[OSS 2018 Berlin] OpenStack Summit 2018 Berlin : Media & Analyst Briefing Session

OpenStack Foundation (OSF) held 'OpenStack Summit Berlin' at Citycube Berlin, Germany from November 13 to 15. 'OpenStack Summit Berlin' was held under the theme of 'Open Infrastructure', with over 200 sessions and workshops in more than 35 projects with experts and representatives from over 50 countries. ‘OpenStack Summit Berlin’ addresses not only the cloud but also innovative technologies and cases of various types of ‘Open Infrastructure’ ranging from edge computing, CI/CD, AI, network virtualization (NFV). And more than 200 sessions and workshops were held in more than 35 open source projects. In particular, Germany, where the summit was held, is considered to be one of the most active areas where OpenStack is used. Large telecommunication companies, enterprises and public cloud service providers in Germany are actively utilizing the OpenStack-based environment, and it is also considered to be an active region in terms of community size and activity. OpenStack Foundation has also released some new news through ‘OpenStack Summit Berlin’. First, with the current progress of four new ‘pilot projects’ which have been introduced at the OpenStack Summit in addition to the OpenStack project in the past year, the new project policy reflecting it was announced. Moreover, the application area of OpenStack has expanded to artificial intelligence and HPC, so various project updates for this were introduced. Meanwhile, the OpenStack Foundation also announced the plan to change the name of the Summit from 'OpenStack Summit' to 'Open Infrastructure Summit' from the next summit. ▲ Jonathan Bryce, executive director of OSF, and Mark Collier, COO of OSF, hosted the briefing session. ▲ The current progress with OpenStack Foundation Projects First, the OSF reported that the OpenStack’s community members are more than 100,000 recently and 187 countries and 675 organizations participated in the community. This is an increase of 33% compared to last year, and it can be seen that more community members have been introduced since the establishment of the basis as 'Open Infrastructure'. Moreover, with the expansion of these communities and the emergence of new projects, the OSF emphasized that the four ‘open’ principles, which have been maintained since the foundation, have become a firm standard in project policy and management. 'Open Infrastructure' means using open source-based components to build the latest software defined-based IT infrastructure environment. 'Open Infrastructure', where everything is based on open source, ultimately provides various strengths including flexibility beyond dependencies on specific vendors and technologies, community-based innovation, interoperability between various components, and accessibility to collective intelligence that open source community has. Moreover, ‘Open Infrastructure’ is based on a path from open-cloud native to next-generation applications. Last year, the OSF first introduced the ‘Pilot Project’ in addition to the OpenStack Project, and then established a system and plan for the management of the pilot project for about a year. Currently, there are four pilot projects, and the policy had been finalized before the summit. The 18-month pilot project will follow the ‘Open Infrastructure’ mission, four ‘open’ principles, and OSI-approved licensing models, and present one or more future releases. If a project is approved by the BoD, it will enter the ‘confirmed’ phase, which offers long-term support and investment from the Foundation. Currently, the OSF is managing five projects, of which only the OpenStack project is classified as the ‘confirmed’ stage. Mainly focusing areas of the 'Open Infrastructure' strategy by the OSF's projects are data centers, CI/CD, container infrastructure, edge computing, etc. Recently, AI and machine learning have been added, so total 5 areas were introduced. As a process for innovation in the market, a ‘four-stage of integration’ will continue to be applied; a) find common use cases, b) collaborate across communities, c) develop new technologies needed for integration, d) tests in all areas ▲ Various organizations around the world participated in the summit to use OpenStack and share cases. ▲ The latest user survey highlights a wider user base and how to use OpenStack. ▲ One of the reasons for hosting the summit in China in 2019 2H is the growth of the market. Over the last year, during the release cycle of the latest version of OpenStack, ‘Rocky’, the number of commits reached 70,000, an average of 182 per day, and the open source projects that had been so active were only Linux Kernel and Chromium. Another highlight of the community's activation side is the presence of companies that presented use cases at the summit, including keynote speakers such as BMW, Volkswagen Group, Verizon, and AT&T. The firms in the financial sector such as SBAB and UnionPay also participated in the summit, and in Korea, SK Telecom had prepared a session on the use of OpenStack-based technologies. In addition, the main content of the recent OpenStack user survey was the growth of OpenStack bare metal cloud, and it was introduced that the integration with Kubernetes led this trend. In a production environment, the use of the OpenStack 'Ironic' has risen from 9% in 2016 to 24% in 2018, and the OpenStack distribution environment based on Kubernetes has been increased up to 37%. What’s more, the survey shows that the multi-cloud OpenStack users highly rely on OpenStack. The most common use was AWS(44%), followed by Azure(28%) and GCP(24%). On average, 58% among these multi-cloud environments are OpenStack based environments. Furthermore, the diversity of the OpenStack user base was also noticeable in the survey. Organizations that still use OpenStack are related to IT, but this percentage has been slightly down from 44% this year compared to 51% last year. The biggest increase, on the other hand, is 'financial services'. The government and defense division have been increased from 4% last year to 6% this year, while retail and e-commerce segments have been increased from 3% last year to 4% this year. Meanwhile, there was a decrease in the proportion of non-IT related parts, and it is ‘telecommunication’ part, which has been decreased to 10% this year from 13% last year. On the other hand, China has been ranked as an important market where OpenStack is rapidly growing. China's private cloud market has grown at a CAGR of around 25% for the past three years, with government, manufacturing, and finance taking up large portions. In China's private cloud market, the open source accounts for 70% of the total. OpenStack became an actual ‘standard’ in this market. 4 of the top 5 private cloud vendors and 13 of the top 20 are based on OpenStack. Also, the survey showed that the adoption rate of open source solutions for enterprise users is very high.

