SK Telecom (CEO Jae-heon Jeong) and SK AX (President Wan-jong Kim) are embarking on a full-scale attack on the AI cloud industry.

SKT announced on the 27th that it has signed a strategic collaboration agreement (SCA) with SK AX and Amazon Web Services (AWS).

This agreement is a strategic move to accelerate cloud migration and AI innovation by combining the AI infrastructure and service capabilities of the three companies.

SK Telecom plans to provide a customized AI cloud solution by combining its telecommunications and AI technologies, SK AX's industry-specific AI construction and operation know-how, and AWS's global cloud infrastructure and AI service capabilities.

In particular, based on our experience in internalizing key services such as AWS's Bedrock and SageMaker, we build AI solutions optimized for customers in various industries, including finance, gaming, public sector, and startups.

This will help ensure the stable transition of AI projects from the pilot stage to actual operational environments and link them to business performance.

Additionally, SKT is building a 'hybrid AI cloud' by combining its own GPU resources with AWS's global infrastructure.

Sensitive data is safely stored in an on-premise environment.While providing scalability connected to AWS infrastructure, it will be possible to provide stable AI services even in industries with high data protection requirements such as finance and manufacturing.

The two companies will collaborate with K-AI Alliance members and industry partners to build an "AI Cloud Hub" encompassing infrastructure, services, and business channels, and develop industry-specific innovation models.

SK Telecom is establishing cloud AI security standards and developing a security evaluation model based on its own AI governance portal, enabling customers to focus on developing AI services safely.

SK AX designs and provides an industrial AI cloud stack that reflects industry-specific data structures and security requirements, and presents an executable model verified in actual operating environments.

To enhance cost efficiency, the three companies are also introducing AI FinOps solutions.

We analyze AWS usage patterns to suggest optimal cost structures and help reduce customers' cloud total cost of ownership (TCO) through real-time monitoring and continuous improvement.

Through this, SKT and SK AX plan to stably supply AWS cloud infrastructure and AI services for the next five years and strengthen their competitiveness in the MSP (Managed Service Provider) sector.

Heo Min-hoe, head of SKT AI Cloud, said, “We expect that this collaboration with SK AX and AWS will accelerate innovation in cloud-based AI services,” and added, “We will continue to develop diverse service capabilities as a competitive MSP.”

SK AX Cloud Division Head Shin Jang-soo said, “The SCA contract between the three companies is an important turning point that will accelerate AX innovation in each industry.”“We will provide an AI cloud environment with productivity, flexibility, cost efficiency, and security to customers in various industries such as manufacturing, finance, retail, and gaming,” he said.

“This collaboration demonstrates a new model for the AI era,” said Heo Jeong-yeol, head of AWS Korea’s partner business, emphasizing, “We will support the AI transformation of all industries in Korea.”