NAVER Cloud Aims to Become a Top 3 Cloud Service Provider in APAC with Massive Investment in Proprietary Technologies and Expertise

- NAVER Cloud holds competitive edge with its industry-specific solutions that incorporate NAVER's know-how and technologies

- NAVER Cloud is the only cloud service provider in Korea that has proprietary technologies to develop and provide products suited to client needs

- By 2023, 80% of annual sales will be invested in original technologies to achieve a new leap forward

SEONGNAM, South Korea, Sept. 16, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- NAVER Cloud, a leading cloud service provider (CSP) in Korea, announced today at an online meetup that it will accelerate its business growth with massive investments in proprietary technologies and expertise. The company expects to become a top 3 cloud company in the Asia Pacific region, including Japan, and advance its global expansion.

NAVER Cloud's product portfolio expanded eight times in just four years, growing into the global provider-equivalent business in product numbers and technological competitiveness

Since launching its Cloud platform business in 2017 with 22 products, NAVER Cloud has grown to become a top 2 cloud service provider in Korea, with globally competitive products. In just four years, the company has expanded its product portfolio more than eight times, with 189 products in 18 categories.

Enabled by its continuous development of an expanding portfolio of globally competitive products and technologies, NAVER Cloud is offering the most scalable and easily configurable cloud service to meet the customers' diverse needs.

Industry-specialized solutions with integrated technologies leads to competitiveness and business growth expected to reach 46% growth YoY and a review of KRW 400 billion

Based on its technology investments and portfolio expansion, NAVER Cloud's revenue in 2020 grew to KRW 273.7 billion (USD 234 million), up by 41% compared to the year before. The growth rate is much higher than those of the global (29.3%) and domestic markets (18.7%). NAVER Cloud expects that its annual revenue this year will reach KRW 400 billion, up by 46% YoY.

"NAVER Cloud's core value is providing services with various technologies and expertise that NAVER has accumulated by operating a wide range of internet services, including search engine, shopping, messenger, video, games, etc.," said Kim Tae-Chang, NAVER Cloud's Chief of Cloud Business. "With our solutions, we support customers in any industry that requires best-in-class IT capabilities."

An increasing number of businesses are adopting NAVER Cloud for its highly advanced technology, supported by NAVER's deep, in-house expertise. Currently, there are more than 50,000 clients using NAVER Cloud and 55% of Korea's top 100 businesses are using the company's cloud service.

NAVER Cloud is serving to public needs as a Korea's leading cloud service provider

NAVER Cloud has established its position as a leading business in Korea by providing stability to public services during the pandemic. For example, NAVER Cloud resolved a recent access error on the COVID-19 vaccine sign-up system. The company also provided the whole range of cloud platform products for free as well as unlimited NAVER Map API to a company that shared real-time updates on infection cases and face mask availability during the beginning of the pandemic. NAVER Cloud was at the forefront of the national crisis when a vast amount of money, manpower and effort was required, and supported public needs with the sense of responsibility as a leading business in Korea.

The only Korean company with original in-house built technologies that allows it to develop and provide products that clients want

Having established itself as Korea's leading cloud company, NAVER Cloud plans to narrow the gap with global CSPs dominating the local market, and accelerate its global expansion. The company's proprietary technologies and massive investment is the key to it reaching the next level.

NAVER Cloud is the only cloud service in Korea that has proprietary technologies, including Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS) and hybrid clouds. NAVER's original technologies allows it to develop and provide products that clients want. Its differentiated technologies will be an important stepping stone for global expansion.

"As cloud adoption is spreading widely across industries, the completeness of platform service offerings and establishment of a cloud-native environment became the new criteria when selecting a cloud service provider," said Jang Bumsik, leader of NAVER Cloud's platform business. "NAVER Cloud is providing a platform in various forms that meets the needs of developers, so that they can focus on developing applications without the burden of building and managing infrastructure or platform."

According to the Open Survey respondents, the most important factors for customers when choosing a public cloud were reasonable pricing (52.1%), customer support and response to outage (41.1%), availability of various PaaS solutions (37.4%). NAVER Cloud is focusing on developing and investing in PaaS in response to customer's growing needs.

NAVER Cloud is providing differentiated technologies, including Cloud DB services that easily build and manage databases, such as MySQL, MSSQL, Redis, MongoDB and Kubernetes that effectively manage container clusters to distribute and deploy applications more efficiently and quickly as well as a Cloud Functions service that can run code without servers.

Recently, NAVER Cloud strengthened its PaaS portfolio by focusing on its data analysis platform, using NAVER's data. The company plans to launch new products this month, including Cloud Data Box, which provides data and analysis for business insights; Data Forest, a large-scale data analysis platform that is capable of big data analysis and machine learning; and Robotic Process Automation (RPA), which can automate simple and repetitive tasks through software robots to improve business efficiency and reduce operational cost.   

In addition, based on NAVER's robust data and technological capabilities, NAVER Cloud is preparing for future solutions and technologies, such as Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) linked with 5G, Robot as a Service (RaaS) and isomorphic encryption. Furthermore, its hyperscale AI, HyperCLOVA, is expanding its application to various NAVER Cloud Platform services, allowing enterprise cloud customers to apply the large-scale language model to their services through NAVER Cloud Platform.

80% of annual revenue will be invested back to technology development until 2023 to make a new leap forward

Along with its investment in technology, NAVER Cloud is continuing its large-scale investment, such as expanding its workforce more than three times and establishing an eco-friendly data center, GAK Sejong, to build the world's best-in-class hyperscale data center.

"We will invest up to 80% of our annual revenue back into technology development and manpower by 2023 to secure a new growth engine," Jang said. "NAVER Cloud has already grown to become the top 2 cloud service provider in Korea and we will firmly establish ourselves as the top 3 provider in Asia-Pacific, including Japan, expanding our business footprint in the cloud industry."

Note for media and analysts:

About NAVER

Founded in 1999, NAVER is Korea's largest Internet company with hundreds of millions of users worldwide. As a global technology company, it operates the No.1 search engine in Korea, NAVER, as well as other online services, such as LINE mobile messenger, Webtoon and Webnovel publishing, SNOW video camera app and ZEPETO metaverse platform. NAVER recorded sales of KRW 5.3 trillion (USD 4.6 billion) in 2020 and is pursuing changes and innovations in technology platforms through continuous research and development of future technologies, such as artificial intelligence, robotics and mobility.

For media inquiries, please contact Weber Shandwick Korea, NAVER Corporation's global PR agency, at naverglobalpr@webershandwick.com.