Identifying and Delivering on Key IT Trends
MSIT Industry Advisory Board member Yusuf Ozturk discusses what areas of growth opportunities he sees for technology companies and how he's confronting them in his role as chief technology officer at Third Summit.
Oct 12, 2022
Yusuf Ozturk has spent his career identifying and implementing ways businesses can use technology to advance their offerings and improve life for consumers.
As chief technology officer at Rand McNally, Ozturk spent seven years managing the company's R&D and IT teams as they developed and supported innovative products for business-to-business and business-to-consumer customers in the transportation industry. Prior to that he was the vice president of engineering at Navteq, a company acquired by Nokia; director of business systems at Music Now, which was acquired by AOL; and technical manager at Cars.com.
Today he's focused on a new challenge.
Ozturk is chief technology officer at Third Summit, a company looking to bring world-class creative tools to small businesses, media companies, and independent content creators. Third Summit's flagship product is Alteon.io, a cloud-based content management system designed specifically for creative teams.
Ozturk, a member of the Industry Advisory Board for Northwestern Engineering's Master of Science in Information Technology (MSIT) program, manages Third Summit's R&D teams with a particular focus on scaling Alteon.
“Alteon has the power to revolutionize the creative economy,” Ozturk said. “Our approach is methodical, but our mandate and scope are vast. We are upgrading and refining our product every week to match the demands of our users, which includes adding functionality that no other content management system offers.”
Ozturk is excited about his responsibilities at Third Summit because they allow him to confront a collection of key trends facing the IT industry head on, including:
● Cloud-based technologies
● Support for remote workers
● Faster networks
● Software as a Service (SaaS) replacing on-premise solutions
● Artificial intelligence and machine learning
● Blockchain deployment
● Heightened security solutions
Ozturk has led development on Alteon’s key collaborative tools as well as Alteon Accelerator, a desktop application that maximizes users’ internet upload speeds.
Since joining Third Summit in July 2021, Ozturk has overseen the growth from a core group of dedicated employees to teams located around the world, including engineers and designers in India, Ukraine, and South Africa.
He routinely draws on this experience when talking with MSIT students about the current challenges and opportunity areas he sees. He has similar conversations with his fellow Industry Advisory Board members, who together help shape the direction of the program's curriculum based on current and future industry trends. Ozturk always tells students that it's their responsibility to understand those trends, particularly cloud-based services and open-source tools, because that knowledge will help them develop and manage strong products that are both scalable and secure.
“MSIT will prepare you to learn this modern IT landscape,” Ozturk said. “The program will teach you how to be a technology leader in cloud deployment, security, scalability, budgeting, contract, vendor and project management, intellectual property, compliance, and building distributed teams, all of which will help you throughout your career.”
As chief technology officer at Rand McNally, Ozturk spent seven years managing the company's R&D and IT teams as they developed and supported innovative products for business-to-business and business-to-consumer customers in the transportation industry. Prior to that he was the vice president of engineering at Navteq, a company acquired by Nokia; director of business systems at Music Now, which was acquired by AOL; and technical manager at Cars.com.
Today he's focused on a new challenge.
Ozturk is chief technology officer at Third Summit, a company looking to bring world-class creative tools to small businesses, media companies, and independent content creators. Third Summit's flagship product is Alteon.io, a cloud-based content management system designed specifically for creative teams.
Ozturk, a member of the Industry Advisory Board for Northwestern Engineering's Master of Science in Information Technology (MSIT) program, manages Third Summit's R&D teams with a particular focus on scaling Alteon.
“Alteon has the power to revolutionize the creative economy,” Ozturk said. “Our approach is methodical, but our mandate and scope are vast. We are upgrading and refining our product every week to match the demands of our users, which includes adding functionality that no other content management system offers.”
Ozturk is excited about his responsibilities at Third Summit because they allow him to confront a collection of key trends facing the IT industry head on, including:
● Cloud-based technologies
● Support for remote workers
● Faster networks
● Software as a Service (SaaS) replacing on-premise solutions
● Artificial intelligence and machine learning
● Blockchain deployment
● Heightened security solutions
Ozturk has led development on Alteon’s key collaborative tools as well as Alteon Accelerator, a desktop application that maximizes users’ internet upload speeds.
Since joining Third Summit in July 2021, Ozturk has overseen the growth from a core group of dedicated employees to teams located around the world, including engineers and designers in India, Ukraine, and South Africa.
He routinely draws on this experience when talking with MSIT students about the current challenges and opportunity areas he sees. He has similar conversations with his fellow Industry Advisory Board members, who together help shape the direction of the program's curriculum based on current and future industry trends. Ozturk always tells students that it's their responsibility to understand those trends, particularly cloud-based services and open-source tools, because that knowledge will help them develop and manage strong products that are both scalable and secure.
“MSIT will prepare you to learn this modern IT landscape,” Ozturk said. “The program will teach you how to be a technology leader in cloud deployment, security, scalability, budgeting, contract, vendor and project management, intellectual property, compliance, and building distributed teams, all of which will help you throughout your career.”
