Focusing Overseas

 

Local system integration (SI) companies are striving to open up overseas markets to deal with the restriction on their participation in public sector projects and internal transactions. The saturation of the domestic IT market is urging them to make inroads abroad, too.  

For example, Samsung SDS is reshaping its corporate structure to concentrate on overseas business and turn itself into a global leading ICT service provider. It has acquired Samsung SNS to shore up its communications business as well, while expanding its logistics IT services abroad. 

These days, Samsung SDS is distinguishing itself in the Smart Converged Space (SCS) Project, which is a part of the Smart Town Project, and won the iF Design Award in January with its Knowledge Forest Service for knowledge sharing, which constitutes the SCS Project. It has recently set up the Global Delivery Center in China, too. 

In the meantime, LG CNS recently won the e-ticketing project in Athens, Greece at a cost of 200 billion won (US$187 million) to become the first Korean SI firm in the European mass transit card market. It is also planning to obtain the 1.6 trillion won (US$1.496 billion) transit card project launched in London last year. The company has already passed the conformance test of the Smart Fare Payment Project and is competing against American and German firms. The selection of the contractor is scheduled for late this year. 

At the same time, LG CNS is going to work together with Russian companies in solar power plant construction projects to build facilities with a combined capacity of 500 MW by 2020 at an investment of approximately 1.8 trillion won (US$1.683 billion). LG CNS obtained the order for a US$35 million ICT education infrastructure construction project in Columbia in January this year, too. 

SK C&C is moving to shift the focus of its global business from social overhead capital (SOC) to manufacturing, service, banking, and many other sectors requiring IT services. In addition, it is going to launch new programs in China, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Middle East so as to boost its global sales. The company recorded 176.4 billion won (US$164.9 million) in overseas sales in 2013 to post a year-on-year growth rate of as high as 57 percent. 

In this context, SK C&C will expand its global mobile commerce business into the smart card sector. It displayed its global mobile commerce solution CoreFire along with various NFC-on-SIM card products, which are the key to NFC-based mobile payment services, at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) held in Barcelona, Spain in February this year. 

POSCO ICT is currently running overseas subsidiaries in places like China, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Brazil. Last year, POSCO ICT won an urban railway construction project in Vietnam at around 100 billion won while taking part in steel mill infrastructure projects underway in Brazil, Vietnam and Indonesia. 

This year, the company supplies steel industry logistics solutions and micro pulse systems (MPSs), which are a type of electric precipitators, to the Chinese market. It is going to increase its presence in the SOC sectors in Southeast Asia as well. 

Ssangyong Information & Communication Corporation is a company specialized in sports SI. It developed and managed the On-venue Result (OVR) systems for the 2013 Kazan Universiade, provided the event management systems for the World Taekwondo Federation, and operated the OVR systems for Nanjing Youth Asian Games 2013. It is currently working on operating systems for the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and the 2016 Rio Olympics. Hyundai Information Technology is participating in financial system establishment and management projects in Vietnam while setting up e-government and portal systems in its public sector.

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