« This is » Soumia El Madhoune

This is” Soumia El Madhoune .. The first girl in a men’s world

How did you know about Pulse ?

I had a friend from my previous occupation who joined PULSE.digital before, and who couldn’t stop talking about how thrilling and exciting it is to work with pulse especially handling international projects with big partners, in October 2019 I decided to take the challenge and start a journey as a PULSE.digital employee.

 

Would you describe your mission with Pulse?

Joining Pulse means joining a big and growing family. I’m a PHP full stack consultant, providing a full range of services concerning web development, from the back-end PHP development and coding to frontend design.

I had the chance to work on massive projects on the last 2 years, and I appreciated a lot how captivating it is to meet different people each time, to discover new technologies and develop my knowledge and skills as much as I can and adapting all of it with each project requirements and needs.
I admit that I have learned a lot, I grew professionally and personally, I’m grateful to have had the help of all of my colleagues and superiors, knowing that I didn’t have much experience before and that I had chosen an industry known of its masculinity.

Being the first girl to be recruited was scary, it put on my toes on my first days, the synergy of the team surprised me and allowed me to feel confortable and to know that I’m in good hands.

 

How do you feel working for Pulse?

I honestly love the atmosphere here, we feel independent and responsible but we have a great frame, I was fully mentored and coached to reach this independence. What I appreciate most is the easy access and fluide communication we have with the administration, I feel heard and understood and mostly taken care of. The environment created is focused on the human value and this criteria is a really the core of every inside process which allows me to have the Pulse spirit.

Expansion to Casablanca

PULSE.digital Casablanca

PULSE.digital Casablanca

PULSE.digital Maroc is anchored more around the creation of jobs for young Moroccan talents.

Thrilling to announce the opening of our second site in Casablanca,  which consolidates our investments in the country and offers several job opportunities to young people. More jobs will be available to accompany the development of our activities. We are also proud of our employees, who, through their commitment and professionalism, have confirmed the confidence of our customers. 

With this second site, we continue to invest in sustainable employment, training for young people and support for our ecosystem through our solidarity actions carried out by the teams of PULSE.digital Morocco.

Pulse Academy by Merkle

Pulse.Academy by Merkle

By bringing thinking and doing into proper balance, we feel much better to meet the future. 

It takes a great deal of courage and confidence for people anxious to take the world by storm to slow down, think, explore all the possible options, and be ready to pull the plug if the information points away from success. At PULSE.digital Maroc, people are beginning to understand the difference between getting things done and getting things done right.

The biggest motivation we’ve had was to help young talents all around Morocco, and give them the opportunity to benefit from an exceptional training-ship program .. The PULSE.Academy By Merkle, officially launched on February 1st, with a vision to collaborate with our gold Partner Merkle in order to prepare 50 engineering students to be the next generation of innovation and expertise.

Young Talents : We come to YOU

School and company, hand in hand to prepare our young people to find their place and impact the world of tomorrow.

To prepare them for the constantly changing world of tomorrow, the higher education establishment must not only train their students in increasingly specialized expertise, and thus meet the new needs of companies, but also encourage the development of soft skills that will enable them to adapt to the changes that will occur in their professions or to be actors of change themselves. It is also a question of accompanying them in the construction of their professional project and the maximization of their employability. To fulfill this vision, we visited these establishments in Khouribga, Safi and Casablanca, and had the pleasure to meet these students along with their professors to get to know them and teach them about the opportunity we had in pocket.

Pulse Digital clouding up at Salesforce Trailblazer Marrakech Community

Community shapes our identity, quenches our thirst for belonging, and bolsters our foundations.

Marrakesh, Salesforce Developer community is coming up with force. From creating the community couple of months ago, selecting a Talent pipeline, setting up the community on Trailblazer to finally recruiting the best Talent to join Pulse digital Badass Team, it was hell of a great and most challenging adventure. We have struggled and today our endeavour shows good sight. The challenge now is to determine how good is good enough. The opportunities are multiples and right in front of us and we have the courage and conviction to pursue it. Marrakech Salesforce Badass group is so navigating the ship into port.

https://trailblazercommunitygroups.com/marrakech-morocco-developers-group/

 

Remote Work amid COVID-19 spread

As the new coronavirus spreads, more companies are asking people to work from home. For many people, a period of remote work is looking increasingly inevitable. Due to this, Pulse.Digital has decided to switch their 80 collaborators for remote work starting today until further notice. In doing so, the agency will make sure that everyone is properly connected and that the work is delivered as usually without delays. We are used to remote work. Nothing will change in the way we manage our employees and our exchanges with our partners. We don’t have an exact idea of when we should be able to come back and work at the office but we need to be prepared for an extended remote work. That is often easier said than done: Technology doesn’t always work properly, children may be running around and employees sometimes lack the right equipment. This is why we have to be aware that communication, is very important in running this process without any impacts. 

Please make sure to stay home to avoid any contamination among your family and your beloved ones. This is a hard moment for all of us but the best approach to adopt with the COVID-19 is to consider yourself and all your entourage already contaminated and that you have the responsibility of social distance.

We trust you so BE RESPONSIBLE.

PULSE INTERNS_2020 PROJECT

This is an exciting time for PULSE.Digital. Backed by a track record of 10 years of annual growth between the parent company in Switzerland and the secondary offices in Morocco, we now welcome 30 interns to join the team as part of the Intern_2020 project. This has been a great challenge !

By joining the internship program on different field of technologies, we will be onboarding you quickly to engage in an Agile environment that focuses on high web-development skills , which includes developing features, improving knowledge on emerging technologies in real-time international projects, helping us get closer to continuous integration, improving quality service and most important getting ready for interviews to concretely embark with us and maximize you chances for being recruited alongside of our international collaborators. As an Outsourcing company too , our goal is your success.

