KT Launches Large Scale Private Cloud

KT, Korea's largest fixed-line operator and its second largest mobile carrier, has launched the nation's first large-scale, private cloud. It will serve as a platform for data-intensive services to devices such as smartphones and tablet PCs, as well as to deliver computing infrastructure to its internal enterprise.

"Telcos should focus on the explosion of data from smartphones, the Internet, and multimedia. We should prepare for continued data growth in the future. There will be many opportunities to provide applications supporting this data explosion. We think cloud is the right technology solution to accomplish this," said Jung-sik Suh, senior VP, cloud services business unit, at KT.

Telecommunications provider KT elected to partner with San Francisco-based Cloudscaling, in part because of the service provider's use of commodity hardware, open source software, and automation, said Suh.

"The leaders in cloud technology are Internet companies, not telcos or enterprise IT companies," he said. "We wanted a cloud computing partner that understood our vision for cloud services, which is a cost-competitive offering at a high quality of service."

By using a private cloud, KT can eliminate systems that require the manual management of virtual servers, moving instead to automated management -- a more cost-effective and efficient approach, according to the company. In fact, the first phase will consolidate 9,800 servers onto the new cloud infrastructure, KT said.

"KT's approach to cloud computing is bold," said Randy Bias, CEO and founder of Cloudscaling. "Modeling their cloud computing architecture after the most efficient and lowest-cost public cloud providers should allow them to leapfrog regional competitors who are building clouds based on enterprise architectures."

Other partners include Intel, Citrix, Nexenta, Cloud.com, and SP Korea, according to Cloudscaling.

"We used commodity hardware to keep the up-front and ongoing [capital expenditure] costs down. The software stack is based heavily on free and/or open source software to lower the license costs. The system was designed for failure," said Bias. "Cloud infrastructure must be highly available, which means hardware and software failure should not interrupt the service. These loosely coupled services should be automatically provisioned, deployed, and managed."

The Cloudscaling team brings together experience building and managing cloud infrastructures at companies such as Amazon, GoGrid, Yahoo, Engine Yard, and Puppet Labs, and has teleco and service provider clients around the world.