expo taking place June 10-13, 2013 in New York City. As more enterprise IT departments move into the cloud, many executives are evaluating whether to adopt a Public or Private cloud. The cost benefits of the Public ...
“I’m careful when using terms like Big Data, because it can mean so many things to different people,” explained Eric Hanselman, Chief Analyst at 451 Research, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “There is huge value in analytics that companies can use to pull intelligence from a collection of data sources that are available in their businesses. The inexpensive storage that cloud services can offer make a great environment to pull together siloed data.” Cloud Co...