You don’t have to be great to start but you definitely should start to be GREAT !

Facebook Developper Circle at PULSE’s

Couple of months ago when we have just launched Tech-awareness, we have set up couple of goals to achieve in without any conservative deadlines really. We have been very busy putting in place a solid culture of what it is to communicate and interact around technologies and how to vulgarize very complex topics to Pulse’s internal audience and later on to wider public.

One of the Major Goals was to open the door to public and tech-communities in Marrakech and link it up with other cities -not specifically to talk us up but to create a melting point for interesting people to meet and resonate at the same frequency and speed as the net. Here we are today, with the most interesting event we could ever possibly open the door to : the Facebook developers circle. This event has been taking place in different spots in Marrakech a while ago now; thanks to Abderrahim Soubaii El Idrissi and Hamza Makraz who both work as Tech-Leads at Pulse’s and are the official administrators of this event. This was their idea and we have been pleased to welcome this great concept at our master-class room. This is what we always wanted; an elegant win under good pressure!

Facebook developper circle’s edition last Saturday was about how to create a web app using Nodejs and Reactjs. 2 workshops run by Abderrahim for beginners to improve their knowledge and onboard their know-how on new environments. Hear us here; the best is yet to come !

TECH-AWARENESS # 8 – Understanding the Ethical Hacking

# Prelude
The online world is a dangerous neighborhood and « Worst » operates in SILENCE.

# Chapter 1 – The Essence of Cybersecurity

Digital age can sometimes be stressful. An aspect of relying on digital dependency can haunt you often. Nowadays, everything from paying bills and accessing your personal banking details is done through various devices and networks. Cybercrime and data breaches can make anyone nervous. Here comes “Cybersecurity professionals” into the picture. Such people are authorized to protect our network, systems and private information.
Cyber Security is all about protecting your devices and network from unauthorized access or modification. The Internet is not only the chief source of information, but it is also a medium through which people do business.
Cybersecurity operates in different areas :
-Network security including (Firewalls, IDS/IPS, Web layer security, bastion Hosts, Private & Public Subnets, External connectivity..)
-Data Security – an area that has to do with Encryption mechanisms, Data resiliency & replication, Data availability & Integrity
-User Access Mechanisms – API access, User access, Federated access, Authentification & authorization mechanisms (MFA)
-Governance & Compliance is more of Physical data location requirements – SLAs – Contractual responsibilities and Audit Assessments.
-Monitoring & Event Management include Security assessments, proactive threat monitoring, Logging & Analysis, Notifications, Traffic pattern analysis.
-Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity – an area for Replication mechanisms, Failover techniques, minimizing service interruptions.

# Chapter 2 – The dangerous liaisons of Hacking & Cybersecurity

CS involves “legal” hacking. « To catch a criminal, one has to think like a criminal. »

Hackers use tools to steal or destroy information whereas Ethical Hackers use same tools to safeguard systems from “hackers with malicious intent”. Ethical Hacking is legal and hacking is done with permission from the client.

#Chapter 3 – The Art of Being a Hacker

Hacking is how you do Science.

*The Recipe
Being a hacker or cultivating a hackers mindset is not just simple, but an effortless endeavour. All you have to do is be ready. You have to be ready to be wrong. You have to be ready to screw up. You have to be ready to give up all your ego, all your pride and prejudice. you have to be ready to get your hands dirty. You have to be ready to grind it out. Just learn how to fall, fall gracefully, and humbly get up again and get back to it.
A Hacker would not follow normal user rules. He has natural ability to misuse software. He thinks necessarily outside the box. He’s determined.
The second part of the ‘Recipe’ is the obsessive want to explore your craft and become the best “whatever” the field is. As long as you obsessively try to solve problems, and you are not afraid of failing and coming up with innovative solutions, you are a hacker.
*The Technical skills
The intangible skills lone can’t give you success in the field of information security, you need to have the in depth understanding of how technology is actually working; you need to understand the systems and processes, from electrical pulses to radio frequency, from bits to bytes and from Windows OS to Linux OS.
-Coding : understanding how to write code is the KEY, you should understand the tool you are using for your test. You should master the C/C++, Python, Ruby, Golang… Be fluent at Algorithms (Search,Sorting,Recursive..) and wing the Data Structures.
-Operating Systems : understand the concept, the flow and the architecture of an operating system. Do not limit yourself to any specific OS, but be familiar with Linux/Unix, Windows/MS Dos, MacOS Android, IOS, Windows Mobile.
-Network : you can’t be an expert on everything but at least know everything a little. Understand the OSI layer model and its protocols (HTTP, FTP, IP, TCP,BGP, NAT, DHCP etc). Learn the art of routing, how router and switches work, understand the wireless protocols for WiFI hacking. Set your intention to learn!
-Hardware : Raspberry pi, Arduino, Esp, Antenna and a double large turkey sandwich !

# Chapter 4 – Attack vectors

If you’ve ever studied famous battles in history, you’ll know that no two are exactly alike. There are similar strategies and tactics time-proven to be effective. Similarly, when a criminal is trying to hack an organization, they won’t re-invent the wheel unless they absolutely have to: They’ll draw upon common types of hacking techniques that are known to be highly effective, such as:
-Remote attacks (DoS, DNS Poisoning…)
-Social Engineering
-Access Control attacks
-Insider Attacks (Advanced Persistent Threats
-Injection attacks (XSS, SQL injection,…)
-Eavesdropping attacks also known as Sniffing or snopping

Conceptually, cybersecurity risks can be divided into two main categories: passive and active attacks. In active attacks the attacker intercepts the connection and modifies the information. Whereas, in a passive attack, the attacker intercepts the transit information with the intention of reading and analyzing the information not for altering it.

