Aju Business Daily

SEOUL -- Kakao, South Korea's web service giant, has launched a subsidiary to provide artificial intelligence-based platform services for enterprises in an effort to compete with global leaders such as Amazon and Microsoft.

Kakao said in a statement that the company has launched "Kakao Enterprise" to provide PaaS (platform as a service) and SaaS (Software as a service) interlinked with Kakao I, an artificial intelligence (AI) platform. 

"Kakao will evolve its know-how in operating AI technologies and services into corporate-tailored services and grow into a leading enterprise IT platform operator in South Korea," Kakao Enterprise CEO Andrew(SY) Baek was quoted as saying. He said that his company would introduce a totally new technology and environment which would connect enterprises to individuals as well as enterprises to enterprises.

Amazon and Microsoft are top players in South Korea's cloud computing-based PaaS and SaaS markets. Other competitors are American companies Salesforce.com and Oracle. PaaS and SaaS are provided to businesses and enterprises in various sectors including manufacturing, security, fintech and healthcare.

To broaden an area of service, Kakao Enterprise will upgrade Kakao I to support various industries and release a messenger app for enterprises. The AI-based cloud service company said that it would cooperate with leading companies in the healthcare, financial, retail, logistics and manufacturing sectors and sign business agreements with to-be-partner companies.

So far, Kakao has provided PaaS and SaaS in car manufacturing and construction sectors to manage data and track work progress in real-time.