[OSS 2018 Berlin] OpenStack Summit 2018 Berlin : Day 2 Keynotes

OpenStack Foundation (OSF) held 'OpenStack Summit Berlin' at Citycube Berlin, Germany from November 13 to 15. 'OpenStack Summit Berlin' was held under the theme of 'Open Infrastructure', with over 200 sessions and workshops in more than 35 projects with experts and representatives from over 50 countries. ‘OpenStack Summit Berlin’ addresses not only the cloud but also innovative technologies and cases of various types of ‘Open Infrastructure’ ranging from edge computing, CI/CD, AI, network virtualization (NFV). And more than 200 sessions and workshops were held in more than 35 open source projects. In particular, Germany, where the summit was held, is considered to be one of the most active areas where OpenStack is used. Large telecommunication companies, enterprises and public cloud service providers in Germany are actively utilizing the OpenStack-based environment, and it is also considered to be an active region in terms of community size and activity. OpenStack Foundation has also released some new news through ‘OpenStack Summit Berlin’. First, with the current progress of four new ‘pilot projects’ which have been introduced at the OpenStack Summit in addition to the OpenStack project in the past year, the new project policy reflecting it was announced. Moreover, the application area of OpenStack has expanded to artificial intelligence and HPC, so various project updates for this were introduced. Meanwhile, the OpenStack Foundation also announced the plan to change the name of the Summit from 'OpenStack Summit' to 'Open Infrastructure Summit' from the next summit. ▲ Mark Collier, chief operating officer, OpenStack Foundation ▲ According to the emergence of ‘pilot projects’, the mission of the foundation was extended further. As breaking news, Mark Collier, COO of OpenStack Foundation, announced that the name of the next OpenStack release, which has been decided in an alphabetical order, will be ‘Train’. He explained that the idea came from a train that kept everyone awake at the Denver PTG, since the location is near the station. Also, he stated that the next OpenStack Summit that will be held at Denver in April 2019 will be the first summit called as ‘Open Infrastructure Summit’, and the ‘Open Infrastructure Summit’ in the fourth quarter of 2019 will be the first summit held in China, a rapidly emerging market. Meanwhile, last year at the summit, OpenStack Foundation launched four new projects, including Airship, Kata Containers, StarlingX, and Zuul. And the Foundation's project management system is organized into two phases, a 'Pilot' and 'Confirmed' model, in order to create a successful community that can collaborate. Currently, four of OpenStack Foundation projects are in the 'Pilot' phase, and OpenStack project is classified as a long term project at the 'Confirmed' phase. The pilot project chosen by OpenStack Foundation starts with ‘Code’ and enters the 'Confirmed' phase for long-term investment once the community has been created with an incubation period of 18 months and enough time to continue. At this point, the pilot project should be able to participate in the movement of community and open source integration strategies for 'Open Infrastructure', follow the four 'Open' principles, and use the OSI-approved license model. Then, after presenting one or more releases after 18 months and has been approved by the board of directors, the Foundation's long-term investment and support will be provided in the 'Confirmed' project. ▲ These four ‘Open’ principles already are, and will be the fundamental to the Foundation's projects. ▲ 'Community Contributor Awards' was held. The four ‘Open’ principles, also considered as philosophies that have been around since the beginning of OpenStack, are comprised of elements of source, design, development and community. And of these, ‘open source’ has a number of licensing models to choose from, and the Foundation introduced that it uses an OSI-approved license. The community aspect is a matter of 'accessibility', emphasizing that everybody can access anywhere, and that they are open to any company or individual in their leadership position. The global side of the community is also important, so the Foundation provides tools and technologies that anyone can access and participate anywhere. In aspect of the development in ‘Open’, every individual change to the code has visibility into the process from the time it had been first written. In the design side of ‘Open’, all ideas have to be reviewed and considered after coding. In addition, while this may seem to give up 'control', it was emphasized that by collecting the opinions of all contributors, ultimately better results will be obtained. Furthermore, ‘Open Design’ enables the true ‘open collaboration’ by opening the process of decision-making to everyone. It was emphasized that the question of whether this system works well has been proven over the years. In addition, 'Open Design' in open source projects is already being widely used and achieving 'Open Collaboration' around the world. Also, among other open source projects, OpenStack project is already one of the three most active projects in history, along with the Linux Kernel and Chromium. At the same time, the reason why this system can actually be conducted is that all contributors are making differentiation and it is ‘the most democratic’ model that all participants can speak up. Next, with ‘Community Contributor Awards’ ceremony, Joseph Sandoval, cloud platform manager of Adobe, and member of User Committee, introduced about ‘Mentoring Others to Foster Diversity’. He first pointed out diversity and inclusiveness as elements that allow individuals to feel belonging to the community, and at this point, mentors can further grow diversity. And as a way to become an effective mentor, he recommended sharing experience and using open source as a platform to enable diversity. ▲ Airship project is currently 1.0 RC and aims at releasing 1.0 in Q2 2019. ▲ AT&T showed a demonstration of delivering 5G infrastructure and connecting remote sites right from the field. One of the pilot projects of OpenStack Foundation, Airship project is a platform for lifecycle management in open infrastructures, providing an end-to-end deployment and update environment for the entire site. The project was started from ‘OpenStack Helm’ in 2016. Airship upstream was begun in 2017 and was added as a pilot project at ‘Vancouver Summit’ in 2018. Through ‘OpenStack Summit Berlin’, Airship project has released 1.0 RC (Release Candidate), and the official 1.0 release is expected to be available in early 2019. Airship Project is an environment in which users provide lifecycle management such as large-scale deployments and updates in various infrastructure environments such as containers, virtual machines, bare metal, etc., and is especially active in 5G and edge computing environments where numerous remote deployment and management is required. In addition, this project is a user-led project, so AT&T and SK Telecom are leading actively for the 5G environment, NFV, VDI and big data processing. At this summit, AT&T presented the 5G environment deployment and demonstration on the cloud basis by using OpenStack and Airship project. AT&T stated that the evolution of the network, which was largely a decade-long cycle, is now entering the early stages of 5G, and 5G can accommodate larger capacity, higher reliability, more coverage, lower latency, more devices and a wider range of applications. On top of that, beyond transition of the simple generation, it is now at the key position in the implementation of new applications such as drones, smart factories, autonomous vehicles and AR/VR. And in the implementation of 5G, AT&T utilized OpenStack, helm, Airship, etc. in a network cloud on a software-defined basis, and it demonstrated that it is possible to respond immediately to a failure by deploying a containerized 5G environment on an edge infrastructure node. ▲ ‘Zuul’ started with the development environment of OpenStack, one of the largest open source projects currently. ▲ ‘StarlingX’ has an edge-specific structure. Zuul is a Project Gating System (PGS), a project derived from the development of OpenStack. And, in a project where a lot of developers are involved, if the code that does not work properly is integrated into the system, the entire project will be destroyed. In this case, Zuul automatically inspects incoming code to make sure it's working properly, and lets people focus on more creative areas. It was also added that 'free software' will need free tools. The v3 release of Zuul was presented at the last Vancouver Summit. Now, Zuul aims for more general use, rather than just project of OpenStack, and a variety of use cases are coming out. Notable new features include 'Supercedent Pipeline Managers', 'Job Pause', improved usability in mobile environments by rewriting web dashboard in React, and supporting Kubernetes build resources. In addition, BMW was introduced as the leading example of a large-scale use. That is, BMW has effectively deployed Zuul in the global automotive software development environment. StarlingX has launched its first release on October 24 as an open source edge platform for communications and industrial IOT use cases. It is an OpenStack environment for ‘Edge’, which coordinates components such as Ceph, OpenStack, and Kubernetes, and supplements them to satisfy new requirements such as high availability (HA), QoS, performance and ultra-low latency environments. Moreover, this project has provided a variety of values to solve various problems in real-world use cases, and vRAN in network edge, health care, and transportation were mentioned as the most likely to be used in the future. What’s more, it was stated that StarlingX will do three releases a year for future release plans. Next, Melissa Evers-Hood from Intel introduced that OpenStack is at the heart of software-defined infrastructures, and in terms of the importance of edge computing, more data will be generated, stored and analyzed on the edge. She also mentioned several technologies of OpenStack ecosystem from this ‘Edge’; ‘StarlingX’, which is OpenStack for edge, ‘Project Cyborg’, which enables direct use of hardware accelerator resources in OpenStack environments, ‘NEMU’, which is a hypervisor for small cloud and edge with no legacy support, and ‘Kata Container’, which is lightweight, fast and safe. ▲ Kata Container complements the lack of 'isolation' of an existing container environment. 'Kata Container' is a technology to reinforce the insufficient inter-container isolation of an existing container environment when sharing the kernel of the host. It can be used as an existing container, but it is a technology that can take advantage of VM's workload isolation and security aspects by inserting a lightweight self-kernel in the container package and connects it with the host through hardware virtualization technology. In particular, the technology can be easily integrated into the management system of an existing container, and the technology focuses on more architectural support, feature extensions, and community extensions. In addition, Kata Container technology has expanded its supporting architecture from x86 to ARM and IBM p-series, and has improved random number generation and seccomp support options. In the future version 1.4, improved log function, ipvlan/macvlan support through TC mirroring, and NEMU hypervisor support were introduced as plans. Moreover, the Kata Container community is working closely with OCI and Kubernetes communities for compatibility, and is testing regularly in Azure, GCP, and OpenStack public cloud environments. Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical, stressed that Canonical not only provides Linux and OpenStack solutions, but also manages OpenStack-based clouds more than any other company. It has supported all individual OpenStack releases and upgrades to date, so if Kubernetes environment is built on the ‘Icehouse’ environment based on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, five years ago, it will provide a way to upgrade the OpenStack environment to 'Mitaka' without changing any other parts. After upgrading the OS, it is possible to continue the upgrades of OpenStack. Of course, the latest 18.04 LTS is available for up to 10 years of use, which is a useful option for long-term applications. And he emphasized that a stable operation for a long time was done entirely of the same code that contributed to the community. Cost-to-performance is also an important part, and now private clouds need to have clear advantages in terms of performance, cost, and security compared to large public clouds. It was said that Canonical is helping enterprise customers build a 'full stack OpenStack' from hardware selection to configuration, deployment and support of an optimized OpenStack environment. He added that the OpenStack, which can be operated with fewer people, will provide clear advantages in terms of cost, and it can also use a multi-cloud strategy with an OpenStack-based full managed cloud. ▲ GPU utilization in the cloud is now available on a complete open source basis. OpenStack provided ways to directly use GPU and FPGA through Nova and Cyborg for artificial intelligence, machine learning, and HPC, which have recently become very popular. The demonstration of a speech recognition application using GPU in the OpenStack-based cloud was shown. All of the components used in the process of recognizing, translating, and outputting speech in video were open source based, and on the use of GPU on an OpenStack basis delivered several times better performance than the traditional processor. The use of FPGAs in OpenStack-based environment is possible through the 'cyborg' project. At the Summit, OpenStack showed how to configure the FPGA application environment for video recognition applications based on OpenStack infrastructure. In addition, the Summit's ‘Superuser Awards’ was awarded by Citynetwork. Citynetwork was introduced that it is running OpenStack-based public cloud in eight locations across three continents, with more than 25,000 cores in production and more than 2,000 users. ▲ This year’s ‘Superuser Awards’ was awarded by Citynetwork.