# Chapter 5 – Ethical Hacking Careers

This has been a lucrative career option for many, and not without good reason! It’s a challenging job that never gets boring, pays well and also brings a greater sense of achievement. Nonetheless, the thin red line between legal and illegal is permission.
Computer experts are often hired by companies to hack into their system to find vulnerabilities and weak endpoints so that they can be fixed. This is done as a precautionary measure against legitimate hackers who have malicious intent. Those people are to be defined as ethical hackers. In this case we could talk about a Career !
There are various specialities in this domain once you wear the white hat. Let’s pencil it down :
-Analyst
-Information Security Officer CISO or ISO
-Security Architect
-Cryptographer vs Cryptanalyst
-Network / Systems / UNIX / DevOps Engineer
-Programmer
-Pentester (Penetration Tester)
-Software Assurance Tester/Engineer
-Security Engineer
-Auditor

# Chapter 6 – Conclusion

Crimes done behind the computer are the 21st century’s problem. With the technology increasing, criminals don’t have to rob banks, nor do they have to be outside in order to commit any crime. Their weapons aren’t guns anymore; they attack with mouse cursors, passwords and a large double Turkey sandwich. Now Hacking is meaningless word in view of the endless definitions that could take. Setting the right intentions and determining factors are the ultimate guideline to either a brilliant career achievements or a meaningless walk through death penalties. Cyber security is about much more than hacking. Mitigation and prevention are all about defense: building systems that make it difficult for hackers to do things they should not be able to do. Learning how to attack a system helps you better defend against attacks—and vice versa.

Special thanks to Hamza Makraz for this great and enlightening « leak of information » Your instructions will be carefully followed. Let’s hack now !

TECH-AWARENESS # 8 – The art of hacking : Cybersecurity 101

Gone are the days when passwords were enough to protect the system and its data. We all want to protect our personal and professional data, and thus Cyber Security is what you should know to ensure data protection.

To understand the need for Cyber Security measures and its practices, we should first get an understanding of the key concept of Cyber Security.

Many people interpret and decide on what cyber security is, some see cyber security as a continuation of evolved version of it-security, others view it as a completely new branch of security and still others see it as mixture of the two.

This edition of Tech-Awareness will give you the core concept and purpose of Cyber Security !

TECH-AWARENESS # 7 – Introduction to Machine Learning

Machine Learning in the Browser, you better not do any lunges!

Let’s demystify for dummies 

Machine Learning is a concept which allows the machine to learn from examples and experience, and that too without being explicitly programmed. So instead of you writing the code, what you do is you feed data to the generic algorithm, and the algorithm/ machine builds the logic based on the given data.

Have you ever shopped online? So while checking for a product, did you noticed when it recommends for a product similar to what you are looking for? or did you noticed “the person bought this product also bought this” combination of products. How are they doing this recommendation? This is machine learning. Of course this is a very vulgar example of how complex machine learning is really .

Let’s loop this from an engineer perspective:

AI (Artificial intelligence) is the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages.

ML (Machine learning) is the scientific study of algorithms and statistical models that computer systems use to effectively perform a specific task.

Currently, the most famous deep learning library in this is Google’s TensorFlow. To give a concrete example, Google users can experience a faster and more refined the search with AI. If the user types a keyword a in the search bar, Google provides a recommendation about what could be the next word. This is again a tiny example of what you could witness from deep learning.

TensorFlow was built to run on multiple CPUs or GPUs and even mobile operating systems, and it has several wrappers in several languages like Python, C++ or Java. It was first made public in late 2015, while the first stable version appeared in 2017. It is open source under Apache Open Source license. You can use it, modify it and redistribute the modified version for a fee without paying anything to Google. More deeply speaking, A tensor is a vector or matrix of n-dimensions that represents all types of data. A tensor can be originated from the input data or the result of a computation. In TensorFlow, all the operations are conducted inside a graph.The graph is a set of computation that takes place successively.

Tensorflow can be run on many different platforms. You can run it on :

  • Desktop running Windows, macOS or Linux
  • Cloud as a web service
  • Mobile devices like iOS and Android

You can train it on multiple machines then you can run it on a different machine, once you have the trained model. 

The subject is vast, it means that there is width, but if you consider the depth, each topic can be learned in a few hours. Each topic is independent of each other. You need to take into consideration one topic at a time, learn it, practice it and implement the algorithm/s in it using a language choice of yours. This is the best way to start your way in Machine Learning. 

“The only limit to AI is human imagination.” ― Chris Duffey

Special Thanks to Abderrahim Soubai Elidrissi for this great « Human » Learning moment. 

TECH-AWARENESS # 7 – Machine learning in the browser

Recently, more and more attention has been paid to artificial intelligence and machine learning. It would seem that these concepts are completely unrelated to web development and JavaScript technologies. They are usually associated with Python/R environment or even C++ libraries. One of the most popular frameworks used by an ever-increasing number of developers is TensorFlow. It was developed in Google in 2011. It’s built in C++ and has bindings to different languages like Python, R or Java. 

A Breakthrough in machine learning would be worth ten Microsoft… Join us Friday, February 7th for a passionate course in Machine learning !

EMSI to PULSE > Crossing Boundaries Between School and Work During Apprenticeships

As part of the internships program that Pulse.digital is running up this year in different fields (Salesforce, NodeJS, PHP, .Net..), we were so happy meeting with EMSI’s and talk through projects and perspectives we have been putting in place the past months.
The talk was mostly about the validated interns and the projects pitch in each field. The primary focus of this internship is to provide the required training* and technology exposure to freshers. Develop using the emerging technology such us (NodeJS, .NET..)
The goal is to open freshers gradually the doors to large-scale experimental field for safeguards technology.

