Nurturing Cloud Computing
The government presented a blueprint for the promotion of the cloud computing sector such as elevating the number of cloud companies to 800 and the cloud use rate to 30 percent by 2018. The Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning and the Ministry of Government Administration and Home Affairs finalized and announced the KCT Cloud Computing Promotion Plan to successfully go ahead with the K-ICT strategy and realize a software-oriented society along with relevant government units and the Government 3.0 Committee in a cabinet meeting on Nov. 10.
This cloud computing promotion plan is aimed at nurturing the Korean cloud computing industry with the public sector as a catalyst as part of the first basic legal plan made in compliance with the Cloud Computing Development Act enacted on Sept. 28. The plan consists of three strategies and nine tasks. The three strategies are the preemptive introduction of cloud computing with the public sector as a catalyst, the expansion of cloud computing use in the private sector, and the creation of a growth ecosystem in the Korean cloud computing industry.
First of all, Korea will prepare a turning point in the growth of the cloud computing industry in the first stage that will proceed until 2018 and take off as a cloud computing leader from 2019 to 2021 according to the plan. The Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning and the Ministry of Government Administration and Home Affairs will scale up the current cloud computing use rate of three percent ten-fold to 30 percent or more by 2018 and will create a cloud computing market amounting to 4.6 trillion won (US$4.0 billion) (the public sector amounting to 1.2 trillion won or US$1.0 billion) for three years.
In 2018, the government will turn its IT centers into cloud computing centers, and will push forward with the construction of a third center under a feasibility study by expediting the transformation of G-Cloud, the cloud computing of the government. It also aims to have 40 percent of public organizations use private cloud computing by applying private cloud computing to less important parts of resources of public organizations first.
To this end, the government will prepare institutional mechanisms such as quality and performance standards related to the introduction of private cloud computing. The government will flexibly apply the rule of banning large companies from taking part in public software projects in the case of cloud computing-related public software projects for competition with foreign companies in the cloud computing sector.
Cloud computing R&D will be expanded as well. The government will ramp up cloud computing’s proportion of its software R&D budget from nine percent this year to 20 percent in 2018. Moreover, the government will run a cloud computing specialist academy to foster specialists for companies and expand information technology research centers (ITRCs) at universities and colleges.