[OSS 2018 Berlin] OpenStack Summit 2018 Berlin : Day 1 Keynotes

OpenStack Foundation (OSF) held 'OpenStack Summit Berlin' at Citycube Berlin, Germany from November 13 to 15. 'OpenStack Summit Berlin' was held under the theme of 'Open Infrastructure', with over 200 sessions and workshops in more than 35 projects with experts and representatives from over 50 countries. ‘OpenStack Summit Berlin’ addresses not only the cloud but also innovative technologies and cases of various types of ‘Open Infrastructure’ ranging from edge computing, CI/CD, AI, network virtualization (NFV). And more than 200 sessions and workshops were held in more than 35 open source projects. In particular, Germany, where the summit was held, is considered to be one of the most active areas where OpenStack is used. Large telecommunication companies, enterprises and public cloud service providers in Germany are actively utilizing the OpenStack-based environment, and it is also considered to be an active region in terms of community size and activity. OpenStack Foundation has also released some new news through ‘OpenStack Summit Berlin’. First, with the current progress of four new ‘pilot projects’ which have been introduced at the OpenStack Summit in addition to the OpenStack project in the past year, the new project policy reflecting it was announced. Moreover, the application area of OpenStack has expanded to artificial intelligence and HPC, so various project updates for this were introduced. Meanwhile, the OpenStack Foundation also announced the plan to change the name of the Summit from 'OpenStack Summit' to 'Open Infrastructure Summit' from the next summit. ▲ Jonathan Bryce, executive director of OpenStack Foundation ▲ Now, OpenStack is based on all the forms of ‘Open Infrastructure’. Jonathan Bryce, executive director of OpenStack Foundation, first introduced that OpenStack Summit has become a massive global event, and this summit is a summit held in Europe again after two years in Barcelona in 2016. And he stated that at the recent events, OpenStack showed ‘Open Infrastructure’ as an important message, and there is a need to think about what opportunities there are in terms of technology and community. In addition, 81% of respondents in various surveys answered that open source is expected to be more important in the coming years. In addition, he mentioned ‘flexibility’ over the business model as a point that companies consider significant with considerations of open source, and this is consistent with the results of OpenStack Foundation’s user survey and the survey results from external agencies. This is due to the wide variety of options that the open source ecosystem brings to, and thanks to this, the OpenStack is used not only in many enterprise private clouds, but also in over 75 public cloud data centers around the world, which is a reflection of flexibility over the business. At the same time, Bryce talked about the advantages provided by open source. It protects against vendor lock-in and allows to work across multiple environments, and it also offers advantages in integration and implementation. With open source, it is possible to innovate, in some instances, faster than the market. On top of that, ‘Open Infrastructure’ reflects requested changes in infrastructure over the last few years, such as the emergence of software-defined base, new workloads like Cloud Native and AI. And ‘Open Infrastructure’ combines with open source based technologies, so it has various features including flexibility, innovation, interoperability, and collective intelligence of communities. According to Bryce, the OpenStack project is one of the most vibrant projects around the world, as it had 70,000 commits over the last year, and 182 changes per day in the terms of Rocky release. Now, OpenStack became a software-defined based ‘base infrastructure’ that connects new environments such as containers, and new applications such as AI, machine learning, and edge computing, in addition to VMs and data centers, and encompasses network environments of service providers. Therefore, as the OpenStack Summit covers not just OpenStack, but also a variety of projects, the next summit will be called ‘Open Infrastructure Summit’. ▲ In the case of Oerlikon, the manufacturing environment was optimized after collecting data from machines based on OpenStack. ▲ Kubernetes and OpenStack are now going together. In the case of Oerlikon's ManMade Fibers segment, OpenStack was used to create an infrastructure environment for integrating legacy, container and third-party workloads. In the production of yarn at a fast speed, a little failure that occurs momentarily creates a big problem. So, in order to optimize the process, Oerlikon digitized the combination of machine learning, process integration and automation, and introduced AI technology based on edge computing. This allows 69,120 sensors on 120 machines of the yarn production for the seat belts located geographically far from each other to sense data, view fault graphs, make 350,000 online decisions per day, and optimize models for data collection and training. Nick Barcet, senior director of OpenStack Product Management at Red Hat, stressed that OpenStack is a good tool for ‘Open Infrastructure’ that spans public, private cloud, service providers, NFV, etc. In addition, with many new workload including containers, AI/ML, big data, HPC and direct hardware access, a variety of deployment models, such as containers in VMs, containers on bare metal, and multi-tenant BMaaS are appearing. In these various cases, even OpenStack cannot respond to all of them with OpenStack’s internal technologies. Therefore, when OpenStack and Kubernetes meet, they can be seen as a complement to each other, rather than a competitive one, and Barcet stated that the point where they meet should be the location of ‘Open Infrastructure’. This is also because OpenStack can provide an infrastructure environment for deploying Kubernetes in large environments. And Red Hat has announced ‘Red Hat OpenStack Platform 14’, based on the release of Rocky, at the Berlin Summit. As a feature of the release, reinforcement of OpenStack-based OpenShift capabilities was introduced. This version will be released to public in December. Red Hat also introduced a new Virtual Central Office (VCO) for the edge environment. It is a flexible open pluggable framework that simplifies deployment and management of edge-based services, including OPNFV, OpenStack, Kubernetes, ODL, Ansible, etc. Besides, Red Hat mentioned ‘dynamic migration’, which brings workloads of VMware to an OpenStack-based environment with a GUI-based interface, and introduction of 3-month release cycle, which is faster that the general 6-month cycle for introducing latest functions and accelerating innovations. ▲ Sweden SBAB took advantage of active automation and 'micro services' on OpenStack basis. ▲ Hybrid service with public cloud stack on individual hardware was introduced. In the case of SBAB Bank in Sweden, it was introduced that change in the IT architecture that supports tasks was essential for speeding up important tasks. To this end, many changes were made in the architecture as follows. By dismantling the ‘monolithic’ approach in which all of the existing components were unified, it was possible to focus on speed and customer-facing applications through micro-services based on OpenStack platform. In addition, by applying automation to every possible step, waiting time has been minimized. There was also a great effect in reducing the downtime caused by modification in the deployment, which was a problem in the existing environment. Deutsche Telekom stated that OpenStack is large and sometimes complex, but it is a very flexible platform for all aspects of the cloud. Deutsche Telekom showed demonstration of changing common images into the images with the feel of famous artists, using AI technology serviced by OpenStack-based infrastructure. And it is said that OpenStack-based ‘Open Telekom Cloud’ is now being transformed from infrastructure to platform. In terms of supporting containers, Deutsche Telekom integrates the functions related to the operation of the Kubernetes with OpenStack-based platform and provides enhanced data protection through ‘Kata Container’. Moreover, ‘Day-2-Operations’, which provides professionalism in a reliable operation, offers the best user experience through accurate capacity management based on the accurate analysis and monitoring of the infrastructure. Besides, in aspect of security, the concept of ‘hybrid’ was introduced as taking advantages of both the benefits of a public cloud and the security of separated hardware. It is a full managed hybrid cloud running on separated hardware with OpenStack environment based, and it can be installed and operated in a customer’s data center. ▲ Tilman Schulz, lead, Private Cloud Services, Volkswagen AG, and Lauren Sell, vice president of marketing and community services, OpenStack Foundation ▲ ‘Fusion Cloud’ of Huawei suggests a full-stack cloud solution. Volkswagen group is a long-time user of OpenStack and has been successfully running an OpenStack-based cloud infrastructure since 2015. It introduced that the recent changes in the automobile industry have been extended not only to production and service provision of automobiles, but also to ‘mobility services’, and it was pointed out that it is important to respond cost efficiently and effectively. And in response to this demand, OpenStack-based environment has high performance, reliability, manageability, cost-efficiently, and flexibility and expandability to cope with change. For future tasks, Volkswagen group mentioned performance of upgrades that has less impact on the usage environment. Frank Weyns, chief system architect of Cloud Computing Western Europe in Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. stressed that OpenStack is now the perfect ‘Open Infrastructure’ platform to glue together new technologies, software, hardware, etc. He also highlighted that OpenStack is useful not only in the cloud but also in IoT, and it plays an important role in linking technologies for ‘digital transformation’. What’s more, ‘Full Stack Cloud’ is a model where resource convergence, data intelligence, and service innovation gather together to create the revolution of the general cloud, and the core technologies for this are AI, big data, cloud, DevOps, and edge computing. The introduction of AI technology in the cloud reduces mistakes by human in more complex cloud environments and implements ‘self-healing’ by automatically responding to abnormal situations. Furthermore, in the big data section, he explained that various databases can be combined as needed on an OpenStack basis. In case of the cloud, with a full-stack private cloud that has a feeling of public cloud, IT operations will be simplified, and the service roll-out periods will be dramatically reduced through OpenStack and Kubernetes’s automated orchestrations. Besides, in the edge computing section, the viewpoint of intelligence, mobilization, edge automation, and edge-cloud integration were introduced. ▲ The addition of functionality for Ironic’s infrastructure operators should be the results of project contributions from the operators. ▲ A case of OpenStack infrastructure upgrade without downtime was shared. Meanwhile, OpenStack is now being operated in more than 10 million cores worldwide, and well utilized in a production environment with a variety of new use cases are coming out. Also, the contribution to development is happening all over the world, and in the latest ‘Rocky’ cycle, there were 32,800 changes. A noteworthy trend in terms of contributions is that the percentage of ‘operator’ participation is increasing. With the increase of collaboration with operators in the project team and the increase of operator’s participation in PTG, it was explained that 25% of all commits are contributed by operators. At the same time, it was introduced that the latest update of Ironic allows operators to make changes to their BIOS settings with software tools to make it easier to deploy OpenStack’s bare metal. In addition, the new hardware architecture supports ARM architecture as well as x86, and the Cyborg project enabled direct use of GPU, FPGA to accelerate workloads of AI and machine learning. Besides, the size of the deployment has been further reduced to make it more versatile, and Magnum now became the official Kubernetes installer in terms of infrastructure support over compute. It was introduced that OVH was mentioned as the operating example of an OpenStack-base public cloud. OVH operates global scale bare metal, private and public cloud at 28 data centers and 360,000 servers. And OpenStack is not only the main layer of their public cloud, but also the abstract layer of bare metal and internally the foundation of its own infrastructure. In an OpenStack-based environment, they complete an initial configuration of a new region in about eight hours, and successfully completed a region-level version upgrade where up to 50,000 instances are operated in four hours without downtime with a year of R&D. In addition, NVIDIA Tesla-based GPU cloud was implemented as a hardware direct connection in an OpenStack basis via PCI passthrough.