« THIS IS » Balla Seck

« This is » Balla Seck > Not easy to be a pioneer – but oh it’s fascinating !

-How did you come in Morocco ?
2005 – i obtained a scholarship from Morocco and Senegal to study at Faculté des Sciences Semlalia Morocco in Science and Physics field where i went for technologies section. I got my diploma and i got a job for a digital company where i worked for 5 years. After a while i started thinking for a change.

-How did you started with Pulse Digital?
A friend of mine was already working for Pulse when he contacted me. He was the only and first collaborator they had at the time in 2013. We were first pioneers and the road was rough. He talked me up to Mehdi so i joined him. He left and i stayed. Why? i have no idea. I would be lying if i said, i believed of a bright future. I simply couldn’t leave a start trying to start. I joined Pulse Digital in 2013, the work was weird and insane. We used to work from home because there was no office at that time. Nothing was conventional or professionally conservative. It seemed like a joke and there was all signs to leave. I needed money and a better job but i couldn’t leave because everything would have fell down without a doubt. We were in a phase were we had to work very hard and not think at all. We couldn’t expect anything yet from all the work. We were heating up the emptiness. I wasn’t worried if we were to get anything from all the efforts. I simply thought; i’ll go along with this till a miracle shows up. I remember times were they were so badly struggling and none of us could see any light coming from this long tunnel. A lot of projects were on hold for lack of collaborators. I couldn’t define what i what tasks were really. I was simply avoiding any perforation to happen. I was literally working on everything and the goal was to deliver quick and as efficient as we could. In 2017 Youssef Soulaim became Mehdi’s Partner and they took an office. A real office came out from the womb after 5 years of struggle. 2017 turned out to be fruitful, we jumped from an « empty Shell » to 10 people in the team and we moved to another bigger office. The storm quieted down and there started a real temptation for a future. 2018 – I realized how i did well staying around, I was already proud of the achievements. The past seemed like a candle at great distance: too close to let you quit, too far to comfort you. I knew that we could do much more. It’s only the beginning of greatness. I witnessed dark and bright moment in here, one sure thing; these team would always make it through. It’s passion!

-What’s your job at Pulse ?
I m a project manager and Front developper . I take care of validation and integration, development and planning tasks for the team. Now i have to leave for Senegal; my home town but i’m not leaving Pulse. The plan would be to work for Pulse from Dakar and manage the collaboration of both moroccan and swiss teams.

-How do you see Pulse growing ?
Pulse has been the best professional experience i have ever had since i started working. From here, you could tell how bright i see its future.
We haven’t been talking about the future much, since i started. Most of the discussions and concerns we had were about where the fruitful work was and let’s go get it. It has now been 6 years working at this firm and the future seems to work for its own profit without counseling us really. I say Pulse is doing a great job at the present moment. Present is the only material for the future to operate and they’ve got the best going on right now.

One thing left to say, i will miss the moroccan office so much. We will still be in touch for sure but nothing like being there every day. This was a great chapter – one of multiple upcoming ones…

 

SALESFORCE – The Birth of Marrakech Community

Believe it or not, Salesforce started life in March, 1999 under the wing of Marc Benioff, as the founder, Parker Harris, Frank Dominguez and Dave Moellenhoff as his team. The goal? Create business software applications in a completely new way as to deliver software through a model known as Software-as-a-Service. 

By November 2000, it was time for a move to One Market Street.

2000 – Salesforce stood for No Software

Salesforce started as a cloud based solution for CRM. CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management.

What this involves is managing all aspects of relationship between an organization and its customers. For example, the contact details of the customer, the deals that are in progress or already completed, the support requests from a customer or a new lead from a new customer. Beyond the customer related information, it also involves storing and managing the details of the people and the concerned department from the seller organization that is managing the customer’s account and needs. 

2003 – Dreamforce – particular event used to launch a product called Force 2.0 — The industry’s first on-demand application service. 

2005 – AppExchange

2006 – Apex, VisualForce & Beyond

2012 – Marketing Cloud

2013 – Salesforce Mobile

2015 – Lightning Strikes

2016 – Artificial Intelligence

In 2016 alone they have acquired over 10 biggest companies.

This Master-Class Program was consistent and galvanizing. Mehdi BelCadi launched a rocket probe to Salesforce universe and made us access to fundamental points aside of a great history.

We went through Salesforce Platform as a service where we talked about :

– Force.com

– Salesforce Classic VS LEX

– Salesforce Administration

– Security & Access

– SalesCloud & Community Cloud

– Low code platform

– Salesforce Development

– Order of Execution

– The Best practices 

The most interesting part for any beginner is of course TRAILHEAD, the fun way to learn with engaging bite-size content that helps gain new skills and hone existing ones. This learning experience platform is at fingertips if anyone wants seriously to start on Salesforce.

Salesforce.com’s own successes are very impressive, but their impact on the community and world they are trying to create is even more so. Through their 1/1/1 model have donated millions of dollars, thousands of hours of volunteer work and millions of dollars worth of their own product to charities around the globe.

Who knows what the future holds for Salesforce and the community they have created, but based on past performance, the future looks bright.

On December 21st, 2019 at pulse’s a community is born.

SALESFORCE – The end of software Party

You recognize the brand, you hear about the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) all the time but you’re still left with the question: what is Salesforce?

In year 2000, the CEO of a tiny startup that no one had heard of paid actors to carry “anti-software” signs. Business Insider wrote an article on the protest and called Salesforce « the ant at the picnic”

That ant at the picnic has helped to create a $250 billon global market.

One main idea: Software should be delivered 24/7 to people over the cloud.

Clouds indeed remind us that everything changes.

