On March 26, the Information Technology Professionals Association of Korea (IPAK) hosted a conference on how Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) and Internet Data Centers (IDCs) should be developed, at the National Computing & Information Agency (NCIA), located in Daejeon, S. Korea.
As S. Korea is ranked first in two categories of a recent 2010 United Nations e-Government Survey (January 2010), growing calls for revitalization of the Korean IT industry's export activities led to holding this conference, where participants explored strategies for boosting the Korean IT industry's exports and defined where Korea's top four ICT solution providers stand right now and where they should be headed in the future.
Ahead of the conference, about 30 experts from industry and academia were briefed on how the NCIA - which has successfully built a systemic line of defense against distributed denial of service (or DDoS) attacks and all sorts of computer viruses by reinforcing its cloud computing system, and has helped Korean IT companies make a foray into overseas markets- had been operated and on what kinds of integrated security challenges it was facing.
Jang Kwang-Soo, President of the NCIA, kicked off the conference with his congratulatory speech, which revolved around South Korea's No.1 ranking in the 2010 UN e-Government Survey, a heavy burden on the shoulders of the NCIA and the need to make a strong resolution once again to bump up the level of cyber security in S. Korea.
Following the congratulatory speech by the president of the NCIA, Cho Sung-kap, chairman of IPAK, said, "As a Korean citizen, I feel deeply proud of the NCIA's technological prowess. And I hope this conference on the development of ITSM and IDCs would pay the way for taking the Korean ICT industry to another level and for exporting state-of-the-art computing & Information centers, like the NCIA, to other countries."
Yang Seong-Taek, former Minister of Information and Communications, stressed in his keynote speech that the Korean government's stepped-up efforts to promote the Korean IT industry would be vital to helping South Korea cement its status as the No.1 IT powerhouse in the world.
The keynote speech by the former Minister of Information and Communications was followed by the presentation by Dr. Nam Goong Han, who works at the Cloud Computing Research division of the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI). Dr. Nam explained, "The energy consumption of an IDC is likely to be equivalent to that of 100,000 households in 2011. Nonetheless, servers and storage have continued to increase, making it a priority to improve the efficiency of IT equipment and lower its power consumption."
In an attempt to achieve low power consumption, the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) installed 2,048 core servers within the ETRI and 12,000 core servers in institutions - such as Chungbuk National University in South Korea, and Carnegie Mellon University in the US- to run cloud computing test beds. GLORY-CL 3.0, a technology developed by the ETRI, is designed to monitor the temperature and humidity of all servers in a network, achieve a 15-20% reduction in sever power consumption, and reduce server heat emissions by using a power distribution board (PDB). Consequently, GLORY-CL 3.0 will make a dent in datacenters' cooling costs.
Then, speakers from Samsung SDS, LG CNS, SKC&C, and POSCO ICT made presentations on the world's best solutions. They talked about their solutions' distinctive features and hard-earned knowhow on building IDC solution centers, in order to suggest ways to enhance the competitiveness of Korea's ITSM and IDCs.
Samsung SDS, the IT services arm of Samsung Group, has been providing four Korean centers and 285 regions in 45 nations with IT infrastructure services that are divided into 38 different types of services in the following five categories: desktops, networks, security, datacenters, and damage control. In particular, Samsung SDS offers a total of four solutions: MAXIGENT (a workflow-based total solution for ITSM, which is used for servers, storage, and utility), OASIS (an automated solution for identifying vulnerabilities and system levels, POLARIS (an automated scheduling solution for system managers, and Control City (an intelligent building solution, whose performance verification was completed both in S.Korea and abroad.
Backed by verified technology, both MAXIGENT and OASIS have been used across the board at all Samsung affiliated companies. And Samsung SDS is broadening its customer base to encompass Korea Exchange (KRX), Doosan Group, and the National Health Insurance Corporation (NHIC). POLARIS features functions such as automated notification of schedule changes and automated command input, so as to bring the number of man-made errors to zero. On the other hand, Control City, designed to reduce construct costs and boost sustainability, has proved its worth by bringing tangible results in the construction of Incheon International Airport, Pangyo (the name of a new town development project in S.Korea), Samsung Group office buildings, as well as Johor Bahru Station BMS in Malaysia.
The presentation made by LG CNS - the IT services arm of LG Group that boasts the biggest number of overseas subsidiaries among the Korean IT service providers- was centered on introducing numerous successful export models that had been formed over the past couple of years. S. Korea's transport system based on smart cards, for example, was exported to Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand. LG CNS successfully set up Korea's transportation card system in Wellington through three rounds of project execution. What is more, the Indonesian National Police is currently running a criminal information center, set up by LG CNS.
Taking advantage of its previous experience in building systems for Korean police agencies, LG CNS set up the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) in Indonesia, which links Police headquarters in Jakarta with 31 local police agencies. In Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, LG CNS built an emergency response network in 31 downtown areas that connects police agencies to fire departments, so as to streamline the responses to emergency calls and establish an integrated command system. Last year, LG CNS beat other tenders to win the contract to set up a financial information system that enables integrated management of Indonesia's national finance, ranging from budgets to settlement. One of LG CNS's most attention-grabbing success models is Viva Vision, a multimedia light and sound show launched by LG CNS and the Fremont Street Experience (FSE), a pedestrian mall in Las Vegas. LG CNS showcased its high-tech, digitally delivered big screen system that controls sound, lighting, and visual images at the same time. The 90-foot-high Fremont Street Experience canopy was decked out with a jaw-dropping display containing 12.5 million HD LED bulbs to dazzle visitors.
SK C&C, the technology outsourcing arm of South Korea's SK Group, developed solutions called "MIDAS" and "ITSM" to automate the job of providing fundamental services and innovate the management of systems. According to SK C&C, the automated management of datacenters will make a great contribution to ICT development as the automation improves the levels of management, security and asset management, and spares employees the burdens of getting stuck late at work and doing grunt work, thereby making improvements to the quality of their lives.
With the development of SmartECM, POSCO ICT also has made breakthroughs in the way companies handle their documents. SmartECM is a solution, geared toward making the life cycle of documents transparent to avoid unnecessary waste and encourage document sharing and utilization. SmartECM - in which information and documents filed by individuals can be stored and processed on both personal computers and the central server, and can be disposed of if needs be - allows original documents to be stored only on the central server, thereby making a big slash in the amount of duplicate files and expanding the extent to which documents can be utilized.
Cho Sung-kap, chairman of IPAK, said, "I hope the presentations on the world's best ICT solutions give you measurable insight into the way forward for the Korean IT industry as well as overseas ICT solution markets.
