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Sept. 25, 2026 — Comtech Associates closed the books on its three-day run at ITCN Asia 2026 in Karachi, sharing the Expo Center floor with Cisco and making a clear argument that security belongs at the top of the IT agenda. The event, the 28th edition of the show, wrapped Sept. 24 after three days of live demos, executive interviews, and technical sessions.
The Comtech-Cisco booth quickly became one of the more active spots on the floor. Visitors could get hands-on with enterprise networking switches, the Cisco Secure Firewall, and data-center hardware, with Comtech engineers walking them through what each system does in a real network environment. Several attendees told the team they hadn’t expected that level of infrastructure breadth from a Pakistani systems integrator; the live setups made the point better than a catalog could.
The booth also generated a steady stream of private conversations, with customers asking about everything from Zero Trust adoption to the practical differences between on-prem data-center designs and hybrid cloud. Those discussions were a reminder of how mature the Pakistani IT market has become; buyers weren’t looking for flashy products, they wanted to know what would work in their own environment.
Cisco leadership leaned into that mood during the show. Kashif Ul Haque, Cisco’s country general manager, did an on-camera interview at the booth with Farooq Zaheer, CEO of Comtech Associates, and didn’t hide where he stands on priorities. “I put security above AI,” Ul Haque said. “AI will not work without security.” He added that the quality of a technology partner is measured less by the first sale and more by whether the customer decides to come back.
Mohamad Besher, Cisco’s SMB lead for the Gulf, Levant, Turkey, and Central Asia, made the point from a different angle. He called out Comtech as an example of the local partner that makes enterprise technology feel realistic for smaller companies, pairing security and networking capabilities in one relationship so customers don’t have to manage five vendors. When asked which technology is moving fastest from large enterprises into SMBs, Besher’s answer was immediate: “Security, without any hesitation.”
That security-first message is not new, but the timing matters. As AI projects move from pilots into production, organizations are discovering that their existing networking and security infrastructure may not be ready. The argument Comtech and Cisco made in Karachi is that security should be treated as the foundation of AI adoption, not an upgrade to consider later. It was a consistent theme across the event, and it’s easy to see why: every connected device, every cloud workload, and every model accessing corporate data needs to be protected before the business benefits become real.
The security focus was also the centerpiece of the most-attended Comtech session. Muhammad Irfan Ghauri, head of solutions at Comtech, walked the audience through Cisco Meraki Cloud Solutions, and what started as a standard presentation turned into an extended working session. Attendees kept asking questions, and the discussion ran well beyond the planned time. Ghauri covered the platform’s built-in firewall, intrusion prevention, content filtering, automatic firmware updates, and Auto VPN between sites, showing how an organization can keep multiple locations protected without a dedicated security engineer in every office.
Meraki is one slice of a much larger solution set that Comtech brings to market with Cisco. The two companies work across eight areas:
The product names on the floor backed up that list. Alongside Catalyst switching and the Firepower 1010 Next-Generation Firewall, Comtech showed how data center systems fit into the same security-first framework. The broader message: network infrastructure, computing, and security need to be planned as one architecture, not bought as separate boxes.
Comtech’s session lineup also included an AI data center briefing and a Cisco Webex collaboration demo. Both fit into the same story. AI data centers place enormous pressure on networking and security; collaboration tools, meanwhile, become a soft target when users don’t have identity protection. The Webex demo leaned on the Secure Endpoint and Duo products that Comtech already sells, showing how the same security policies can extend from infrastructure to workplace apps.
For U.S. readers, the Karachi event might seem like a regional story, but the takeaways are broadly relevant. The conversation at ITCN Asia kept returning to the same themes now driving technology spending in North America: AI workloads demand stronger security, SMBs need access to enterprise-grade tools without enterprise-sized staff, and partners are expected to take responsibility for outcomes, not just product delivery. Cisco’s emphasis on the SMB segment, and the specific role it handed to Comtech, is consistent with the way security vendors are trying to reach smaller buyers in the U.S. market.
There was also something distinctly old-school about the best moments in Karachi: an actual person, at an actual show, walking through a technical design with a potential customer. That interaction model is making a comeback as hardware and software get more complicated. A booth that can show a working Meraki dashboard, or a firewall configuration that works with an AI data-center setup, is worth more than another PDF brochure.
Comtech left the show with its position unchanged: enterprise networking, cybersecurity, data center, and managed IT services in Pakistan, delivered through Cisco technology. The company has said the goal is to help organizations build secure, scalable, and future-ready IT environments. After three days on the floor in Karachi, the follow-through mattered more than the hardware itself.
About Comtech Associates
Comtech Associates is a Pakistan-based IT solutions provider specializing in enterprise networking, cybersecurity, AI data center infrastructure, cloud integration, and managed IT services. The company designs and deploys secure, scalable technology environments for organizations across sectors. At ITCN Asia 2026, it showcased that portfolio alongside Cisco at Expo Center Karachi.