Be aware of what’s coming soon at Pulse’s…

 

TECH-AWARENESS # 6 – Competitive Programming

“Everyone should learn to program a computer, because it teaches you to think.” — Steve Jobs

Do you remember being stuck on a problem, you start explaining it, and you instantly see holes in the logic you didn’t see before? Most programmers know this feeling.

Do not try to solve one big problem. You will cry. Nothing can help you if you can’t write down the exact steps. In programming, this means don’t start hacking straight away. Give your brain time to analyze the problem and process the information.

You would know better what it means to “think like a programmer.”

Enter the world of competitive programmers , join us Friday december 29th, for a series of fortified lines that you must break through to program with competition !

 

« THIS IS » Ernest Igwe Benson

This is Ernest Igwe Benson, one of the best Tech-leads we have at PULSE. Thanks for being part of the team !!

How did you land here ?

I graduated in 2018 from l’ESMA. I was looking for a job. Meanwhile I tried couple of companies and moved away couple of times. I guess the heat wasn’t there and I knew better what I didn’t want more than what I actually wanted from a company . You only picture yourself half way at the start when you graduate. For me I knew I wanted heart beats that would mark a beginning of greatness.
I knew Youssef -the managing director- through a friend who was almost hired for my current position but left finally so I was introduced and interviewed in rush to start quickly. I don’t think that I ever had the time or enough hindsight to really consider the responsibilities I was given. I was barely flirting with the professional world of the industry and couple of months later I land in the middle of colossal series of breaking waves up to 30m and the only option was to swim fast and good, very good. I think you push yourself to that whether you are a good swimmer or someone who had never been to the sea. I was given a project belonging to a very important international client and I was the second person hired in the Moroccan team. Things got very complex and sophisticated quickly, nobody to hide behind, We had to show high quality work and from that the new challenge was to maintain the quality, relevance and competitiveness along the team in that situation anyone newly hired. So part of the responsibilities was to hire new people, train them to perform heroic work in grim circumstances. I could say that in one year I knew of myself what I probably wouldn’t know in years of experience.

What’s your current job in pulse?

I’m a full stack engineer and a technical lead. My responsibilities are mostly developing new features, reviewing code, fix bugs, troubleshoot problems or questions when there’s any and of course provide technical guidance in my team. I make sure the communication flows technically and otherwise between the people in the team. We learned how to be autonomous and it had to happen fast but it wasn’t always the case. The team now is getting larger and we can tell that they have all the assistance they need to stay focused and overcome their weaknesses. It’s a swim or die job!

What do you think of Pulse as a young company ?

Well, in this industry the only thing that matters really is knowledge and a feet away; its smart application. I think at Pulse they re very aware of this because they haven’t borrowed any knowledge, they just found out their own by sequential experience. Now Pulse’s culture gets you in that mindset without teaching it really. This is the most powerful quality at this firm. Pulse is growing for sure, and it gets more and more trusted by giant corporations, the future is smiling for sure. The challenge here would be to keep up with its culture because that’s what’s going to get us there!

TECH-AWARENESS #5 – NodeJS Framework through binoculars

In recent years -thanks to Node.js- JavaScript has become the “lingua franca” of the web for both front and backend applications. This has given rise to awesome projects like Angular, React and Vue, which improve developer productivity and enable the creation of fast, testable, and extensible frontend applications. However, while plenty of superb libraries, helpers, and tools exist for Node (and server-side JavaScript), none of them effectively solve the main problem of – Architecture.
Nest provides an out-of-the-box application architecture which allows developers and teams to create highly testable, scalable, loosely coupled, and easily maintainable applications.
This Friday TECH-AWARENESS #5th edition will explore the art of building Apps From Scratch using Nestjs, and Nodejs framework. Let’s dive into unpopular ideas and build from subversion !

TECH-AWARENESS #4 – Malicious activity

60% of small companies go out of business within six months of falling victim to a data breach or cyber attack. With both the financial security and future of your business on the line, it’s crucial for organizations of all sizes to have measures in place to monitor suspicious network activity.

Friday October 25th, Rachid Belouche has given us a wonderful presentation about this critical topic. Heavy talk and awareness raise about the malware works and what should be done to detect and combat it. Here’s a breakdown of major points we run through :

What Constitutes Suspicious Activity?

Suspicious network activity can refer to a number of different behavior that involve abnormal access patterns, database activities, file changes, and other out-of-the-ordinary actions that can indicate an attack or data breach. Being able to recognize these activities is important as it can help pinpoint the source and nature of the breach, allowing you to act quickly to correct the security threat and minimize damage. Most common examples of attack vectors are :

DNS Tunneling ( Sending sensitive data using DNS protocol in the payload to avoid being detected while transmitting the confidential data )

Pivoting (unique technique of using an instance to be able to move around inside a network)

SQLI (use SQL Injection vulnerabilities to bypass application security measures.)

XSS Reflected (script is activated through a link, which sends a request to a website with a vulnerability that enables execution of malicious scripts.)

RCE (refers to the process by which an agent can exploit a network vulnerability to run arbitrary code on a targeted machine or system. )

OS Command (occurs when an attacker attempts to execute system level commands through a vulnerable web application.)

CSRF (Cross-site request forgery; allows an attacker to partly circumvent the same origin policy, which is designed to prevent different websites from interfering with each other.)

LFI (Local File Inclusion; occurs when an application uses the path to a file as input.)

There are couple of tools we should be able to use to identify and get rid of red flags : SysLog, SIEM (ELSA, Splunk, Intel Security…)

Checking the 5 tuple information using PCAP analysis helps in identifying the patterns of suspicious behaviour.

Very interacting presentation since we got to experience real-time exemples that helped a lot in understanding the core of the topic and be aware of how securing network environments has become an increasingly important topic. So thank you Rachid for sharing this with us.

