01
Sense of Mission as Engineer, as well as Entrepreneur
DevStack CEO Seung-Wook Jang ambitiously said, “I established this company with a sense of mission as an engineer, and as an entrepreneur, that we need to make sure that the cloud industry, which will underpin the foundation of the Fourth Industrial Revolution in the future, should not be dominated by global corporations, such as IBM’s mainframe and Oracle’s DBMS.” His idea is to provide highly competitive services in the cloud field, which requires core technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, including high-performance distributed processing technology and broadband network interfaces. Ten years ago, Amazon, the world’s largest online bookstore, introduced cloud services to the world. Subsequently, IT companies, such as Google, MS, and Naver, followed suit. These companies started to fiercely compete with one another in the cloud battlefield. Then, Mr. Jang had worked at IT service companies, and, in late 2010, for the first time in Korea, he established a public cloud based on OpenStack.
Back then, Mr. Jang already had extensive experience as a cloud expert. He used to work at a leading electronics, communication, and Internet portal company. He also had experience in establishing two companies. To him, the cloud market was a huge opportunity that could not be missed. Furthermore, there was no more time to hesitate because the dependency of the domestic cloud market on foreign businesses was becoming more and more evident over time.
02
Aiming to Build a Research Institute Company from the Beginning
The initiation of DevStack was largely based on his experience and know-how previously accumulated while applying and commercializing OpenStack for large-scale cloud systems. The company name “DevStack” represents his commitment to becoming a leading player in OpenStack applications. While working as CTO of KINX, he was preparing a blueprint for starting a company dedicated to OpenStack. Finally, in November 2015, he established DevStack, a joint venture jointly funded by ETRI Holdings. Subsequently, the company was designated as an ETRI Research Institute Company in January 2016, raising its stature as a technology-based company. Indeed, from the moment he decided to start a company, Jang wanted it to be a research institute company. The reason was clear. For DevStack to gain a competitive edge in the field, it was essential to gain access to ETRI’s proprietary technologies, including cloud service broker technology for computing-based service brokerages. Other technologies of ETRI, such as cloud-based large-scale deep-learning high-speed processing technology and cloud-based intelligent video security platform technology, also played essential roles in the company’s building up of competitiveness. Furthermore, continuous technology exchanges with ETRI provided the technology-based company with a growth engine. In March 2017, Jang established a company-affiliated research dedicated to developing, establishing, and operating services of a hybrid cloud system allowing the parallel use of multiple clouds through R&BD support projects for research institute companies. DevStack has been proactively preparing for the future while trying to answer this fundamental question: “What more can we do with OpenStack?” The company is planning to provide various services, including high-performance parallel processing computing and IoT services for AI, VR, deep learning, FinTech, biotech, and other fields, based on its highly competitive GPU-based high-performance broadband cloud.
03
Aspiring to be the World’s Best Intelligence and Information
Infrastructure Company
The recent trends of the domestic and international cloud markets clearly indicate the urgent need for the establishment of infrastructure, such as high-performance GPU and broadband communications technology for deep learning, as well as the advancement of corresponding operating systems. Based on its competitive edge in cutting-edge advanced technologies and more efficient use of equipment, DevStack is planning to provide cloud services at a price over 30% lower than those of Amazon. By doing so, the company aims to take the domestic cloud industry to the next level. According to Mr. Jang, a company can save costs of more than 50% compared to when using Amazon services through the efficient use of virtual machines, enabled by DevStack’s support. As a talented developer and market-leading entrepreneur, Mr. Jang has made his presence felt at the forefront of the IT industry. His advice to pre-entrepreneurs is, “The only way to be practically good instead of being apparently good is to find ways to stand alone and survive without relying on external support. To this end, it is necessary to come up with systemized procurement plans for phase-specific required resources. No success without preparation. Give it a try!”
