Busan Metropolitan City and Amazon Web Services (AWS) signed an agreement on July 25 at Busan Cloud Innovation Center to develop smart city initiatives and strengthen innovation in the public sector.
The agreement is aimed at strengthening mutual cooperation based on the success of the startup initiative made through a memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed between the city of Busan and AWS in March 2016.
The signing ceremony was attended by Deputy Mayor Yoo Jae-soo of Busan Metropolitan City, Peter Moore, who is in charge of AWS public works in Asia-Pacific region, and Ben Butler, who is in charge of the AWS Global Cloud Innovation Center.
The main contents of the new agreement are cooperation on the Busan Smart City Initiative to solve urban problems such as transportation, public security, healthcare, logistics and environment, expansion of operations of the Busan Cloud Innovation Center, and enhancing the promotion of cloud-based startups, and expanding education on the development of cloud experts.
Meanwhile, the Busan Cloud Innovation Center, which was opened in November 2016, is the first of the seven cloud innovation centers in the world supported by AWS Worldwide public sector, and is the only model among them that cooperates with local governments such as Busan City.
The Cloud Innovation Center is contributing to creating a cloud-based business ecosystem in the Busan region by discovering and nurturing promising startups, providing consulting on cloud technologies for cloud infrastructure and operating specialized education programs. Over the past three years, it provided 186 companies in Busan with consulting service on cloud business and trained more than 800 cloud professionals.
"We appreciate the AWS’ commitment to active support for new businesses pushed by Busan to resolve urban problems, and we hope that continued cooperation between the city government and AWS will provide a solid foundation for the growth of startups in Busan," said Deputy Mayor Yoo.
Meanwhile, Peter Moore said, "As Busan city has more public infrastructure challenges to address, the startup community will play a more important role in using global cloud services to quickly build innovative solutions that address Busan's top priorities such as smart cities, port management, healthcare and the movie industry.”
