Havooz ICT Services

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company.

Avea is one of the largest mobile operators in Turkey, and we are part of a larger group, the Turk Telekom group. Turk Telekom is the [incumbent six-line] operator and owns 90 percent of Avea. Besides Avea, it also owns TTNet, which is the largest Internet service provider in Turkey. TTNet owns more than 90 percent of the overall market. We are the mobile subsidy of the group.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I lead Avea Labs, which is the research and innovation face of Avea. We have been working on innovation projects, and we have an incubation center where we help larger startups to develop their products for operators.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your goal for working with Havooz ICT Services?

We have a [wireless application protocol gateway] that handles traffic from our users especially with increased traffic from different sources or social media. The WAP gateways have had different structures because they are coming from different vendors. The amount increased more than what we expected. It was not feasible to handle that with traditional databases. At that time, we were one of the pioneers in adapting big data trends.

Havooz proposed a project to us. We needed that and upper management needed that, so we accepted them to our incubation center, where they developed a product, working with our engineers. They handled a large amount of traffic for that division for us.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their work.

This project handled the data coming from the WAP gateway; we have an [external transfer rate] that transfers the data into the format that we require and storing the data. For regulatory purposes, we have to store the data for a certain amount of time. One advantage of using a data system was that we had a significant savings on storage.

It was about two times what we had before, and in addition to the regulatory purposes, I call the [assurance/insurance] team regularly to [prepare some reports] to present to certain upper management or a related team. We had to use that system to answer those requests as well.

Furthermore, customer care was also interested in receiving certain information from these logs related to our customers. This system was designed to store the data in an efficient way and [log queries] for different team, such as quality assurance and customer care. The challenge was also to provide similar response times to these types of queries when compared to the previous ones.

How do you select companies for the incubator?

We have phone calls where we state what types of companies we are interested in. Companies apply through our website. We receive applications from more than a hundred of these types of companies that want to work with us. We have a two-phase selection process. In the first one, we look into their project and how it relates to our own business. In the second level, these companies present their projects to our upper management, including our CEO, CTO, and CIO network. If upper management selects them, they are accepted into our incubation center.

The advantage here is that all of their projects are approved by upper management, so their products are very likely to be purchased. We do not give them purchase guarantees at the beginning. They have to make sure their products are high quality.

Are they only Turkish companies, and does the Turkish government help?

Initially, it was only Turkish companies because it was easier for them. We have offices in our premises that we provide for them, and they can access our test lab, which is a small replica of our own networking and IT [information technology] equipment lab. That is a big plus for them to work on our equipment.

We have been to Boston several times, and we are open to international startups that want to do business with our operators. However, we haven’t had any applications yet. We are located in Istanbul.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

How has Havooz ICT Services performed?

We have been very happy with their work. They have the technical knowledge in terms of handling the data. One of their co-founders was a professor at one of the universities here and had some experience in [HP] Labs before in the United States. They are very hard working, they try to understand the customers’ needs, and provide solutions based on that. Overall, they are committed to what they are doing.

Is there anything unique about them that really makes them stand out, compared to other companies?

One of the most interesting parts of their work was that they introduced us to big data when nobody was talking about it. We had a solution before many people, and we were pioneers in Turkey. With most companies, you actually receive what you need. Here, you are actually looking into something more innovative. They provided something more innovative for us. They proved their experience and are very familiar with the new developments in the big data area.

Looking back on the work so far, is there any area that you think they could improve upon or something that you might do differently?

I was [alternating] between them and our internal divisions when they were using the products. Initially, it was something new for our operation teams and solution teams, and it was hard to understand their architecture. We probably will not have similar problems for their future projects because many people have become familiar with the architecture, and it’s easier for them to express. I don’t see any major recommendation in that area.