Christos Tattis, NetU’s Senior Commercial Manager, shares his thoughts about the year that passed regarding the IT industry in Cyprus.
What has the year been like for the IT industry in Cyprus and Greece?
Christos Tattis, NetU’s Senior Commercial Manager, shares his thoughts about the year that passed, talks about the main developments in the IT industry and makes his own predictions about the future of ICT on the island.
Read his full interview in Gold Magazine below.
What kind of a year has 2019 been for your firm? Name some of the highlights and/or low points.
2019 has been another fruitful year for our firm. We have been working towards providing top quality IT solutions and services in both the Private and the Public Sector and we are very proud to be recognized for this.
Over the year, we have made significant progress in exporting our expertise in Law Enforcement solutions. We have established a strong presence in Cyprus, Greece, and Croatia and we have been shortlisted in various other countries. We are now established as one of the few companies in Europe that have the expertise to execute this kind of complex and mission-critical projects.
In the Private Sector, the year was dedicated I would say to the Cloud Business. We promote a few of the best in class Business Solutions like Salesforce CRM and Oracle NetSuite ERP. “CIO Review” magazine based on some thorough evaluation process has nominated NetU “One the 20 Most Promising Solution Providers” for 2019 in the world. I would say that this was the result of the hard work done throughout the last 2 years at all levels.
More broadly speaking, has 2019 been a good year for your profession in Cyprus and internationally? What have the main developments been?
In general, 2019 has been a good year for our profession. The Cyprus ICT Services market has grown on a year-to-year growth of 9% which is far better than the expected recovery from a financial crisis of this magnitude.
More and more, both the public and the private sector, have been recognizing the need to get more decisive in the digital transformation era. Investments towards digital transformation are becoming a necessity and that’s where NetU is positioned, to help and consult our customers.
Within the year, we had a very significant development in terms of enforcing and embedding Data Compliance and Security in B2C applications, through the GDPR roll out. We have seen the impact of this Directive being a significant opportunity for our profession both in terms of creating software but also in adjusting the existing one.
Furthermore, the Government has announced several important and high value projects as part of its digital strategy.
The acceptance of efficiently doing business in the cloud, was another important development, directly affecting our profession. A significant percentage of the ICT investments are geared towards this direction. More and more businesses acknowledge the benefits of cloud computing. We do feel very proud, since we have been working for the last 4-5 years to achieve this cloud computing uptake in Cyprus. As one of the largest system integrators on the island we feel very strong about this and we are still actively promoting it.
How do you view the present state of the Cyprus economy and what are your hopes and/or predictions for it in 2020?
It’s obvious that the last 2 years, the Cypriot economy has exceeded expectations, with a 4% annual growth in the national GDP. While it is expected to slow down for the next years, the forecast remains in the positive sign.
This indeed reflects in the IT spending as well. It is expected that companies will increase their investment in IT solutions for achieving their digital transformations strategies. In the public sector the award of large projects that are currently under evaluation by the Government it is expected, giving a positive outlook to the ICT market.
However, there will be some serious challenges in the near future, the most important of which, could be the IT talent shortage. We believe that it is important to establish a strategic partnership with the Educational Institutions in Cyprus, in order to ensure enough talent will graduate from our educational institutions to cover most of the IT industry needs. As Cypriot ICT companies, we have to remain competitive in a period that no limitations exist and the only way to do this to create talented professionals with critical thinking promoting efficient solutions.