TECHAWARENESS #4 – The crusade of suspicious network activity

Data breaches are one of the top concerns for today’s organizations. The  costs of these breaches continue to increase, with the average global cost of a single breach hovering at 3.62 million $. Beyond the financial consequences of a breach, network security is also hugely important for any business because an attack can compromise the trust of your customers. So what constitutes suspicious activity and how we could identify and combat it ? Don’t spend more on coffee and join us friday October 25th for a suspicious tech-awareness edition content-launched by Rachid Belouche, one of our great developers!!!

TECHAWARENESS #3 – AWSKind

“I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you’re going to innovate.” — Jeff Bezos

Omar El Ghati made a brilliant presentation friday 4th october, we’re so thankful to your hardwork and how you made it easy for us to understand and be part of a great chat. Here’s a brief of the major points we went through, during the third successful edition of Tech-awareness.

A brief history of AWSkind :

In 2004 Amazon officially launched SQS (Simple queue service) as its first service. 2 years later, in 2006 Amazon Web Services (AWS) emerged from behind scenes providing on-demand computing resources and services in the cloud, with pay-as-you-go pricing. For example, you could run a server on AWS that you could log on to, configure, secure, and run just as would a server that’s sitting in front of you. The whole concept builds on top of the cloud computing principle (Iaas –infrastructure as a service) PaaS (or Platform as a service) and SaaS (or Software as a service), providing IT infrastructure and other services over the internet.

In 2017 AWS releases a host of Artificial intelligent services as well as VR services.

In 2018 AWS is leading the market share by storm, lifting the curve to 47.8% vs 15.5% for Microsoft. Here’s one that refers to a success !

So what’s AWS core products ?

-Compute and Networking Services

  • Amazon EC2 (Provides virtual servers in the AWS cloud)
  • Amazon VPC (Provides an isolated virtual network for your virtual servers)
  • Elastic Load Balancing (Distributes network traffic across your set of virtual servers)
  • Auto Scaling (Automatically scales your set of virtual servers based on changes in demand)
  • Amazon Route 53 (Routes traffic to your domain name to a resource, such as a virtual server or a load balancer)
  • AWS Lambda (Runs your code on virtual servers from Amazon EC2 in response to events)
  • Amazon ECS (Provides Docker containers on virtual servers from Amazon EC2)

-Storage and Content Delivery Services 

  • Amazon S3 (Scalable storage in the AWS cloud)
  • CloudFront (A global content delivery network (CDN))
  • Amazon EBS (Network attached storage volumes for your virtual servers)
  • Amazon Glacier (Low-cost archival storage)

-Security and Identity Services 

  • AWS Identity and Access Management (Manage user access to AWS resources through policies)
  • AWS Directory Service (Manage user access to AWS through your existing Microsoft Active Directory, or a directory you create in the AWS cloud)

-Database Services 

  • Amazon RDS (Provides managed relational databases)
  • Amazon Redshift (A fast, fully-managed, petabyte-scale data warehouse)
  • Amazon DynamoDB (Provides managed NoSQL databases could be uses under two capacities modes : Provisioned & On-Demand mode)
  • Amazon ElastiCache (An in-memory caching service)

As you can see it takes a while to get familiar with each tool to get into some sort of workflow. By and large,  AWS provides building blocks that you can assemble quickly to support any workload  and diving into it requires you to understand their own keywords and concepts. There’s really a whole cloud computing world steadily gaining huge popularity here!

TECH-AWARENESS #3 : AWS « The peculiar »

In 2006, Amazon launched Amazon Web Services, giving customers access to the same cloud technology it built to serve millions of shoppers on Amazon.com. Throughout the years since they started, they’ve built hundreds of new services, onboarded millions of customers, and expanded operations around the globe. Get to know better the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform, with over 165 fully featured services from data centers globally. For people who like to invent, AWS it!

Acknowledging Thomas Coombs : Software development Manager Dentsu Aegis Network

On behalf of Pulse Digital, we would like to thank you for taking the time to visit us .

We felt your visit was extremely valuable in getting to know you better and securing some solid goals with the team here and being able to share thoughts about couple of candidates that had the chance to be lively  interviewed by you in a very confortable and professional way. We hope you got as much out of your visit here as we did. We look forward to our next catch up!

« THIS IS #1 »

This is Mehdi Bouy

Pulse ’s IT Project Manager. Mehdi hasn’t always been an IT project Manager. Mehdi Bouy is one of the oldest collaborator Pulse had since it was created in 2017. We could tell from how he talks about it. Mehdi can dish out some modesty but he’s definitely one of Pulse ’s important building brick.

-When did you integrate Pulse ?

I came in at the end of 2017, couple of months after they opened the moroccan offices. I was newly graduating from  the EMSI and started as intern at Pulse. Back then we were a team of 10 people. After a month, Pulse offered me to officially onboard as a wordpress specialist. I did that for 7 months and i learned to much things that had big impact on my technical knowledge.

-When did you switch to digital Marketing and why ?

You know when you have a team of 10 people, you come to know what everyone is doing and the smooth communication is already set for any curious mind. At that time we didn’t have any digital marketer and we were kind of doing it without knowing what it was. I discovered a passion for it and as we were all building from the source i had the most freedom to work creatively and show the best of myself. Pulse offered me to switch position to digital marketing so i signed up for it and i had the best experience. The swiss team was of incredible assistance.

-What’s your current position at Pulse? and what are your main tasks?

I’m an IT project manager and basically i’m in charge of initiating projects and communicating job expectations planning, monitoring as well as appraising job results like coaching counselling coordinating and enforcing systems, policies and procedures. I also have to prepare annual budget, schedule expenditure, analyse variances, correct actions and couple of tasks like such. It’s a vast and rich area where you can adapt tasks following the need. Main goal is to accomplish results and monitor projects efficiently till their closing. It’s more fun than it seems!

