OREANDA-NEWS. July 18, 2012. Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE: 6501) today announced its launch of data center services in Korea to start on July 19, 2012 mainly targeted to Japanese companies developing businesses in Korea.

The services will be provided through collaboration with LG CNS Co., Ltd., Korea's major IT company, and LG Hitachi Co., Ltd., Hitachi Group's distributor of IT products in Korea. Specifically, the services will connect Hitachi's data centers in Japan and LG CNS's data centers in Korea, which altogether provide various data center services such as data linkages and remote data backups.

LG CNS currently owns three data center hubs in Korea and is scheduled to open a new, the fourth data center hub in December 2012. While utilizing LG CNS's data centers in Korea, Hitachi will delegate activities including operation design, technical support for users, and quality control to LG Hitachi. As a result, the collaboration will enable Hitachi to provide Japanese companies seeking IT infrastructure in Korea with data center services in such a manner that Hitachi does in Japan.

In addition to escalating price competition in Japan, intensifying competition among corporations amid the progress of globalization has been accelerating the trend of Japanese companies, in particular manufacturers, to go overseas. Investment and business development of Japanese companies are spreading in Korea as well, which increases the importance of maintenance and user support for the regional IT infrastructure.

Through collaboration with LG CNS and LG Hitachi, Hitachi will mainly offer assistances to Japanese companies developing businesses in Korea. The data center services will meet various user needs for data centers, for example, data linkage between backbone systems in Japan and portal systems in Korea.

Taking the announced launch as the first step, Hitachi aims to expand its data center services in two years by tens of data center hubs primarily in Asian region, possibly through additional collaboration with overseas data center service providers.