• 

  HP Labs Boris Balacheff Vice President had Media Group Interview in Korea

  On January 14, 2019, at Millennium Seoul Hilton Hotel in Seoul, HP (HP Inc.) held a media group interview with Boris Balacheff, Chief Technologist for System Security Research and Innovation at HP Labs. At the interview, he introduced HP's view of security, countermeasures, and technologies. Currently, Boris Balacheff is coordinating security research on cyber physical system as well as personal device architectures in HP Labs. In addition to setting up technology strategies for the HP portfolio as a whole, he is also committed to academic collaboration and standard establishment in industry. On behalf of HP, Boris is participating in Trusted Computing Group (TCG) and Certification Program Committee, and is the founder of the first concepts. He has also been successful in smart card research and HP Trusted Computing research and has conducted cloud client security research to support the IT needs of cloud-based mobile customers. At the interview, he said that the starting point for the security of enterprise IT environments starts with 'devices', and the process by which companies select IT devices to use in addition to their network over the next few years is also a decision process in aspect of security. Furthermore, he emphasized that the ‘devices’ refers to all devices connected to the networks as well as the PC. And HP well understands the importance of this hardware-level security, continues to apply it to the product with ongoing research, and continues to work hard to keep the industry moving along with ongoing technology development. ▲ Boris Balacheff, Chief Technologist for System Security Research and Innovation at HP Labs Boris Balacheff stated that he has been committed to improving security at the interfaces of hardware and network, inventing key elements of early stage of trust computing technology, and designing the first version of the Trusted Computing Module (TPM). In addition to making these industry standards, Boris has taken a step further to study firmware security. Through this, he is striving to cope with the increasingly sophisticated attacks and to jointly design and respond to firmware and hardware security based on this. In hardware security, two primary vulnerable sources were mentioned. The first is that the number of devices is increasing, more and more users are using more devices, the interface between physical and mechanical world such as IoT is increasing, and new applications are emerging. Endpoint devices are used to create information, access information, and output information for users, and while there has been much effort in orchestration related to infrastructure security and cloud management security in an enterprise environment, the device environment has become more and more complex and more security-related solutions have been added. This also means that the attack surface and opportunities have increased for attackers. The second point is that devices are connected to more diverse networks in the IT environment. The workspace is changing to open space, and devices are connected to various types of wired and wireless connections anytime and anywhere, thereby weakening the security of the connection. In response to this situation, HP has been working on the overall situation of threat, and designing and developing products by analyzing where the attacks are taking place and where the attackers with what capabilities are active. Over the past several years, both the attackers and the security industry have been in a relationship of ‘cat and mouse’. Now, however, Boris explained that attackers are no longer willing to play hide-and-seek, and their attacks are showing attempts to attack at different levels, not software levels. There are two major types of attacks at ‘different levels’. The first is an attempt to penetrate deep into the system below the OS layer. In this case, if the intrusion works successfully up to the firmware level, there will be no software for detection or defense. Of course, this is not easy, but the reward will be great. It is expected that these attacks will not be done only on PCs. Another way to avoid detection of anti-malware solutions is to move to other devices on the network. And Boris introduced that HP has been working on a study of this possibility, since some of HP's businesses, such as printers and IoT devices, are connected to the network and are likely to be used in such attacks. Especially in recent years, printers are connected to almost all devices, and malware could be hidden in the network by sneaking into the devices such as printers that are less manageable or protected than PCs. In this case, it will be difficult to cope with traditional security solutions. In addition, expertise to attack firmware embedded in PCs and printers can be applied to IoT, etc., and various security-related conferences have been actively announced about attacks on printers. Whereupon, HP stressed that manufacturers are the only vendors that can respond to hardware and firmware security, and that solutions for software and network are not enough. In addition, security enhancements in terms of devices and firmware are becoming more important, so ‘HP SureStart’ technology for it continuously check whether firmware is falsified and prevent firmware tampered by malware attacks from running. Boris introduced that HP is securing resilience against attacks by applying protection, detection and recovery technologies from the hardware level in the design of enterprise-class appliances. On top of that, not only at the individual device level but also over the situation connected by network, management tools to ensure the integrity of devices are provided. Also, he emphasized that the starting point for corporates’ cyber security starts with 'devices', and the process of selecting IT devices that companies will use in addition to the network over the next few years is a process of decision in aspect of security. ▲ Boris Balacheff stated that technology-leading companies are responsible for proving and disseminating the technology. Q) (Acrofan) Recently, the area to consider regarding security is becoming wider. It seems that the movement to utilize ‘standard technology’ is becoming more prominent in the industry as a whole, focusing on cooperation among companies rather than the movement by a single corporation. For example, TPM is now used by a variety of manufacturers like the standard technology of the PC platform. In this case, it is unlikely to be differentiated from an individual corporation’s position. In this situation, what do you think about how can companies solve differentiation and verification of this differentiated technology? A) (Boris Balacheff) In terms of the quality of the security features we provide, verifying and demonstrating that the security features are working well is also a challenge in security. As a matter of fact, in the cases of TPM and TCG Group, we have tried to make various related programs. And not all TPMs are certified. However, HP only ships certified products. The review committee is also reviewing whether our assertions about security are well supported. In addition to the standard, it is not easy to prove the security features that we have differentiated, but we know that security is important at the hardware level. For instance, in the case of the 'HP SureStart' function, it is being certified by an external certification authority for microcontrollers and endpoint security controllers that are used to the function. In fact, in the position of an innovative company or leader in the industry, there are difficulties such as the burden of representing cutting-edge technology on behalf of the industry. It is also important to showcase new features and help industry follow. Although the process of the authentication is slow, it is slow and costly. But I think there may be other options besides the certification. HP also has internal processes for security technology, testing, and evaluation. Testing through external agencies is also important. In addition, HP announced the industry's first 'Bug Bounty' program for printers a few months ago. Because we have put a lot of effort into internal security technology, investment and development, we now think it is important to include outside experts. HP is testing more robust platforms internally. Nonetheless, HP believes certification is also very significant.

