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| Kim Dong-hoon, director of the cloud business department of NHN Entertainment, speaks during a media conference at the firm's building in Pangyo, Gyeonggi Province, Tuesday. / Courtesy of NHN Entertainment |
By Jun Ji-hye
NHN Entertainment will offer its clouding computing services to more financial companies and online shopping malls, going after Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft and other multinational service providers, the company said Tuesday.
It also plans to open data centers in Japan and the United States within the first half of the year to make inroads into global markets.
The move is in line with the firm's efforts to transform itself into a more comprehensive information technology firm from a game company.
"With our TOAST Cloud, we will target corporate clients in the financial and commerce sectors in 2019," said Kim Dong-hoon, a director of the cloud business department of NHN Entertainment, during a media conference held at the firm's building in Pangyo, Gyeonggi Province.
He said demand from financial companies for cloud computing services is expected to rapidly increase this year, which will become an opportunity for his firm to offer distinguished services.
NHN Enterprise officially launched TOAST Cloud, which stands for "toward, art, science and technology," in December 2014. Then, the firm migrated its systems and those of its subsidiaries to cloud computing services before expanding the services to external customers in 2015.
As of December 2018, the firm had secured 500 corporate clients including KB Financial Group, Ticket Monster and Chungnam National University.
Kim said NHN Entertainment is capable of offering diverse cloud computing services, including hybrid cloud, private cloud and multi cloud, in accordance with the characteristics of each company.
"Service disruption and security problems are the most sensitive issues in offering cloud computing services. Our experience will become our competitive power," Kim said, noting that stability of TOAST Cloud has been verified through the firm's various IT service experiences.
In a bid to enter global markets, the firm will open the data centers in Japan and the U.S. in February and May, respectively.
The firm will directly target local companies in those countries, it said, stressing that this is the same strategy that AWS and Microsoft have used to enter the overseas markets.
"We aim to achieve 100 billion won ($88 million) in sales in three years in Japan," Kim said.