– How do you see Pulse growing with its team ?

Pulse is like a rare flower that is enjoying growing up and it does it fast. Since the beginning of the adventure i had the best projection for Pulse and until now i was right. The beginning of any company is a natural time of assessment and planing but it’s always a good time to take stock of what it wants to accomplish  and who it wants to become and you can’t do that without a company culture. Having great company culture is no longer just an option. Today’s workers consider it as much as they consider salary and benefits. In fact, fantastic company culture is almost expected along with other traditional benefits. At pulse, i have the feeling that even after achieving incredible grow -and we’re on the path for- We would still work with a family culture that was naturally implemented, where everything seems to be possible and any evaluation is a fun part. Since i started, I always had the feeling that i would start working for a company and leave after to build my own. I’d say that Pulse changed my perspective. I literally feel i’m working for my own company. It’s a part of me and i enjoy watching it growing and embellishing like i would for my kids. If an employee or a collaborator achieves naturally this mindset it means that a company would surely have a growing future. Here, We often like to project ourselves in a bigger firm but i’d say that the current Pulse would still be the most gracious and sociable version of it. I love so much working here!

TECH-AWARENESS # 2 – FOG COMPUTING The future is still so much bigger than the past

TECH AWARENESS # 2 has made it wide open on FOG COMPUTING. Many Thanks to our brilliant speaker Taofiq Fal who content-launched the subject.

Let’s boil it down to Major points :

The Internet of Things IOT represents a remarkable transformation of the way in which our world will soon interact. Much like the World Wide Web connected computers to networks, and the next evolution connected people to the Internet and other people, the IoT looks poised to interconnect devices, people, environments, virtual objects and machines in ways that only science fiction writers could have imagined. Sounds like a math jazz.

Clouds are up in the sky, and the fog refers to the clouds down close to the ground. Fog computing has emerged because cloud computing hasn’t been able to keep up with the growth of IoT devices. The increase of consumer and enterprise devices connected to the IoT has put too much strain on cloud services from even the most cutting edge providers. The reason is that the cloud is too far away from the point of origin, and sending data to the cloud to be analyzed results in latency that is simply unacceptable in many environments.

The major characteristics of the Fog refer to low latency and location awareness; wide-spread geographical distribution; mobility; very large number of nodes, predominant role of wireless access, strong presence of streaming and real time applications, heterogeneity.

Scrolling up, the original cloud boom began when mobile devices like smartphones and tablets were becoming all the rage. Back then, these devices were weak on computing power, and mobile networks were both slow and unreliable. Therefore, it made complete sense to use a hub-and-spoke cloud architecture for all communications. But now that most of us are blanketed in reliable 4G technologies, and mobile devices now rival many PCs in terms of computational power, it makes sense to move from a hub-and-spoke model to one that resembles a mesh or Edge Computing data architecture. Doing so eliminates bandwidth bottlenecks and latency issues that will undoubtedly cripple the IoT movement in the long run.

Basically, if you are in an industry such as transportation where you need to collect data at the edge of your network (from vehicles for example) then fog computing provides you with a rapid and efficient way to do this. Fog computing allows you to generate real-time data and insights at the edge of the network without sending information all the way back to the center.

In many ways, fog computing and cloud services complement each other well. Cloud services expand enterprise connectivity on a global scale but they have always struggled to handle the sheer output of data generated by IoT devices. Thus fog computing is the perfect way to supplement the general connectivity afforded to users by cloud services. Two good friends!!

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”― Arthur C. Clarke

TECH-AWARENESS #2
Eyes-Wide-Open on IT Topics

When it comes to business IT, there is perhaps no more common topic of conversation than cloud computing; unfortunately, just because it’s at the top of modern discussions doesn’t change the fact that most people have no idea what the fuss is all about. In August 2012, Citrix Cloud Survey Guide wrote, “First to mind when asked what ‘the cloud’ is, a majority respond it’s either an actual cloud, the sky, or something related to weather.” Sad, but true. If you’re wrapping your mind around the cloud and how it affects business sin the modern world, here are some more IT topics discussions that can expand on this ironic statement. Join us at Tech-awareness 2nd edition Friday 23rd August. There will be debate !!!

TECH-AWARENESS FIRST EDITION IS A SUCCESS

TECH_AWARENESS FIRST CALL has been a success! We’re so proud and lucky to have been part of this great project launched for the first time in Pulse office. this is the one event that doesn’t really need promotion. We probably don’t give enough credits to our dear employees that were so involved during the meeting.

Adil JAD Allah Eddib, who organized the content of this first edition was impeccable. Aside of being highly instructive, the four points that he has chosen launched a very interactive discussion. We’ve spoken about the PHP 7.4 and his release on November 28, 2019, then the 10x engineer big debate since Shekhar Kirani’s tweet about the flagship issue of “How you’d spot a 10x engineer?” -a point that quickly drove us to a more fervent debate.

Third point was Libra BlockChain which of course involved the inevitable comparison to bitcoin. Very interesting point took the floor at the moment: should we trust Libra as “stable coin” defined by Marcus David -Facebook Executive- as “more like a traditional currency?! The debate about that is still ongoing in Pulse corridors! The best was saved for last; the 4th and major point was the dark patterns; Adil painted out different features of interface design that are mainly crafted to trick users into doing things they might not want to do.

To sum up, we have been introduced to a collection of informations that a lot of us weren’t aware of but made us exchange and share both a technological and intellectual moment. This is what TECH-AWARENESS is about. We are proud of how our first edition went. Here is to even more successful editions and the best is yet to come.

