Korean IT service providers have stressed on strengthening overseas businesses and getting into the overseas market, under the banner of ‘globalization’ in the beginning of the new millennium.According to Korean IT service providers, overseas sales accounts for from less than 1% to 10% of their total sales. The result varies but overall result is below their expectation. But expectation is growing as companies are establishing many global regional offices this and next year.◇Establishment of overseas officesSamsung SDS’ started to provide services in America by establishing the American office in May 2007. This year marks the tenth anniversary. Samsung has five overseas offices: American office in 1997, Chinese office in 1999, European office in 2000, Singaporean office in 2006 and Latin American office in May 2007. LG CNS built all its seven foreign offices in the 21 century: Chinese office in 2001, European, Japanese and American offices in 2003, Indian office in 2004, Brazilian office 2005 and Indonesian office in 2007. SK C&C has three overseas offices: Mongolian office in 2001, American office in 2004 and Chinese office 2007.Daewoo Information Systems opened the first overseas office in Yantai, China in August. POSDATA built its Beijing office in September 2006. Hyundai Information Technology set up five offices: California in 1995, China in 2001, Dubai in 2002, Vietnam in 2004 and Pakistan in 2005. Of all the 17 offices, six offices (more than one third of 17) are established last and this year. That allows two different explanations: companies enter the overseas market slower than expected. And if this trend continues, the number of overseas offices will increase and show good records in the near future. ◇Records of overseas officesLG CNS shows the best performance; the company’s 2005 overseas sales was 162.8 billion KRW, 9.9% of the total sales of 1.6409 trillion KRW. In 2006, it was 199.4 billion KRW (10.4%). LG aims to get more than 200 billion KRW in the overseas market this year. SK C&C’s 2005 overseas sales was 10.2 billion KRW (0.9% of total sales). It was a 0.6% increase from 2001’s 0.3% (0.24 billion KRW). The company is showing poor overseas records compared to its competitors. Hyundai Information Technology is the first Korean exporter of SI (systems integration) technologies. Its overseas sales was 13.9 billion KRW (2.4%) in 2000, 16.7 billion (4.3%) in 2003 and 10.3 billion (8.0%) in the first quarter of this year. Daewoo Information Systems and POSDATA show little sales records as their first foreign offices are less than one year old.◇Outlook of overseas officesMost of Korean IT service providers established overseas offices to outsource IT services or to manage systems of their mother companies’ overseas affiliates. Therefore, It was natural they weren’t able to get much sales records. But as they show good results in the overseas market, regardless of supporting affiliates, the market prospect is bright. Korean IT service providers diversify their products and the strategy works. So it’s worth while to look at the records: Samsung SDS won a contract with the Beijing government to establish AFC (automatic fare collection). LG CNS was selected to provide services to the Indonesian police agency. SsangYong Information & Communication Corp. entered into a contract with Qatar to install comprehensive information system for Doha Asian Games. POSDATA began to provide IT services and export digital video recorders to China. “Korean IT service providers have wanted to penetrate the overseas market. But the results have been poor. From last year, they started to diversify their products through specification. And I think the export volume will gradually increase,” said Lee Ji-woon, a managing director of Korea Information Technology Service Industry Association.