Pivotal promises shift to cloud-based enterprise

By Yoon Sung-won

Melissa Ries, Pivotal’s vice president and general manager in the Asia Pacific region, speaks about the company’s cloud-based enterprise platform service strategy in Korea during a joint press conference by VMware and Pivotal at the ASEM Tower in Samseong-dong, southern Seoul, Tuesday. / Courtesy of VMware

Global big data and cloud computing firm Pivotal said Tuesday that it is seeking a partnership with Korean conglomerates to establish a cloud-based and software-defined enterprise structure.

Pivotal pointed out that many large Korean companies need a more agile enterprise service that allows them to gradually shift to next-generation platforms while maintaining the existing IT infrastructure such as hardware-based servers and data centers.

“Korea’s conglomerates contribute more than 80 percent to the nation’s gross domestic product, and have already made significant investments in IT infrastructure.

And we understand that many of them want to transform themselves into cloud-based enterprises,” said Scott Lee, Pivotal’s general manager in Korea.

He made the remarks during a joint press conference with VMware, a global virtualization service company, at the ASEM Tower in Samseong-dong, southern Seoul, Tuesday.

“We believe our enterprise platform service is tailor-made for Korea’s environment because it helps companies maintain what they have invested so far.”

Pivotal, established as a joint company by EMC, VMware and General Electric in March 2013, has been a leading provider of big data analysis and cloud computing services for enterprises.

Lee took office as the first general manager of Pivotal’s Seoul branch office, Monday.

Melissa Ries, Pivotal’s vice president and general manager for the Asia Pacific Region, said more than 1,000 client companies have adopted Pivotal’s services.

She said the cloud-based, software-defined platform allowed them to save operational costs in renovating manufacturing processes or expanding their IT infrastructure.

During the press conference, Yoo Jae-sung, VMware’s general manager in Korea, introduced a global industry trend toward the more agile and cost-efficient third-generation cloud enterprise platforms from predecessors based on mainframe or server computers.

He said companies now can concentrate on handling data and developing business applications.

“VMware’s virtualization technology and Pivotal’s cloud-based platform service will free IT workers from concerns about hardware-based servers, storage and problems with networks,” Yoo said.

James Watters, Pivotal’s Cloud Foundry product vice president, and Andrew Shafer, Pivotal’s senior technology director, said the “Pivotal Cloud Foundry,” the company’s core service, provides various functions such as mobile management, visual analytics and corporate messaging using a single platform.

“Global companies such as IBM, HP, SAP, Intel, GE, Ericsson, NTT Communications and Verizon have joined in the Cloud Foundry Foundation and we anticipate Korea’s well-known conglomerates will also participate,” Watters said. “We are currently concentrating on big data analysis in the Korean market as we also look to work with financial institutions.”