At the top of VMware’s priorities for Korea, a nation becoming actively engaged in cloud computing, are plans for buttressing the firm’s localization initiative and moving closer to the business of its customers.

“We need to get closer to the business of our customers and need to move up much closer, more to the consulting at the business level and become more vertically aligned so that our solutions are focused around vertical solutions,” said Mike Sumner, VMware’s director of systems engineering for the Asia Pacific region, in an interview with The Korea Herald on Tuesday. 

VMware is a U.S.-based company that provides virtualization software. In the industry, VMware stands as No. 1.

Regarding the Korean market, Sumner said VMware had become much more localized, as previously it used to operate a huge Asia Pacific region, but is now focused on Korea as a country.

The obvious reason for the change is Korea’s fast-growing reliance on cloud computing technology, as the country is the world’s most wired and is among one of the leaders in IT.

The new cloud infrastructure solutions VMware introduced on Wednesday reflect what the firm can and plans to bring to Korean clients: speed and agility.

The new solutions will cut the time needed to add new hosts to one or two minutes, down from the current half an hour.

Sumner noted that customer needs for virtualizations software has been fast changing, meaning new skill sets are required of companies.

“We’ve had to continue to evolve. We’ve had to continue to invest and develop, and also of course bring in more training,” the director said.

The skills that were around five years ago are no more, he added.

There is much more to be expected from the Korean IT sector, Sumner said, meaning there are more business opportunities for software service providers such as VMware.

“Infrastructure services are coming up, and Korea will soon move up to more value-added services,” he said, noting that next-generation smart devices such as smartphones and tablet PCs will prove to be a boon for service solutions.

Regarding security concerns, Sumner said both the corporate sector and government regulators will have to work together to create an efficient regulatory environment for cloud service providers.

By Kim Ji-hyun (jemmie@heraldcorp.com)