By
Godfrey Benjamin
February 22nd, 2023
By identifying the major cause to address per its own flaws with regard to the outage, Kakao Corp has come up with a plan to build its own data center.
Whon Namkoong, the co-CEO of a South Korean Internet company, Kakao Corp (KRX: 035720) has tendered his resignation following a mass outage of the company’s services over the past weekend.
The devastating outage hit the South Korean economy in ways not imagined. As the country’s most popular Super App, residents depend on the services offered by Kakao for messaging, ride-hailing, banking services, and more, with government officials also reliant on the app.
While the outage was not primarily the fault of Kakao, Namkoong said he apologizes for the mass outage for such a prolonged period and said that he feels “the heavy burden of responsibility” for what has happened. According to him, Kakao will do everything within its power to restore the faith.
“We apologize for causing huge inconvenience for such an extended time,” Namkoong said in a news briefing on Wednesday. “We are aware that it will take a great deal of effort over a long period of time to recover lost trust.”
The outage in Kakao’s services was fueled by a fire that gutted the SK C&C data center in the south of Seoul on Saturday. With the fire outbreak, the question of whether Kakao has not done enough to safeguard its data with appropriate backups has arisen, creating the avenue by which many faults the company.
By widespread reach, Kakao is used by as many as 47 million of the country’s 51.7 million population, a figure that gives a glimpse into how much discomfort the outage has caused. With all hands on deck to restore services, the company said it has restored some of its services including Kakaomail and TalkChannel. From its projections, the full operations are bound to be experienced in a couple of days.
Shares of Kakao rebounded 0.81% on Wednesday after crushing under the weight of the outage news. The latest resurgence is evidence investors are pacified with someone taking responsibility.
How Kakao Corp Plans to Move Forward after Outage
By identifying the major cause to address per its own flaws with regard to the outage, Kakao Corp has come up with a plan to build its own data center. The company has earmarked the sum of 460 billion KRW which is approximately worth $325 million for the project.
The construction of the data center is billed to commence in 2023 and the estimated timeline for the completion of the project is 2024. As a national infrastructure as described by South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, experts believe it is high time the company made this move to mitigate related risks in the near future.
With the resignation of Namkoong, Euntaek Hong, Head of ESG at Kakao and the co-CEO alongside Whon will take over as the sole leader of the $16 billion corporation.