• 

  IBM Korea 2018 Top 5 News & 2019 Major Agenda Media Briefings

  IBM Korea hosted ‘IBM Korea 2018 Top 5 News and 2019 Major Agenda Media Briefings’ at its office in Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul, on the morning of January 3. The briefing session was organized by IBM Korea to announce the top five news in 2018 and the five major agendas in 2019, with the attendance of the President Hwa-jin Chang and CTO & Director Kyung-soon Um at IBM Korea. “After declaring to reborn as a cloud platform company in 2017, we have been focusing on that part in 2018. In 2019, IBM Korea will concentrate on the hybrid cloud business and focus on artificial intelligence and cloud platform after 2018. We ask for continuing the interest and support you gave also in 2019.” Mr. Hwa-jin Chang, president of IBM Korea, said. ▲ IBM Korea's New Year Media Briefing was held. ▲ "IBM plans to focus on the hybrid cloud business in 2019 and focus on artificial intelligence and cloud platforms after 2018," said Hwa-jin Chang, president of IBM Korea. IBM Korea's 2018 five major news were announced: 'AI', 'Cloud', 'Block Chain', 'System' and 'P-TECH'. First, it was mentioned that 2018 was a year of expansion through the ‘AI’ and IBM has made various active attempts to apply it to real business beyond proof-of-concept. For example, Korean-based artificial intelligence chatbot were created with HyundaiCard, and artificial shopping advisor was produced with Lotte Department Store, by adopting artificial intelligence inside the process to help tasks more efficiently. In addition to the chatbot, IBM also has expanded the use of enterprise artificial intelligence from a customer-facing chatbot to a variety of industrial artificial intelligence areas. In aspect of the ‘Cloud’, IBM has improved the security and stability of on-premises while simultaneously providing the speed and flexibility of a public cloud with the proliferation of ‘IBM Cloud Private Platforms’. The public cloud business of IBM Korea grew by 78 percent last year, and it was introduced that ‘private cloud’ will rise in this year. At the same time, IBM will provide the latest technologies, including Watson, blockchain, and Big Data Analysis, on all clouds, and will take leadership in several areas by acquiring Red Hat, a leader in open source technology portfolio. Next, in the 'Blockchain', the number of projects of blockchain increased 2.6 times compared to 2017, and various proof-of-concept projects were conducted in Korea. IBM launched a network that commercializes logistics and food distribution blockchain, such as TradeLens and IBM Food Trust, to demonstrate the benefits of cost savings and faster speed by making transactions transparently based on blockchain and sharing information in real time. The case of Wal – Mart adopting IBM Food Trust to reduce distribution time of fruits from 6.6 days to 2.2 seconds was introduced. In addition, Everest Group's PEAK Matrix survey of blockchain services has revealed that capability and influence of IBM's blockchain business are excellent. IBM Korea’s ‘System’, which was introduced to be used by 44 of the top 50 banks in the world, has been selected as an accounting system by KB Kookmin Bank based on security, performance, and stability. System Z of IBM Korea is programmable in Java and has been newly upgraded based on block chain technology, and its security is outstanding since all data is automatically encrypted when the application is running. Along with this, the entire lineup of Power 9 has been enhanced and completed, and the recently introduced Summit has become the fastest supercomputer in the world. ‘P-TECH’, a social contribution program, is a five-year public education system that fosters human resources related to advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, cyber security, and blockchain. ‘P-TECH’, which started as a social contribution in the United States, was the sixth in Korea after Australia, Morocco, Singapore and Taiwan, and is scheduled to open in March 2019 with Semyeong Computer High School and Gyeonggi College of Science and Technology. IBM Korea will create the Department of Artificial Intelligence Software, and plan to have one-on-one mentoring and IBM-paid internship program. ▲ In the 'Blockchain', IBM launched a network that commercializes logistics and food distribution blockchain. ▲ IBM's ‘System’ was introduced to be in use by 44 out of 50 top banks worldwide. Next, IBM Korea announced that it will focus on five areas in 2019: ‘Hybrid Cloud’, ‘Security’, ‘AI’, ‘Blockchain’, and ‘Quantum Computing’. According to the IBM Institute for Business Value, 85 percent of companies worldwide are using multi-cloud, and by 2021, 98 percent will adopt hybrid multi-cloud. In addition, various financial regulations are anticipated to be eased in 2019, including the revision of the Electronic Banking Supervision Regulation, so that many companies are expected to effectively use the private cloud and public cloud, both of which establish a cloud environment in their own data centers, together. IBM Korea is ready to offer services and solutions for multi-cloud management with its hybrid multi-cloud capability, cloud security and open source competitiveness, and will lead the market with private cloud leadership. At the same time, with the rise of AI and cloud, it was announced that ‘Security’ aspect is significant. In the situation in which personal information and data protection issues are strengthened and Europe GDPR much be complied, domestic security market size is 2.2 trillion won and security service market is 1.26 trillion won. Therefore, IBM Korea stated that it will provide security-related services through SOC in the field by a manpower that customer wants, or solve the shortage of specific security manpower by providing the security technology using artificial intelligent through SOC. Moreover, IBM Korea explained that the 'AI' is expected to grow at a CAGR of 69.8% in the Asia-Pacific region by 2021, spending $5 billion, and 70% of Asia-Pacific companies use AI. The firm asserted that it will make the process of how AI decides and studies with data transparent. Also, it will use ‘AI Open Scale’ technology to detect data bias and provide solutions to prevent misinformation during the process of training AI. In addition, IBM Korea will concentrate on 'Blockchain', expecting to reduce transaction costs by 35% by 2021 as implement industry-specific blockchain and the omni-ecosystem expands. At the government level, blockchain is expected to become more active as the government plans to encourage blockchain technology such as voting, shipping, logistics, and intergovernmental documents with the 25 billion won of budget this year. Therefore, IBM Korea has grown by 400% in the blockchain field last year and activated about 600 projects and 10 blockchain networks. In this year, IBM Korea expects the token economy to become more active this year, with the announcement and activation of various blockchain commercialization networks in each industry. Lastly, ‘Quantum Computing’ that IBM Korea saw potential and focused on was introduced. More than 100,000 people worldwide have experienced the ‘IBM Q’ through IBM Cloud, more than 5 million of experiments and more than 110 papers were published, and 1800 institutions and 300 private research institutes are using ‘IBM Q’. Currently, only Samsung Electronics is participating in the development of the quantum computer ‘IBM Q’. In the first half of this year, IBM will announce a quantum computing program in which major institutions and companies participated, and the first commercial version of the quantum computing system and quantum cryptography. ▲ IBM Korea tries to solve the shortage of specific security manpower through SOC or remote SOC. ▲ It was stated that IBM Korea will use ‘AI Open Scale’ technology to detect data bias and provide solutions. ▲ In the first half of this year, IBM Korea will announce a quantum computing program in which major organizations and companies participated.

