KT seeks foreign partners for cloud computing

By Kim Yoo-chul

Telecommunications giant KT will make ``all-out’’ efforts to establish a significant presence in the emerging market for cloud computing, according to company officials Thursday.

Cloud computing describes a new era of Internet usage when most activities and data storage are provided online and accessed from personal computers or other devices.

Global technologies companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, IBM, HP and Cisco have leaped on the cloud bandwagon, while in Korea, KT and its industry rival, SK Telecom, are some of the companies that are competing to get out of the gate early in server-based computing.

In a news conference, KT announced plans to expand its partnership with small- and-medium-sized enterprises, which may eventually account for a significant part of its cloud computing cliental, and also explore more opportunities in overseas markets.

KT will release a ``2.0 version’’ of its cloud computing products and solutions by the end of this month, according to senior executive Suh Jeong-shik.

Earlier this year, KT announced plans to invest 120 billion won ($108 million) through 2012 to develop cloud computing services for corporate clients and promote its ``Ucloud Pro’’ service for small- and-medium-sized companies.

``About 500 small- and-medium-sized companies and 150,000 individual clients have already registered to our cloud computing services in the past months and we are increasing the numbers of our servers,’’ Suh said.

``Currently, KT has secured 18,000 servers, which is comparable to the number Amazon is operating. We will need about 100,000 servers to push our planned scale of cloud computing services.’’

International partnership is key

Cloud computing is considered crucial for telecommunications providers like KT and SK Telecom, which are scrambling to find new growth engines to make up for their declining voice services in fixed-line and mobile telephony.

KT Chairman Lee Suk-chae told reporters on the sideline of the news conference that his company is in talks with numerous international technology companies to strengthen its cloud computing efforts.

``I will soon fly to China to talk with one of our potential Chinese partners. In China, our cloud computing services are garnering rapt attention,’’ he said.

Lee’s visit to China will come after his recent meetings with the CEOs and senior executives of Cisco, Intel and Apple in the United States, where they talked about the possibilities of business collaboration.

However, Lee was coy on whether he will be aggressively seeking mergers and acquisition (M&A) opportunities to strengthen KT’s cloud computing capabilities.

``KT seems to be on the right path. But carriers must not be tempted to become overly ambitious and be stubborn about pushing their own platforms and technologies and rather focus on delivering differentiated services and technologies,’’ said an industry insider.