The government will fully switch the policy from the existing 'Cloud First' to 'Private (Public) Cloud First'. Cloud services such as software as a service (SaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) will be fostered and expanded from the current Infrastructure as a service (IaaS). Cloud-based data centers will be also classified as separate industries and their growth will be supported.
According to industry sources on the 10th, the Ministry of Science and ICT prepared a draft of the '3rd Basic Plan for Cloud Computing Development (2022~2024)' centered on these contents.
The main point of the plan is to prepare a private Cloud-First policy, to promote the use of private cloud by the public sector, and to invigorate related industries. The goal is to expand the cloud services of private companies beyond the use of government cloud infrastructure.
Overseas, the central government is taking lead in introducing private cloud services across all areas. The U.S. pushed ahead with the central government's cloud-first policy. The UK promoted the distribution and utilization of cloud in the public sector with the 'Public Cloud First' policy. The European Union (EU) is promoting 'GAIA-X', a cloud construction project within the region to reduce dependence on global companies such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft (MS) and to secure data sovereignty.
South Korea is also pushing forward with the revision of related laws to expand the priority use of private cloud. Currently, the target of introducing the private cloud first is limited to public institutions. The Cloud Computing Act will be amended to allow the use of private clouds in the areas of central ministries and local governments as well. Through the evaluation of the government, local governments, and public institutions, incentives will be given to private cloud service organizations based on the digital service use results, which will be counted as extra points.
In order to expand SaaS, which is available in the public sector, the development of and conversion to SaaS by 2024 with the target number of 240 will be supported. In the UK, there are 12,100 SaaS services available to the public. In Korea, there are only 19 (based on the acquisition of security certification). Accordingly, by increasing the amount of SaaS available to the public, the public sector has set a goal of increasing the private cloud use rate from 5% today to 20% by 2024.
In order to expand the PaaS market, the number of participating companies and institutions of the 'open cloud platform' (PaaS-TA) will be increased from 60 this year to 300 by 2024. Following SaaS, the plan is to strengthen PaaS competitiveness by promoting joint research such as securing PaaS compatibility and developing cutting-edge features through cooperation with domestic PaaS companies.
Secure the competitiveness of the data center industry, which is emerging as the core of the cloud era. In order to revitalize the cloud data center industry, the government establishes a standard industry classification for the data center industry and conducts a fact finding survey. Based on this, a plan to foster specialized companies is established and data center technology competitiveness is strengthened.
The government has established a cloud computing development plan every three years since 2015. To establish the third basic plan to be implemented starting next year, a task force (TF), in which relevant ministries and experts participated last February, was launched and drafted.
A representative of a domestic cloud company said, “We have called for a full shift to the cloud, but the public is still hesitant to adopt a private cloud. In order to enable the expansion of cloud adoption, various policies such as incentives should be accompanied with the plan.”
An official from the Ministry of Science and ICT said, “Based on the current draft, we are in a situation where we are listening to and discussing the opinions of related ministries and others. We plan to complete the convergence of opinions and present it to the Information and Communication Strategy Committee this month at the earliest.”
By Staff Reporter Ji-SunKim river@etnews.com