• 

  2019 LoL Champions Korea Spring Media Day

  On January 11th, Riot Games held '2019 LoL(League of Legends) Champions Korea Spring Media Day' at LoL Park in Jongno-gu, Seoul. Ahead of '2019 LoL Champions Korea Spring (2019 LCK Spring)' that will be held from January 16th, the event was organized to introduce the features of league management, with the officials including Jun-kyu Park, Korean representative of Riot Games, Sang-heon Oh, director of esports business, Cheol-hak Kim, secretary general of Korean eSports Association in attendance. ▲ '2019 LoL Champions Korea Spring Media Day' was held. As the first order, the operation policy of '2019 LCK Spring' was introduced. According to the announcement, '2019 LCK Spring' consists of a total of two rounds, with the first round being five days a week from Wednesday to Sunday and the second round being four days a week from Thursday to Sunday. Likewise, the league will be held from January 16th to March 31st, and the playoffs will start on April 3rd. The winners will be determined by the finals on April 13th. Broadcasting of '2019 LCK Spring' can be seen on TV cable channel SBS Afreeca and new medias such as Naver, Afreeca TV, and Facebook. In the case of foreign language broadcasts, Chinese version will be broadcasted on Huya TV, English on Facebook and Twitch, French on OhGaming, Japanese on OPENREC.tv, and German on Summoners' Inn. Moreover, the organization of the stadium and the contents of '2019 LCK Spring' are being prepared with the aim of showing like sports as much as possible. It was highlighted that a coach box where coaches, coaching staffs and waiting players are located, and an analysis desk that analyzes the progress of the game will provide more excitement to users through this season. Besides, since the round stadium is structured with open-type booths, white noise and sound curtain system will be actively utilized to thoroughly separate the sound of the audience and that of the stage. ▲ The league will start from January 16th, and the winner will be decided by the finals on April 13th. ▲ TV and new media broadcasting channels were introduced. ▲ International broadcasts will be also available in five languages. ▲ The goal is to show like sports as much as possible. On the other hand, regarding the game judgement, Riot Games and Korean eSports Association will organize a joint judgment committee for unifying the process. This is because referee's decision and confirmation by management had to be done separately in the past. The joint judgement committee of each competition will be composed of six referees including technical referees dispatched by Riot Games and game referees by Korean eSports Association. They will perform tasks such as field management before the match, game operation during the match, and game analyzation after the match. Meanwhile, for enhancing coping abilities and reinforcing capabilities of the referee, '2019 LCK Professional Referee Training Plan' is being pushed forward. As a method of training the referee in accordance with this plan, six referees are selected, and the training course consisting of basic courtesy training, theoretical education and field education has to be completed. After the training, the selectees will be working as an official LCK referees. ▲ Riot Games and Korean eSports Association will organize a joint judgment committee. ▲ '2019 LCK Professional Referee Training Plan' is being pushed forward. Following the operation policy of '2019 LCK Spring', the second order was prepared to listen to the coaches and players' commitments and determinations to this season. (Afreeca Freecs 'Spirit' Da-yoon Lee) Beginning this spring season, we will prepare hard to make good results in domestic and international competitions. (Afreeca Freecs Coach Yeon-sung Choi) We aim to achieve better results than last year, and we are preparing for the best. (kt Rolster 'Smeb' Kyeong-ho Song) LCK is likely to be fierce this year. As many new players have come in, we are working hard with a new mind. (kt Rolster Coach Chang-jong Oh) We want to show a better performance by achieving parts that we could not make last year. Since new players have come, we want to show the experienced kt and new kt as well. (Gen.G Esports 'CuVee' Sung-jin Lee) As I did not show a good picture at LCK last year, I will try to show a better picture this year. (Gen.G Esports Coach Woo-beom Choi) I believe the results will be better if we enjoy, so we will enjoy the match this year. (Hanwha Life Esports 'Sangyoon' Sang-yoon Kwon) I am practicing hard to show a good performance. I ask a lot of encouragement. (Hanwha Life Esports Coach Hyun-jong Kang) We want to go higher than the last season. We'll do the best. (Damwon Gaming 'Nuclear' Jong-hyun Shin) We have been receiving much attention with the promotion to LCK. I will take both cheering and criticism as stepping stone and try hard to show a better performance this season. (Damwon Gaming Coach Mok-kyung Kim) As a new LCK player, I will always try to learn. I will try my best and prepare the season. (Sandbox Gaming 'Joker' Jae-eup Jo) We want to get positive results with a perfect match, and become a team receiving positive comments. (Sandbox Gaming Coach Ui-joon Yoo) I want to know how far we can go up with our own style. (SK Telecom T1 'Faker' Sang-hyeok Lee) The results at KeSPA Cup left much to be desired since we just had gotten togerther as a team at that time. But, in the spring season, we will come back with a better performance. (SK Telecom T1 Coach Jung-kyun Kim) This season we want to show performance that fans will be satisfied with. (Griffin 'Sword' Sung-won Choi) We will make much effort to show good performance in LCK as KeSPA Cup. (Griffin Coach Dae-ho Kim) We will fight hard with other teams and win-win each other to increase global influence. (Jin Air GreenWings 'Stitch' Seung-ju Lee) As various players have gathered, we want to work hard with our first intention. We will do the best in the direction of further development. (Jin Air GreenWings Coach Sang-yong Han) The aim is to make an aggressive team and receive positive evaluation. (Kingzone DragonX 'TusiN' Jong-ik Park) Kingzone DrangonX is a new team, so we will try harder to go higher. (Kingzone DragonX Coach Dong-hoon Kang) Since all players are working hard lately, I am going to prove that Kingzone DragonX is a remarkable team. ▲ There was time to listen to each team's coach and players' commitment to this season.

