South Korea Ship Builder Tacks to IBM to Help Tame Big Data

SOURCE:  IBM

Seoul, Korea – 17 Sep 2012: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (DSME), one of the world’s largest shipbuilding and offshore companies, has engaged IBM to build a stronger and more resilient IT environment around IBM’s advanced storage systems to help the company better manage its Big Data challenges.

DSME, based in the coastal city of Geoje-si on the southern tip of the Korean Peninsula, specializes in building diverse heavy marine equipment, including vessels, offshore platforms, submarines, and destroyers. At 4.3 million square meters, its shipyard is one of the largest and busiest on the planet and seemingly in constant motion with its 900-ton goliath crane moving vessels and equipment 24 hours a day.

DSME has experienced dramatic growth since its founding in 1973 and has crafted an aggressive long-term roadmap for 2020 with a revamp of its IT infrastructure as a key aspect.

“With a vision of becoming the top general heavy industry group in the world, DSME aims to drive business transformation and innovation for continued growth,” said Seung uk So, Leader of the DSME IT Planning Group. “We look at IT as a strategic imperative for our business aspirations and wanted to work with a service provider that shares our vision and passion. Our engagement with IBM would help create a sophisticated storage environment, a critical infrastructure requirement in this age of data explosion.”

To do it, IBM will help DSME create a storage infrastructure built around four IBM XIV Gen3 high end disk storage systems and the IBM Storwize V7000 virtualized storage system. The systems will integrate with the DSME’s core business applications, including mail service, enterprise resource management (ERP) and database management, among others, and manage the company’s more than 255TB of data. The smarter computing solution will not only create an integrated storage environment for DMSE to better analyze and use data, but ensure readiness for disaster recovery. IBM was selected as the preferred partner over HP and EMC.

IBM XIV Gen3 is a multifunction high-end disk storage solution with an innovative architecture that offers exceptional performance and scalability. It also significantly reduces cost and complexity and enables improved performance to the application workload, such as virtualization, analysis, and cloud computing. Moreover, the system can optimize the storage performance of various applications, including database, email, online transaction processing, and ERP applications.

“IBM is working with organizations across the world to help them build efficient IT environments and enhance operational efficiency,” said Hyungsuk Kim, IBM Korea Storage Business Director. “By establishing the XIV storage system, DSME will overcome existing storage performance limitations and enjoy the benefits of improved performance and cost reduction. We are excited to be able to contribute to DSME’s long term vision and growth plans.”

IBM services clients and partners in the region from its branch office in the city of Busan, which was recently expanded to support increased local demand for its solutions and services. IBM is currently engaged in a major program of geographic expansion across Korea and other important growth markets including the opening of new branches and facilities, the recruitment of new staff and business partners and investment in training, marketing and citizenship programs. IBM currently has 12 branches in Korea in the cities of Seoul, Changwon, Incheon, Wonju, Suwon, Asan, Daejeon, Jeonju, Daegu, Busan, Gwanju and Jeju.

About DSME

Started in 1973 at Okpo Bay, Geoje Island, has since grown into the world’s premium shipbuilding and offshore contractor who is specialized in building various vessels, offshore platforms, drilling rigs, FPSO/FPUs, submarines, and destroyers. DSME’s vessels are highly appreciated for their finest quality in the world’s shipbuilding market where established major players in the world economy such as Europe and America compete.

To learn more about DSME, please visit http://www.dsme.co.kr/epub/main/index.do.

About IBM

To learn more about IBM, please visit www.ibm.com/storage and follow us on twitter @ibmstorage.

To learn more about IBM Korea, please visit: www.ibm.com/kr