Asim Alp changing the quality of computer engineering one step at a time, starting with heavy industries!
- What exactly is it that you master, can one call you an entrepreneur or would that offend your creative view upon the “computer code”?
– No, it would not offend me at all. I’m an entrepreneur who engineers software. My expertise is writing high quality software, so that’s given. Therefore, finding the right project and the right partner is my key to success. For every product that I choose to create, I work with a partner who’s an expert on the field. And, I only invest in software that either doesn’t exist, or that I can do significantly better.
- We know you spent most of your youth in the United States till about two years ago when you decided to move back to your native Istanbul, why?
- Well, as much as I loved New York, I always missed Istanbul. The most important thing that attached me to New York was my company. I just couldn’t leave my child and leave New York. When I sold my company in the summer of 2008, I saw an opportunity to move back to Istanbul and I took it. Right now, I’m happy in Istanbul, but being a world citizen, I guess I’ll always have something or someone to miss. After all, I lived in the US for 10 years and I left a lot of good friends behind only to reunite with others that I’ve been missing for years..
- Talk to us a little about “Qualist”. It is a unique project in terms of collaborative forces. Could you elaborate?
– I started Qualist with my partner Cem soon after I moved back to Istanbul. Qualist focuses on industrial software with a different business vision: Most industrial software is priced based on the number of users. We believe that this contradicts with the purpose of using software in the first place. We want as many users as possible to use our software and putting limits on this on day zero during the sales process is ridiculous. Therefore, all our software comes with unlimited number of user licenses. Also, most industrial software is installed on third party hardware (servers) by consultants. This is a long and troublesome process, because end-users would have to deal with three different sources: software company, consultant and hardware company. Even worse, in case of problems, everyone would blame each other. At Qualist, our software is bundled with our hardware and configured by us.
- A source told us that you are extremely interested in space, nature and a good documentary on physics never slips by unnoticed by you. Is that some thing that inspires you daily.
- I wonder who this “source” is! Yes, indeed, I’m inspired by any kind of science in general. I think scientific way of thinking helps us understand the unknown in a more real way. I believe that there is an explanation for everything, you just have to be open minded enough to comprehend it. I question everything around me and don’t take things for granted just because someone says so.
- What are your future plans both business or pleasure, anything we can expect that would be out of your comfort zone.
– Well, a friend of mine once convinced me to jump off an airplane, so I think I’m willing to try many things that is out of my comfort zone. One day, I’m hoping to convince this friend to go to space with me on a Virgin Galactic (www.virgingalactic.com) spaceship.. Apart from that, we have new projects under way: Qualist Doc – hopefully a game changer in document management, Qualist Check – for quality assurance, and Qualist Home – for smart homes: As an example, let’s say you’re watching a movie and your door rings.. Your movie pauses automatically, lights turn on and blinds come up. You see your guest on your screen and open the door by clicking a button on the remote. When you’re ready to resume your movie, you just click another button and lights dim, blinds come down and your movie resumes.. Details of all these projects will be published on www.qualist.com as we launch them in the coming months.
- How can intelligent programming become part of the “green” effort.
– To make global warming history, we need to rethink the way we do many things and this requires a lot of new technology from electric cars to carbon-free energy supply. We really need to achieve zero carbon emissions – anything more will continue to harm Earth. I think intelligent software will lie at the heart of all these technological achievements in a way that it’ll be the driver (or executor) of all new methods and components.
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