KT Cloud held a groundbreaking ceremony for the 'artificial intelligence cloud data center' (AI CDC) on the 29th in Yecheon, North Gyeongsang Province. This is the first data center in the nation built under a public-private partnership model, which has now commenced operations.
KT Cloud secured land and auxiliary facilities in 2023 in line with the government's policy for decentralized regional data centers and completed the facility in collaboration with Gyeongsangbuk-do and Yecheon County Office. The ceremony was attended by over 200 officials, including Choi Ji-woong, CEO of KT Cloud; Yang Geum-hee, Deputy Governor of Gyeongsangbuk-do; Kim Hak-dong, Mayor of Yecheon; Lee Hyung-sik, Provincial Council Member; Kim Byeong-kyun, Head of KT's Daegu-Gyeongbuk Regional Headquarters; and Min Young-hak, CEO of CJ Logistics.
The AI cloud data center in North Gyeongsang Province, which KT Cloud invested approximately 110 billion won in, was built on a site of 7,970 square meters (㎡) with a total floor area of about 9,828 ㎡. The four-story building has a power supply capacity of 10 megawatts (㎿) and an IT capacity of 6 ㎿.
The company noted that 'it will play an important role as a hub for providing cloud services to regional public and private corporations' and that 'it was constructed with the highest seismic classification in the country and designed to provide customized infrastructure for each customer by creating separate high-density and low-density server rack spaces.'
KT Cloud plans to offer cloud-native infrastructure services based on OpenStack and Kubernetes technologies through this data center within the latter half of the year. The company will further strengthen its multi-cloud strategy and establish a next-generation cloud platform that can flexibly respond to domestic AI infrastructure demand. Operations have commenced with the goal of securing an infrastructure capacity of more than 320 ㎿ by 2030.
Lee Cheol-woo, Governor of Gyeongsangbuk-do, said, 'The results were made possible by the passion and cooperation of each agency since the signing of the memorandum of understanding (MOU) with KT in January 2022.' He added, 'We will actively promote various projects, including fostering local talent and attracting corporations, centered around this cloud data center to create an AI and data industry ecosystem.'
Choi Ji-woong, CEO of KT Cloud, emphasized that 'the Gyeongbuk AI cloud data center, developed in collaboration with Gyeongsangbuk-do, is significant as the nation's first public-private partnership model,' stating, 'We will not only contribute to invigorating the local data industry but also proactively respond to domestic AI cloud market demand by strategically expanding new data centers based on customer needs.'