by Andrew Jay Rosenbaum
ANKARA
Turkish companies are “reluctantly” moving into the Cloud, Onur Bucukoglu, IBM Enterprise Sales Unit Manager in Ankara told Anadolu Agency in an interview.
“A great many Turkish companies are still operating in the traditional way, depending on in-house hardware rather than adopting the software-and-services model that is prevalent in the industry today,” Bucukoglu explained.
Much of the world’s IT is migrating to a model based on the Cloud, that is, using data storage outside of a company’s premises that is accessed via the Internet.
“In fact, the Turkish market is dominated by hardware, and that has slowed adoption of the Cloud and service platforms,” Bucukoglu said. This puts limits on productivity and efficiency, he said.
However, there is a shift today to new delivery methods like the Cloud, Bucukoglu said.
“IBM is one of the leading Cloud providers; we have made significant investment in software-and-services platforms. Our entire software portfolio is adapted to the Cloud, and it is all available as a service,” he added.
Bucukoglu pointed out that IBM addresses the great issue for companies shifting to the Cloud – Is my data secure? Who has access to it?
“If you look at the Turkish industry a year ago, compared with today, I see more and more companies shifting to the Cloud. After all, data is no less secure on Cloud than when kept on premises – there are always security issues."
“Just because Turkish companies are ‘reluctant’ doesn’t mean they aren’t either thinking about or choosing the Cloud,” Bucukoglu said. “I have seen in my territory one major account shift to IBM cloud for offshore services; it’s a large electronics company.”
Many Turkish companies are addressing the security issue by opting for the hybrid Cloud, Bucukoglu said. A hybrid cloud is a cloud computing environment in which an organization provides and manages some resources in-house and has others provided externally.
But Turkey still spends less than other countries at the same level of development on IT, and that could be a growth-limiting factor, Bucukoglu said.
“Turkey spends about one percent of GDP on IT. That’s much less than countries like the Czech Republic which are at 7 percent. That kind of IT spend has helped companies in the Czech Republic to leapfrog to more up-to-date levels of computing,” Bucukoglu said.
Western countries spend an average of between 2.5 to 4.5 percent of GDP on IT, according to researcher IDC.
Turkey is also well-advanced in the use of Big Data, Bucukoglu said. Big Data refers to the collection of unstructured data from sources like social media and using it to determine consumer trends.
“Banks and retailers are already making good use of data analytics to understand what consumers want,” he added.
In 2005, IBM exited the low-end server market, Bucukoglu recalled. “At that time our CEO, at a press conference, took out a mobile phone – not yet a smartphone, and said that, in a few years, everything will be dominated by these devices as they will get smarter and use a higher level of computing power. Of course he was right.”
Turkey is also advanced in mobile penetration and smartphone app use, he continued.
“There has been tremendous growth in the Turkish market driven by the devices themselves. Turkish consumers are using very powerful devices, sometimes ones that are disproportionate with their income level,” Bucukoglu said.
“As a result, GSM operators are shifting their business models, moving more into data revenue streams with less expected from voice,” he said. Many Turkish companies are following suit, making greater use of smartphone technology and allowing workers to use the devices of their choice in the workplace.
IBM formed a critical partnership with Apple last year for the creation of a large set of enterprise apps, Bucukoglu said. The company now offers more than 100 enterprise-level apps, for clients in a number of sectors, he added.
“IBM has been in Turkey for more than 77 years. To last that long, we have had to be very innovative. The fact that we generate more patents than other companies in Europe shows just how innovative we are,” Bucukoglu said.
