SEOUL, KOREA — The Data Center opening ceremony was held near Gimhae city hall on December 8, 2011. Despite the modest size, the event drew high-profile attendants like the Mayor of Gimhae, local members of parliament, and personnel from Korea Communications Commission and Ministry of the Knowledge Economy.
Such a huge interest in the ceremony can be explained by the fact that it was to celebrate opening of the Global data Center built jointly by KT and SoftBank. Last year, at a conference in Japan, KT announced that they would provide a data center service for Japanese companies to preparation for ‘restricted electricity use’ in the event of a future earthquake in Japan.
Having led data center services in Korea with nation-wide IDC centers, KT has built Korea’s first cloud data center (CDC) in Cheonan in an attempt to take the lead in cloud computing.
Personal Cloud Service
The first cloud computing service brought to life in Korea includes N Drive of NHN and U Cloud of KT. This storage unit provided service to individual users.
U Cloud, personalized cloud service, reached 1.4 million users as of December 2011, after reaching one million subscribers within a year since its launch.
U Cloud provides 50GB of default storage for Olleh users and, once the relevant program is installed in PC, it automatically backs up the data in a designated folder to the online storage. U Cloud enables clients to use the stored data wherever they are as long as they have access to the internet.
The data can be accessed and used as soon as users install the application in their smartphone or tablet PC. Differentiated from N Screen service that supports video, text and photos through home-based network or special terminal, KT is providing cloud-based service that can be accessed from any terminal. Users can also watch a video with U Cloud home without having to go through separate conversion process.
Recently, the company launched three new apps – Olleh Photo Up, Olleh Message Up, and Olleh Record Up. By linking with U Cloud service, photos are automatically saved, text messages, and voice files and can be accessed from different terminals.
The cloud-linked apps released this time will help users manage the memory capacity in their mobile phones by enabling real-time uploading and downloading of the files with the 50GB U Cloud.
KT is also preparing for various services based on personal storage and planns to open relevant API in the near future so that software developers can take advantage of U Cloud service as well.
Furthermore, the “open-in” feature, soon to be updated, will allow users to open stored data in another app with the U Cloud home application and modify data using a separate application.
