Kakao Corp. announced on Monday that it would establish its first data center in Ansan, Gyeonggi, South of Seoul, by 2023. Kakao, Hanyang University, and the Gyeonggi and Ansan local government agreed to construct the facility inside the university’s Erica campus.
According to Kakao, the facility would cost a total of 400 billion won ($336.6 million) and 18,383 square meters of land.
Yeo Min-soo, Kakao’s CEO, said that the company aims to build the best data center in the industry with efficiency, stability, and security. It would support the growth of significant technological advancements.
Breaking Ground
Kakao would finalize the design of the industrial-educational data project this year and would start building in 2021. The company intends to complete its construction in 2023.
The data center would hold 120,000 servers and would include a total storage capacity of six billion gigabytes.
Kakao’s first data center would also provide companies’ core infrastructure as their physical base for servers, data storage, and network equipment. The company outsourced its data storage facilities before since it began in 2006, even after expanding into finance and games.
The data center would provide a solid foundation for its research and development in artificial intelligence and big data. The facility would also strengthen the company’s data management skills.
The center would also help Kakao Enterprise prepare its plans to launch a cloud service for its corporate clients.
The data center would contain eco-friendly structures like water and energy consumption monitoring systems and rainwater collection set-ups. The use of new tools could minimize or prevent damage in case of emergency blackouts.
Designated to become the “technological innovation cluster” by the government, the Ansan Science Valley would host Kakao’s data center. The municipality expects the center to generate 2,700 jobs and produce an estimated 800 billion won ($672.5 million) income.
