ⓒ MOBIGEN

Now it’s time to take a look at a Korean business bringing about changes in the global economy with some new ideas. 

Today, we’re going to introduce you to a big data company called Mobigen. Let’s hear from company CEO Kim Tae-soo. 

Established in 2000, Mobigen provides comprehensive solutions related to big data. The name “Mobigen” is a combination of “mobile” and “generation,” meaning a wonderful company created by generations that continue to move forward. Mobigen has a vision of becoming a sustainable company that would last for a hundred years, not a company that shines only temporarily. It has 80 more years to grow, since it was set up 21 years ago. For that purpose, the company makes constant efforts toward research and development. Currently, it sells big data solutions. 

Big data is a commonly used term now. In fact, large amounts of data did exist even before the phrase “big data” appeared. Some sectors, including the telecommunications industry, needed technology to deal with the data. 

Kim worked at a mobile telecommunications company when he was younger. While researching distributed processing of high amounts of data at the company, he thought that relevant technology would be used in various areas in the future. This belief and confidence led to the creation of Mobigen. 

Beginning in the 2010s, big data became a big buzzword across industries. Having developed expertise in processing massive amounts of telecommunications data, Mobizen released its big data solution called “IRIS.” 

IRIS is absolutely useful for handling large amounts of data. In the initial stage, only telecommunication service carriers had huge amounts of data. But now, big data is used in many different areas including the public sector, national defense and electricity. Our major clients include SK Telecom, LG Uplus, the Korea Electric Power Corporation, the Ministry of National Defense, the Agency for Defense Development and the Seoul Metropolitan Government. 

IRIS is used to deal with logs generated from mobile phones, capable of processing 100 billion records in real-time a day. It means that about 10 trillion records are collected in three months and our solution can process and analyze 3 petabytes of data in real-time. This is the best performance in Korea, as far as we know. In term of data storage capacity, 1 petabyte is equal to approximately 1,000 terabytes. Our solution is used for a number of areas that require data processing in an as large as petabyte size. 

IRIS can store immense amounts of data stably and process them in real-time without errors. Mobizen owns technology to process 3 petabytes of data in real-time. Peta is a prefix meaning 1 quadrillion or 10 to the 15th power. Processed in this way, the data are analyzed and visualized to enable people to make greater use of them. These days, this solution is sought after by many areas. But there was a time when the company found it difficult to secure clients. 

When IRIS was first released in 2008, we promoted it as an ultra high performance system capable of processing 1 billion records a day on ten servers. Except for a few mobile telecommunications companies, most firms showed little interest in it, saying that they wouldn’t need such a solution because they were dealing with less than 100 million records in an entire year. When the big data market opened in 2010, however, the clients who had once rejected us began to look for us again. 

The same was true of artificial intelligence-related technology. At first, it drew a lukewarm response. But after the emergence of AlphaGo, a computer program that plays the board game Go, people began to show interest in AI and many clients approached us. At the time, we felt that we would certainly be given opportunities some day, as long as we consistently accumulate technology and stay alive.  

Mobizen has grown in line with the expansion of the big data market. Fortunately, a government project provided the company with a chance to take another leap forward. The so-called “Data Dam” project, which is the representative task of the government’s Digital New Deal, would allow the private sector to use some 140-thousand kinds of public data. The purpose of the project is to invigorate the data industry and nurture it as the country’s new growth engine. The project is expected to spur the growth of big data companies. 

As the next step, Mobigen is preparing for a data transaction business, in the belief that the Data Dam will lay the groundwork for large amounts of data and facilitate data transactions. The company has already started developing relevant technology for convenient transactions, including the one involving data standardization. 

In this way, the company has been able to prepare for marketable technology one step ahead of its competitors, thanks to its skilled R&D staff. 

While most of big data companies in Korea repackage open source software, we’re developing products with our own technology. When it comes to platform or cloud businesses, it is essential to develop solutions with independent technology due to various reasons including licensing. About 80 percent of our 220 employees are R&D staff. The R&D workforce has accumulated technology of distributed processing of large amounts of data over the last 20 years. In addition to the big data solution called IRIS, they have developed cloud services as well to contribute to the company’s achievements. 

There are companies that do not know how to use collected data properly, although they know that the data will prove profitable. Mobigen is examining a business model, in which it forms a partnership with those companies, raise the added value of data and share the profit with the companies. It also plans on switching its solution-based business to a platform business. 

We have a plan to provide IRIS as a cloud service. Customers use it whenever they need to analyze big data and pay fees that depend on usage, rather than buy it. Through cloud application, we’ll provide IRIS as a pay-per-use service, with which we’ll explore the global market. We’ve released a beta version of the IRIS big data analytics service on Amazon Web Services. Currently, we’re preparing to enter the market in China and Japan through collaboration with local agents. You will see our products in overseas markets soon.

Mobigen has prepared for future technology step by step to establish itself as a big data company representing Korea. But it is never satisfied with the current status. It continues to create new opportunities to adapt to a new environment. We’re looking forward to the future of this company, which continues to pave the way for growth through endless innovation.