Mehmet ERDO?DU from NODA, Vice President
About NODA
NODA is a young technology company where 30 years of experience in map production and geographic information systems are transferred into software industry located in Ankara, TURKEY.
Though being young, we are producing spatial intelligence and 2d/3d geographic information systems for Turkey's most important institutions both directly and as a subcontractor, owing to our field experience and professional staff.
The best example is of our know how in GIS industry is to sign 9 geographic information system projects, 2 national and 7 local since our foundation in 2009. In this sense, we see that we already fill an important gap on software development services especially for geographic information systems. As Noda, we put emphasis on R&D activities. In this sense, our R&D unit in Gazi University Techno Park, one of the largest universities in Turkey, continues our intense work on localization of technology, in other words technology transfer.
We announce privileges about Geographic Information Systems with "GIS Reinvented" motto.
Q: Could you give a brief introduction of Turkey for us?
A: From an economic perspective; Turkey has shown remarkable performance with its steady growth over the last eight years. A sound macroeconomic strategy in combination with prudent fiscal policies and major structural reforms in effect since 2002 has integrated the Turkish economy into the globalized world, while transforming the country into one of the major recipients of FDI in its region.
The visible improvements in the Turkish economy have also boosted foreign trade, while exports reached USD 135 billion by the end of 2011, up from USD 36 billion in 2002. Similarly, tourism revenues, which were around USD 8.5 billion in 2002, exceeded USD 23 billion in 2011.
Significant improvements in such a short period of time have registered Turkey on the world economic scale as an exceptional emerging economy, the 16th largest economy in the world and the 5th largest economy when compared with the EU countries, according to GDP figures (at PPP) in 2011.
While many economies have been unable to recover from the recent global financial recession, the Turkish economy expanded by 9.2 percent in 2010, and 8.5 percent in 2011, thus standing out as the fastest growing economy in Europe, and one of the fastest growing economies in the world.
Finally, we can say that Turkey became one of the most popular investment areas all over the world. She is like an arena which is full of opportunities and also competition.
Q: What are the main features of the GIS in Turkey? In which industries GIS is widely used nowadays? And which are the most potential industries in the near future?
A: Actually the main features of GIS are not very different from other applications in the world. From my point of view; the most valuable customers in GIS industry are public administrations. I don't want to mention any specific administration because in my humble opinion, there is no kind of administration which we cannot introduce a GIS related software system. It's just a matter of awareness. If we let them to know more about GIS, they will start to dream how GIS can help their daily work.
On the other hand, after EU policy adaptations and economic reforms (especially privatizations) in Turkey, energy and energy related private sector companies became a very significant GIS customer in Turkey. After now, we need to develop industry specific GIS products or support partners to develop such value added products over GIS.
Q: How about the GIS market in other European countries, is it the same as Turkey market? If not, what's the difference?
A: When we talk about the technology itself; there is no difference. What Europeans use is what we use here in Turkey. But the main difference is the European data standards and production methods. It's also related to the regulations of course.
You can easily understand what I mean, if you try to implement a simple geo coding service in a regular European city and in a Turkish city. The address system, postal codes and every tiny geographical information is much more complex than what they use in Europe. This issue is very critical since data is a fatal factor in all GIS applications. So as a result I can say that same technology but different implementations.
Secondly, we also need to mention the incoming effect of open source geospatial activities. Many countries in Europe like Spain, France, Italy etc. are mainly transferring their spatial systems to open source architectures. This is also a popular topic here in Turkey too. Is this a thread for us? In my personal opinion, we can easily change this aim to our advantage. But if we ignore open source technology we can easily loose the competition. This is an urgent issue that we got to think about.
Q: What kind of the role does Turkey geospatial industry play in the European market?
A: Up to now, I don't think that Turkish geospatial industry had play a role in the European market since Turkish geospatial market is still a closed market according to the regulations in Turkey. But after the EU integration policies in Turkey, especially INSPIRE directive implementations; Turkey gained a very important position for the applications of data interoperability. We will see the tangible results of investments on this specific area in the next few years.
Q: Could you please introduce the history of your company Noda, such as the background, development process, the successful cases, etc?
A: Noda has been established as a technology investment of Karadeniz Surveying Group in 2009. Karadeniz Surveying Group is operating more than 25 years focusing on geodesic measurements and spatial data production on the field.
Since 2009, we had more than 10 successful cases of GIS implementations. One of the most important implementation was the Property Management System developed for Directorate of Highways in Turkey. Property Management System is in a continuous development process in order to introduce the latest GIS innovations to the use of Directorate. Together with Karadeniz Group we are currently operating with more than 30 engineers focusing on geospatial technology development and for sure after using SuperMap products we will open a new era in our GIS services.
Q: What industries/sectors do you think Noda would have competitive advantages in?
A: Noda has a serious competitive advantage in GIS related fields especially surveying and land management. As a premium player in the market, our business development team has a large network in public administration authorities which brings us a superior power of GIS integration opportunity into many management information systems.
On the other hand, we are planning to introduce some innovative solutions for the energy industry including electricity distribution and mine management.
Q: What do you think of the co-operation with SuperMap in the market? Could you tell us why you choose SuperMap as your partner? what does Noda value most?
A: I think SuperMap has many innovative features which will bring us competitive advantages especially on 3D GIS projects. Our decision to select SuperMap depends on its key technological superiors like being an all in one technology provider by including web, desktop and mobile GIS solutions for several platforms including Windows and Linux.
Furthermore, SuperMap lets customers to use what development language they want. For instance if your team has experience in Java, you are welcome to use Objecs Java. Its same for .Net based technologies too.
Besides all those technological features, Noda mainly values on serious customer relations management policies which SuperMap really cares about. If you are a SuperMap user, you can be sure that whenever you have a trouble, the solution is not far away. You can always find a representative to answer your questions in SuperMap.
Q: What is your promotion strategy for gearing up the sales?
A: Our main promotion strategy is to let SuperMap customers to use our new brand SuperMap Cloud portal for free. As you know, spatial data is a key element in GIS projects. If you don't have data, all technology becomes useless. So acquiring spatial data is an expensive and important issue for the customer. By introducing SuperMap Cloud for Turkey, Turkish customers will be able to use the data from deskpro.net or directly from their custom developed web GIS project.
Q: Do you have any goal in the next 3-5 years with SuperMap in the market? What's your plan to achieve it? Based on Turkish GIS market, please talk about the future of our cooperation.
A: For now we did not put a market share target in front of us at least for the next 2 years. We are still in the phase of organization and infrastructure investment. But after the completion of all investments, firstly we will focus on gaining at least the same success as we did in Karadeniz Surveying which corresponds to %25 of total market share in GIS technologies market.
For the future, we are planning to develop B2B and B2C solutions for private industry starting with energy and mining sectors. Personally, I believe that the future is at direct customer access by customized GIS products. Of course business development for public administrations will be still a key focus in our sales plans.
Q: We know this is your first trip to China, how do you feel?
A: I have been visited to many countries all over the world in almost 15 years. As you mentioned, this is my first time in China and I can say that this country is so impressive. China is totally different from the rest of the world. I mean it's full of hospitality and you can feel the effects of a thousand years old cultural heritage in every street of China. On the other hand, China is full of business opportunities if you are good observer.
Q: Any words to Chinese GISers and SuperMap?
A: I would like to thank to all SuperMap staff for their hospitality during my visit in Beijing. I can say that I am looking forward to visit China again, probably in the next SuperMap Users Conference. Thank you very much. Tesekkurler.
Part of NODA Staff
Mehmet ERDO DU and Lini, GM of SuperMap International Business Division