• 

  2018 LoL KeSPA Cup Finals Event

  On December 31, 2018, ‘2018 LoL KeSPA Cup Finals’ was held at Gwanggaetogwan Convention Hall of Sejong University in Gwangjin-gu, Seoul. The event was held to decide the winner of ‘2018 LoL KeSPA Cup’, which has been held from December 18th. Gen.G and Griffin, who won against KT Rolster and DAMWON Gaming in the semi-final, respectively, had a match of best of five. ▲ Gen.G and Griffin, who entered the finals, stood with the trophy in the middle. In the first set, Griffin won by succeeding in overturning the game through an engagement in a crisis situation. Griffin has been active all over the map early in the set and has made a prevailing atmosphere by destroying the bottom turret shield as well as scoring kill points. Thereupon, Gen.G fought back with kill points made by ‘CuVee’ Seong-jin Lee, and ‘Peanut’ Wang-ho Han. Also in the joint battle of the 11th minute, the situation became favorable with the performance of ‘Peanut’. Both teams exchanged attacks and tried to interfere with each other's aiming. Griffin got the first Baron, but the second Baron was stolen by Gen.G‘s ‘Peanut’, and Griffin was in crisis all over the map. However, while Griffin had been hurried and watched for a chance with 3 earth dragon buffs, at the huge engagement after the third fire dragon, ‘Lehends’ Si-woo Son won a victory with ‘Death Sentence’ skill and succeeded in turning the tables. Keeping the momentum, Griffin entered the opponent base, removed the tower and suppressor, destroyed the nexus and got the first set point. At the second set, Griffin succeeded in continuing the momentum of the previous set and once again won. At the beginning of the set, Griffin's 'Tarzan' Seung-yong Lee started pleasantly by stealing the red buff that Gen.G was hunting. At the engagement in the middle area of the 9th minute, ‘Chovy’ Ji-hoon Jeong’s Irelia jumped inside the opponent’s tower and pushed hard from the beginning with double kills. Gen.G succeeded in defending Griffin’s offensive with defensive tactics, but failed to overturn the situation while chasing the opponent for counterattack since the team rather counterattacked. At the situation, Griffin stole the Rift Herald that Gen.G was hunting and raised the pace of the offensive. Griffin continuously succeeded in destroying the second middle tower at the 23rd minute and raised the attack power by hunting the dragon. At the engagement occurred after hunting Baron, Griffin eliminated the champions of Gen.G without difficulty and arranged the middle line. In the end, Griffin successfully entered the opponent’s main base, eliminated Gen.G’s champions one by one, destroyed nexus, and finally scored the second set point. ▲ Griffin reversed the situation with the engagements won the first set. ▲ In the third set, Griffin also dominated the game by pushing the opponents hard from all areas. The third set, which was the last chance for Gen.G, was finished with a victory for Griffin who did not miss the chance. Until the first dragon appears in the game, both teams focused on the defense and did not show much movement. However, Griffin got the dragon and the clash had begun in earnest. After Griffin scored a point in the bottom area, Griffin went a little ahead with ‘Chovy’ Ji-hoon Jeong’s solo kill from Gen.G’s ‘Fly’ Yong-jun Song, but Gen.G soon narrowed the gap by recording three kills successively after Rift Herald. Nevertheless, the situation gradually became favorable to Griffin. In the top area, ‘Sword’ Sung-won Choi got Gen.G’s ‘CuVee’ Sung-jin Lee, summoned Rift Herald and succeeded in eliminating the first middle tower. Gen.G’s ‘Ruler’ Jae-hyuk Park tried counterattack with scoring several kills, but Gen.G soon lost power by blocking the attempt of stealing from Griffin’s ‘Peanut’ Wang-ho Han. Eventually, Griffin got into the main base of Gen.G, and the engagements took place on the access way at each line. Griffin managed to destroy the nexus while maintaining the dominant position, and set score 3 : 0 to win the championship. Meanwhile, as the MVP of the finals, Griffin’s ‘Chovy’ Ji-hoon Jeong, who showed powerful attack at every set, was selected. ▲ President of KeSPA, Young-man Kim, presented trophy and prize money to the winner Griffin. ▲ Griffin's 'Chovy' Ji-hoon Jeong was selected as the MVP of the finals.

• 

  HP Labs Boris Balacheff Vice President had Media Group Interview in Korea

• 

  IBM Korea 2018 Top 5 News & 2019 Major Agenda Media Briefings

• 

  2018 Kakao Press Conference Declaring ‘Hey KaKao 3.0’

• 

  Microsoft Korea 'Digital Transformation Summit' Press Conference

• 

  Qualified Teams confirmed for the FIFA eClub World Cup 2019

  The best 16 eFootball teams in the world are set to meet in London next month for the FIFA eClub World Cup 2019. Over 150 teams participated in the Online Qualification which took place in January and the 15 qualified teams will join the reigning Champion Brøndby IF, the only team to win the FIFA eClub World Cup so far by claiming the first place in the inaugural event in 2016 and in last year’s edition. The FIFA eClub World Cup will take place from 09 - 10 February 2019 in London. The qualified teams for the FIFA eClub World Cup 2019 are: AFC Ajax (Netherlands) AlNassr FC (Saudi Arabia) Brøndby IF (Denmark) NoFuchsGiven eSports (England) Dijon Football Côte-d'Or (France) ECV eSports (Netherlands) FaZe Clan (USA) Futbolist (Turkey) Imperial (England) KiNG eSports (Germany) Manchester City eSports (England) Prime NINJA (Japan) Team Vitality (France) Tricked eSport (Denmark) VFL Bochum 1848 (Germany) Wolverhampton Wanderers FC (England)

