The Seoul Region consists of two Availability Zones at launch. Each Availability Zone includes one or more geographically distinct datacenters, each with redundant power, networking, and connectivity. Each Availability Zone is designed to be resilient to any issues in another Availability Zone, enabling customers to operate production applications and databases that are more highly available, fault tolerant, and scalable than would be possible from a single datacenter.
With this launch, the AWS Cloud is now available from 32 Availability Zones across 12 geographic regions worldwide, with another four AWS Regions (and nine Availability Zones) in China, India, Ohio, and the United Kingdom to be available in the coming year.
“Customers continue to choose AWS as their infrastructure technology platform because we have a lot more functionality than any other cloud provider, a significantly larger partner and customer ecosystem built around AWS, and unmatched maturity, security, and performance,” said Andy Jassy, Senior Vice President, Amazon Web Services. “Our Korean customers and partners have asked us to build AWS infrastructure in Korea so that they can run more of their workloads on AWS and approve new initiatives that could change their business and customer experience; we’re excited about delivering this to our customers today.”
Since its inception in 2006, AWS has changed the way organizations acquire technology infrastructure. With more than one million active customers worldwide and over 50 services for compute, storage, databases, analytics, mobile, and enterprise applications, AWS has become the new normal for companies of all sizes in all industries to deploy their applications.
Nexon is Korea’s premier gaming company, providing 150 games in 150 countries. With 68 percent of the company’s total sales of US $1.5 billion coming from their overseas business, Nexon is positioning itself as a global game provider. “For gaming companies like Nexon, it is difficult to estimate if an investment on infrastructure is going to pay off. By using AWS, we’re able to experiment with different games and invest in those that develop a following. With AWS, we did not need to make a huge initial investment and are able to manage our IT infrastructure more effectively,” said Sang-Won Jung, VP of New Development at Nexon. “We are currently running our new mobile MMORPG game, HIT, 100 percent on AWS. This game set the record for achieving the number one sales ranking in the Korean mobile gaming industry in the shortest period of time. With the new AWS region in Korea, we plan to use AWS not just for mobile games, but also for latency sensitive PC games as well.”
Mirae Asset Global Investments Group, the number one asset management company in terms of profits in Korea, migrated its web properties from its on-premises data centers to the AWS Cloud. “In order to stay competitive, online and mobile businesses are more important than ever in the financial services sector. Using AWS enabled us to improve our web service environment and reduce annual management costs by 50 percent through the consolidated platform of web services such as servers, network, database, and security,” said Wan-Geu Kim, Managing Director of the IT Department at Mirae Asset. “With the launch of the AWS Region on Korean soil, we will now move even more of our sensitive and mission-critical workloads to AWS.”
Investing in Korea’s Cloud Future
Along with the new region, AWS has also worked to build a vibrant local cloud technology ecosystem in Korea. The rapidly expanding AWS Partner Network (APN) in Korea includes Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and Systems Integrators (SIs) who are building innovative solutions and services around the AWS Cloud. ISV partners such as Ahnlab, Dreamline, Hancom, IGAWorks, and TMAXSoft are providing a variety of software, security, and connectivity solutions that can be used in conjunction with AWS. SIs including Bespin Global, GS Neotek, Megazone, and Vsystems are helping enterprises to migrate to AWS, deploy mission-critical applications on AWS, or are providing a full range of monitoring, automation, and management services of customers’ AWS environments.
AWS is also delivering its AWS Educate Program to help promote cloud learning in the classroom with eight local universities, including Sogang University, Yonsei University, and Seoul National University. Since its launch locally in May 2015, over 1,000 Korean students are participating in AWS-related classes and non-profit e-learning programs, such as “Like a Lion.”
The new Region adds to Amazon’s existing cloud computing investments in Korea. Teams of Account Managers, Solutions Architects, Technical Support Engineers, Professional Services Consultants, and various other functions support customers in Korea.
