NHN Cloud Advances Globally: "Achieving 1 Trillion KRW Revenue by 2025"

[Asia Economy Reporter Buaeri] NHN has thrown down the gauntlet to the global cloud market dominated by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft (MS). NHN is showing aggressive moves to target the global market, including acquiring ‘Cloudnexa,’ a partner company of AWS.

On the 11th, NHN unveiled its new cloud business brand, ‘NHN Cloud,’ and announced plans for global expansion at a business strategy press conference. The new brand name reflects the intention to grow as a leader in the global cloud market beyond Korea. Lee Jin-su, CEO of NHN ACE, said, "Based on accumulated technological capabilities, we will actively expand our mid- to long-term global business through sales network cooperation with global companies."

NHN currently offers 120 products in the cloud sector and has secured over 3,000 corporate customers. Last year, total cloud sales exceeded 160 billion KRW. NHN plans to achieve annual cloud sales of 1 trillion KRW by 2025. To this end, it will expand its business in three areas: global services, cloud data centers, and data & artificial intelligence (AI).

NHN especially plans to strengthen its global capabilities centered on cloud management services (MSP) in Japan and North America. NHN started cloud region (data center) services in Japan and North America in 2019 and is also considering entry into Southeast Asia. NHN Global, its North American subsidiary, acquired Cloudnexa, an AWS consulting partner, in January.

NHN is also targeting the global market with its data solutions business. NHN’s integrated data solution ‘Dighty’ is a unified data platform that combines internal and external corporate data to assist in precise targeted marketing. NHN has partnered with the UK-based global IT company ‘Vango,’ and last year the two companies jointly established the data solution company ‘Audience’ locally. They have completed preparations for global business expansion by providing customer data platform (CDP) services in Europe and building a sales network.

NHN is focusing on expanding cloud infrastructure through the construction of regional data centers. NHN built the eco-friendly urban data center ‘Pangyo NCC’ with its own technology and is currently constructing data centers in Gimhae, Gyeongnam, and Gwangju Metropolitan City. The Gimhae data center, which NHN is promoting with an investment of 500 billion KRW, is four times the size of Pangyo. It is expected to serve as a core data center for smart cities by playing roles such as smart factory advancement and AI solution construction. Kim Dong-hoon, Executive Director in charge of the cloud business at NHN, stated, "The Gimhae data center will be built as a data center optimized for global company services."

Gwangju will be developed as an AI data center. The Gwangju data center is expected to support R&D infrastructure and platforms for companies and universities, while contributing to the development of various industries through information reprocessing. Executive Director Kim emphasized, "NHN Cloud will support a service infrastructure environment that anyone can easily encounter and conveniently use in daily life."