TECH-AWARENESS

From the television you watch to the mobile phone you use to connect with your near and dear ones, from the car you drive to the refrigerator you use to store your food, from the air conditioners you use to beat the heat to the laptops you use to accomplish various tasks –  everything is a gift of technology.

We at Pulse digital are aware of that and more of it, we’re concerned to keep a long and happy relationship with progress. This is why Pulse has decided to carve a weekly niche for a technology transfer. the goal is to maintain and refresh technology awareness around our rich halls.

We’re happily inviting our team Friday July 26th at our offices from 4:30 to 5:30pm to be part of the first “Tech-Awareness” that will be content-launched by Adil Jad Allah Eddib one of our great consultants. So why don’t you be a tech-champion and come over!

Pulse is having a data master in its team !

There’s a funny quote from Edwards Deming that says “In god we trust but all others must bring data.” It’s fascinating how every single information must be run by data. In Africa the data field is giving a massive outpouring of professional opportunities.

Some of you might not be familiar with Big Data Engineer university launched by Africa Data Lab which basically suggests an intensive professional training dedicated to data jobs, developing your competences and aptitudes via data experts that coach you and manage the most effective and adapted program for you without leaving your job.

Big Data Engineer university has just announced their first graduates and Pulse digital is in turn proudly announcing that one of them is part of its beautiful team. We are so proud of Badr Arrabatchou who’s an excellent team member of Pulse Digital.

We will always challenge our employees to be the best version of themselves.

Visiting our partners

As a part of our ongoing collaboration, Youssef got to visit one of our partners in their Switzerland offices.
During the visit, both parties got to discuss future plans and collaboration prospects, our partner’s potential needs in terms of profiles as well as a detailed description of the position and its requirements.

One of the main points discussed is consultants’ training. The goal is to have the consultants trained by our partners in Switzerland once a year in order to keep up with the new processes and technologies, and towards the end of the course, get new certifications.

Afterwards, both parties headed to meet one of our biggest clients to get their feedback on our services and processes and overall experience with us.
The meeting also covered a general performance review of our current team based on their productivity and ability to work with a multicultural group of people. Fortunately, there is a general consensus that our teams are very efficient and can work well in stressful environment.

Although our teams are currently doing very well, the hiring process is still a little bit slow due to the high level of quality our partners are demanding. So, slowly but surely, we working towards reaching our goal of 50 consultants before the end of the year.

Our support team

Technical client support is a crucial part of our process. Making sure the customers are heard is important to keep them loyal. Seeing the high demand for people handling clients complains and concerns, our partner decided to branch out with our collaboration and start a new team that specializes in client support, a team divided into two levels: a level that deals with clients directly, receiving their calls and creating tickets based on the complaints, and another that works on solving these tickets. Our team received intensive training by our partners through multiple visits over the time of their work here.

Our support team is still relatively small, but we are working towards making it bigger and able to provide an around the clock support.

PULSE life

What makes PULSE.digital stand out more over other work places is the team spirit we have going on around our offices, the family-like ties we’ve developed, allowing the teams to develop both personally and professionally. Here are few testimonies of some of our colleagues:

Working at Pulse Digital Morocco is a new experience for me. It offers an excellent work environment that allows you to develop in many ways. I’m happy to be part of Pulse Digital Morocco.” B.A

Pulse is a really cool place to be. From the onboarding experience through the daily work, you get the opportunity to work with great teams across the world, using the best tools and solving interesting problems.” E.C

I have been working with pulse digital since its creation, and I feel grateful and lucky that I have had the opportunity to be part of its growth” M.M

At Pulse.digital Morocco We work closely with customers. We create together an environment where we look for facts, share and analyze information, and explore ideas and opportunities.
We do, we develop, we compile, we patch up.” K.T

Technically speaking, I came here as a child, I grew up here and as time went on, I gained more self-confidence because of the amazing team and the managers trust” O.B

As an intern, the experience has been very good. No difficulty in sharing information and a professional work environment.
Perfect team spirit, perfect collaboration.” Y.O

My job is a .NET Consultant and I’m currently working for PULSE digital Maroc. It’s where I found things I’m looking for as a young passionate developer who wants to learn and evolve. On top of that, the company have a great work atmosphere maintained by Its employees and the managing staff.” O.E

Check out our job openings and join the family !

Visit from Portugal

After a year-long collaboration with one of our partners and many visits from their swiss team, we finally got the chance meet their Portuguese team in our offices.

They took a moment to talk to everyone on the team and have a chat about what they do and the part they play in the team.

The purpose of the visit was to start a collaboration with the Portuguese team and show them our advancements and the work process we have developed with their swiss counterparts.

This visit helped put faces to the names we see on our screens daily and got us to connect more and make the work we do with them even more enjoyable. It also allowed a culture exchange between the two teams and giving both sides a look at our different perspectives.

The experience helped pave the way to more business opportunities and collaborations down the line and stronger bonds between the two companies.

Our expansion

Pulse.digital Maroc was founded in 2017 by Mehdi Moussouli and Youssef Soulaim and a team of under 10 developers. Over the span of two years and through the hard work of everyone involved, the company managed to quadruple in size with our ever-growing operations with multiple partners in different countries all over the world.

In our first year, we worked with our mother company located in Switzerland, PULSE.digital, working directly with clients on different projects: app and software development and design mainly. Through a lot of planning ahead and the will to grow and evolve, we ventured into outsourcing which was very challenging at first, it still is, but it got easier with time as we gained more and more momentum.

Our activities keep growing and expanding everyday thanks to the collective effort of our leadership and team of consultants. Currently, we have two departments: offshoring and outsourcing, each with multiple sub-departments: development, graphic design, digital marketing, client support, etc, with over 40 team members doing their absolute best to deliver the best product possible.