MS Korea Executives Appointed as KT Division Heads... Collaboration Intensifies

KT has appointed an executive from Microsoft (MS) Korea's cloud and enterprise customer division as the new head of its division.

According to the telecommunications industry on the 2nd, KT announced its first personnel appointment of the new year, naming Jeon Seung-rok (photo), who led the cloud service 'Azure' business at MS Korea, as the head of the GTM division within the Strategy and Business Consulting sector.

The GTM division is a subordinate organization of the Strategy and Business Consulting sector, established to discover, propose, and execute AI transformation projects in cooperation with MS. KT created the Strategy and Business Consulting sector last year during an organizational restructuring to actively promote AI transformation projects.

Kim Won-tae, who served as executive director of the Enterprise Customer Business Division and head of the Enterprise Global Business Division at MS Korea, was appointed as head of the Strategic Customer Business Division of KT's Enterprise Division on the same day. Additionally, Executive Director Park Cheol-woo was appointed head of the Financial Business Division of the Enterprise Division, and Deputy Executive Director Kim Jin-seon was assigned to the Decision Intelligence Lab D-Science within the Technology Innovation Division.

Industry insiders predict that the recruitment of MS executives by KT in the first personnel move of the new year signals the start of full-scale cooperation between the two companies.

On the same day, KT CEO Kim Young-seop held a town hall meeting with employees and identified achieving remarkable results in the business-to-business (B2B) sector through collaboration with MS as the top priority goal for this year. CEO Kim also projected that through cooperation between the two companies since October last year, KT will generate cumulative sales of up to 4.6 trillion won over five years.

Specifically, sales are expected to reach 269 billion won this year, 610 billion won in 2026, 1.012 trillion won in 2027, 1.296 trillion won in 2028, and 1.37 trillion won in 2029. Furthermore, a joint investment of 2.4 trillion won will be made, and within the first quarter of this year, an 'AX (AI Transformation) specialized company' composed of experts in AI and cloud fields will be launched to develop Korea-specific specialized AI models, among other collaborative efforts.