South Korean operator KT Corporation is launching a cloud computing offering in Japan this week, in conjunction with Softbank.The new offering, which will operate on a datacentre in Korea, exploits a growing market for overseas storage in Japan, where an increasing number of enterprises have, since the devastating earthquake in 2011, looked to neighbouring South Korea for the opportunity to minimise their data storage risk.
The new service, Cloud K, will be sold in Japan through SoftBank and is the culmination of a three-year project. KT Corp originally announced its intention to build the country’s largest private cloud in August 2010, which launched in October of that year. In June 2011, KT and SoftBank Telecom entered into a $65m cloud joint venture which saw the two companies complete the construction of cloud-ready IDCs in Gimhae, close to South Korea’s second largest city Busan and also proximal to the Japanese border, in March of last year.
KT was also among the first players to launch consumer-focused cloud computing services in South Korea – the U Cloud, a 50GB storage and back-up service. The company is vying for the number one spot in the cloud arena, and is also looking to diversify its business from core telecom services by offering an enterprise cloud solution extending beyond the capability offered by more traditional enterprise vendor solutions.
The company also plans to introduce cloud services in other countries as early as next year.