Conglomerates urged to work with SMEs for Seoul's data center bid

By Yoon Sung-won

The Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) is gearing up for its cloud data center project, which will allow IT giants to bid for the public software system deal for the first time in Korea.

The SMG unveiled the preliminary standards for its project to build a cloud data center in Digital Media City, northwestern Seoul, Monday, speeding up the bidding process. The new cloud data center will be the second for the metropolitan city, following the first one in Seocho, southern Seoul.

“The new data center will help us manage data and maintain network equipment more consistently,” said an official at the SMG. “The city administration will become smoother once the cloud system is introduced.”

As the city administration has underlined mutual growth between conglomerates and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) here in its request for proposals, bidding conglomerates are expected to seek cooperation with local partners. Businesses including Samsung SDS, LG CNS, LG N-Sys, LG Uplus, Hyundai AutoEver, KT DS and SK Corp. have expressed interest in bidding on the project.

According to the SMG, the project, in which it plans to pour in 11.9 billion won, aims at expanding its IT infrastructure and capacity to accommodate increasing data traffic for the use of big data and Internet of Things (IoT) services. A cloud data center is also expected to help the city boost operational efficiency and provide public services.

The SMG said it will integrate five separate computer rooms at the new data center and replace outdated server and network equipment with new ones designed for a cloud-based system. For this, it plans to introduce x86 server equipment and open source software such as the Linux Operating System to provide more business opportunities for SMEs in the Korean software industry.

In its request for proposals, the SMG stated that it will use equipment made by local SMEs. In particular, it stressed that it will choose virtualization software, which is one of the most important parts of a cloud system, provided by an SME.

Last November, the government partly lifted regulations that have limited conglomerates bidding for public IT projects in four sectors _ IoT, big data, cloud and mobile. The SMG and the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning have also approved IT businesses affiliated with conglomerates to join the project.

At the same time, the government has emphasized that private businesses must sincerely cooperate with public organizations in dealing with possible accidents in operating cloud system services.

It also said businesses must keep the data within Korean territory. For this reason, global IT giants such as Amazon Web Service (AWS) and Microsoft have been expected to seek business opportunities in the public service sector here as they increasingly expand their data center facilities through co-location deals with local data center operators.

The SMG said it plans to finish choosing partners by July and start establishing the cloud data center by December.