Service Provider

Critical supplier of data center services

Turkcell is a digital operator headquartered in Türkiye, serving customers with its unique portfolio of digital services along with voice, messaging, data, and IPTV services on its mobile and fixed networks.

Turkcell operates the largest Data Center infrastructure in Türkiye from four primary locations, positioning itself as the market leader with the most significant share.

As part of its strategic objective to evolve into a digital operator, Turkcell offers its proprietary digital services within state-of-the-art data centers.

From a business continuity standpoint, both public and enterprise clients of Turkcell are reliant on the secure and resilient data center infrastructure to deliver their services. Consequently, Turkcell's Data Center Infrastructure is the preferred choice for these clients.

Our customers recognize the importance of backups and business continuity. More organizations are happy to move services out of their own data centers. We need to demonstrate that we are robust, agile, secure, and able to scale.

For Turkcell, the challenge is to be not just big but smart. The goal is that its next-generation data centers are software-defined, multi-tenant, segmented, automated, and orchestrated. The company needs to be quick to adapt to changing customer demands and able to support growth in edge computing, while also respecting sustainability goals and improving energy efficiency as the data center business grows.

"We need to meet the evolving needs of our customers in a rapidly changing digital landscape," Durmus states.

Automation and orchestration across underlying infrastructure

Turkcell's data center network is built using almost entirely Cisco solutions; at the heart is Cisco ACI and Cisco NSO. In tandem, these deliver automation and orchestration across the underlying physical and virtual infrastructure.

"Cisco is our critical partner in the data center network and a pioneer in the implementation of new technology and new capabilities" says Durmus. "Cisco provides a comprehensive portfolio of solutions, including networking, security, compute, storage, and management. This end-to-end approach enables us to build an integrated and cohesive data center infrastructure."

The engagement, he continues, is as much about the current Cisco technology as the ongoing support and future roadmap: "We have access to the best technical expertise, and Cisco's investment in R&D, its commitment to innovation, futureproofs our investment."

It is Cisco ACI that allows the Turkcell data center network to respond quickly. For Turkcell customers needing to deploy different workloads with different performance expectations, this software-defined networking solution simplifies, optimizes, and accelerates infrastructure deployment.

"Our customers are asking for hybrid cloud, co-location, network-as-a-service, and other infrastructure capabilities. Cisco ACI is the solution that integrates data center fabrics with cloud infrastructures," says Durmus. "With our new network, we have the agility and flexibility to offer every type of data center service."

He says the use of Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches enables customers to choose a switch that aligns with their current needs and will easily expand their network. The modular design makes it easier to upgrade; security and energy efficiency are built in.

"Collectively, the versatility of the Cisco Nexus switches means they're capable of meeting the diverse needs of organizations across various industries."

Creating a single, virtual data center

For Turkcell, the engagement with Cisco powers not only the largest data center facility in Türkiye, but also the most agile. Turkcell can respond to diverse requests from public and enterprise customers quickly and appropriately. For some workloads, the priority may be redundancy; for others it is latency. Where deployments used to take three to four days, infrastructure can be in place within the hour. Maintenance can be carried out without disrupting services.

"Together with Cisco, we've established end-to-end service automation and orchestration. In this way, we provide our customers with the most innovative services in the shortest time via a solid and secure data center infrastructure," says Durmus.

In effect, Cisco ACI enables Turkcell to create a single, virtual data center from the nine physical data centers. It is now possible to create different cloud environments for different industries—public, private, finance, and information and communication technologies (ICT)—each with their own performance, redundancy, and security characteristics.

It is also the most sustainable approach possible today. Turkcell can ensure that its infrastructure resources are being used productively, with a single pane of glass across the national operation. Turkcell has issued an annual sustainability report since 2011 and wants to power its data centers entirely from renewable sources by 2030. "Our carbon disclosure is a matter of utmost importance to us" says Durmus.

Turkcell's data center services will be the engine driving Türkiye's digital transformation. The future is likely to mean greater latency, 5G, IoT, and edge data, all of which will require customers being closer to their data. Durmus sees AI and machine learning as informing the next round of service efficiency,

"Our greatest expectation is to be the first to deploy new technologies, to use them in our data center infrastructures and to provide them to our customers, and to work together with Cisco while achieving this," concludes Durmus.