Korea Telecom (KT) and Softbank will enter a cloud computing JV worth 70 billion won ($65 million) to tap into the market for Japanese companies left crippled by Japan’s power crisis following the country’s March 11 earthquake.
The venture, to be set up by September, will see KT hold a 51% stake with Softbank holding the remaining 49%.
Both firms will open a data center by October in Gimhae, near Busan in South Korea to offer cloud services to Japanese companies seeking a more reliable power source for their data centers.
Companies in Japan were told to cut back on electricity use by 15% from July as part of the country’s efforts to cope with the energy shortage, a move that might prove a challenge to certain companies’ data center operations.
According to Yonhap News, Softbank intends for the project to protect critical corporate systems and data from natural disasters such as earthquakes.
KT had last week announced its intention to generate nearly half its revenue from areas outside of core telecom by 2015, in the face of a saturated domestic telecom market.