• 

  Celebrating the Year of the Pig at Hong Kong Disneyland Resort

  Hong Kong Disneyland Resort (HKDL) will be celebrating the Year of the Pig from now to February 24, 2019. Step into the park filled with Chinese New Year decorations along Main Street, U.S.A. and enjoy a truly impressive array of new seasonal meals and gifts to shop from. To ring in the Year of the Pig, the Three Little Pigs, together with Mickey Mouse and Friends in their brand new Chinese New Year outfits, will appear around the park to spread warm new year wishes to guests. Do not forget to participate in the “God of Fortune Goofy Celebration Moment” to receive some extra good luck. Also, guests visiting from February 5 to 9 will enjoy extra blessings upon entering the theme park when they are presented with a newly designed Lai See packet. Travel trade partners around the region are presenting attractive tour packages from now till March 31, 2019, offering superior value for money for a vibrant multi-day vacation at HKDL. 1. Celebrate the happiest Chinese New Year ever with Year of the Pig fun It would not be a perfect Year of the Pig without an appearance from Disney’s cute pig characters, the Three Little Pigs. Everyone loves the classic story of the pigs who built houses out of straw, sticks and bricks to keep the Big Bad Wolf away. To celebrate the Year of the Pig, the Three Little Pigs will be meeting guests at Fantasy Gardens in Fantasyland. Be sure to snap photos with them to capture these special memories with your loved ones and don’t miss the Three Little Pigs-themed decoration in Town Square. For a fulfilling start of Chinese New Year, guests should gather their fortune at the entrance of HKDL with a newly designed Lai See. These special red packets will be distributed to guests during the first five days of Chinese New Year, from February 5 to 9, while stock lasts. Each red packet includes a delicious chocolate gold coin as well as a merchandise, food and beverage coupon, and guests can share the good fortune with holiday gifts. Guests may also immerse themselves in the spirit of Chinese New Year as seasonal décor touches of gorgeous flowers and shimmering lanterns around the park bring prosperity and good fortune for the year ahead. During the upcoming holiday season, guests are invited to join the brand-new “God of Fortune Goofy Celebration Moment” at the Castle Hub Stage. This upbeat dance moment occurs twice a day with a series of traditional Chinese New Year songs. To wish guests an auspicious New Year filled with good fortune and happiness, Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald, Daisy, Goofy, Chip ’n' Dale, Duffy, ShellieMay, StellaLou and Gelatoni are waiting to meet guests at Main Street, U.S.A. in their brand new Chinese New Year outfits. Their newest friend Cookie is also joining for the first time, wearing her glimmering Chinese New Year attire. And that is not all — performers dressed in traditional Chinese outfits will appear around the park, bringing surprises and delivering happy New Year wishes to all! 2. Festive Chinese New Year food — a recipe for happiness The fun of the Year of the Pig continues with festive Chinese New Year food in the park and resort hotels. HKDL is proud to present a total of 60 Chinese New Year-themed food and beverage delights for the season, from full-blown set menus to delicious snacks. Grab good fortune at the Main Street Bakery with sweet and savory nibbles such as the “Gold Ingot,” “Ingot Pudding,” “Wishing Fish” and “Lucky Mousse Cup,” or head to Main Street Corner Cafe hosted by Coca-Cola® to feast on a “Chinese New Year Set” in Chinese, Japanese or Thai style. HKDL offers delicious dining choices for family gatherings. At Studio Lounge, guests can try out an assortment of delicacies in the “Chinese New Year Platter” or its special “Lo Hei”, which stands for good luck and prosperity. Hollywood & Dine is also offering the new “Mini Treasure Pot” for you to be blessed during the year. In Crystal Lotus, indulge in the “Everything Goes Well Dinner Set” which comes in nine dishes for some long-lasting good fortune or gather some good luck for guests with the “Golden House” set menu at World of Color Restaurant. 3. Share the blessings with collectible keepsakes HKDL is offering more than 50 new and exclusive merchandise items this year, including plush toys, accessories, apparel, stationery, pins, home decor and much more. The new items feature Duffy and Friends, Mickey and Minnie, Disney●Pixar, the Disney Princesses and the Three Little Pigs. Shop for all-new Duffy and Friends plush toys, key chains, bags and Tsum Tsum in traditional Chinese outfits featuring silky red and green with colorful floral patterns that symbolize the festive spirit! Guests can also find Cookie-themed merchandise items in traditional Chinese outfits for the first time ever. Among all the Disney style Chinese New Year gifts, guests especially love the new windmill, candy and cookie box, lai see packet or a “fai chun” banner with a lucky message. As a special offer for the Year of the Pig, guests can take home an exclusive Hamm plush toy in Chinese New Year-theme — based on the beloved film “Toy Story” — for only HK$68 when spending at least HK$200 at HKDL’s merchandise stores. 4. Extend the fun with a resort hotel stay Guests are invited to extend the magic of Chinese New Year with a stay at one of the themed resort hotels. Enjoy a complimentary in-room festive overlay in all three hotels and take part in inspirational Chinese traditions through family-friendly hotel activities, including the Feb 5-only Disney Lion Dance tour and Chinese New Year Choir across the three hotels during the first three days of the lunar new year, as well as the Disney Traditional New Year Market, which will be organized throughout the holiday season. Little guests can also join the festive themed arts and crafts sessions across three hotels. This year, guests will also have a chance to make their holiday wishes through hanging their written Wishing Card on our Chinese New Year Wishing Wall at the Hong Kong Disneyland Hotel and Disney Explorers Lodge. A stay at a resort hotel is the best way to create magical family memories! 5. Spice up the season with romantic Valentine’s Day dinners The festive magic extends to Valentine’s Day. Couples can visit the park during the CNY event period to also experience a romantic holiday together. The resort is offering close to 40 Valentine’s Day-themed merchandise items including Mickey and Minnie, Winnie the Pooh and Piglet, as well as Duffy and friends series. After enjoying their time in the park, lovebirds can pamper their significant other with a romantic Valentine’s Day dinner at Studio Lounge, Walt’s Cafe or World of Color Restaurant. It’s the perfect way to celebrate a romantic Valentine’s Day together at HKDL. 6. Special HKDL packages on offer by trade partners to share the celebratory fun Travel industry partners in Asia are offering attractive packages for visitors to experience multi-day HKDL Chinese New Year experiences. A PLAY & SHOP 2-Day Special Package is available for booking through regional travel trade partners. It includes one 2-Day admission ticket and 2 merchandise discount vouchers of HK$15 each. Cathay Pacific Airways (CX) is presenting a CX Magic-in-The-Air package inclusive of return flights on CX, one-night stay at a HKDL themed hotel and one 2-Day admission ticket. The offer is available from now to March 31, 2019, for visitors from Australia, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. Meanwhile, travel trade partners from around the region have come up with an array of HKDL themed packages in their markets, including:

• 

  Black Desert Online’s Battle Royale mode enters Early Access today

  Today Black Desert Online players can get their first taste of the Shadow Arena, a new Battle Royale-style mode that will be available after today’s regular maintenance. Anyone who has bought Black Desert Online or has access to the game via the 7-day free trial can participate in the Shadow Arena tests. The Shadow Arena will have a limited capacity and is only available for testing during certain times. Please check the Black Desert Online website and social media channels for the updated schedule announcements. - About the Shadow Arena Shadow Arena is a new mode that pits up to 50 players against each other in a struggle for survival. Gather supplies and outwit your opponents to become the last person standing. Players will start the match as a ‘Black Spirit’, a small flying specter that can then possess the bodies of one of the playable classes in Black Desert Online. For the Early Access version, the Warrior, Sorceress, Berserker, Tamer, Valkyrie, Wizard, Witch, Dark Knight and Mystic will be available allowing participants to pick from nine different playstyles By roaming the arena after finding their preferred class, players can gather skills, weapons, armor, accessories and special items such as flares, potions, traps and more. It will be essential for victory that players strategically acquire their skills and items to deal with the opposition. For more information on Black Desert Online or on how to enter the 7-day free trial, please visit blackdesertonline.com

• 

  NAVER Successfully Ended ‘CES 2019’ and Well Received for Its Technology Demonstration

  NAVER Corp. (CEO Seong-sook Han), which participated in CES 2019, the world's largest consumer electronics show held in Las Vegas for four days from January 8th to 11th, was well received by many visitors and ended the event with great success. - NAVER recorded more than 5,000 visitors, interested in a robot arm and autonomous guide robot. NAVER / NAVER LABS booth, which demonstrated location and movement-based 'Ambient Intelligence' technologies such as robotics, autonomous driving, and mobility, attracted more than 5,000 visitors over four days. The booth was designed as an opened outdoor booth that anyone can freely access, so the number of visitors was not counted separately. However, the fact that 5,000 eco bags provided as souvenirs were exhausted explains that the number of the actual visitors exceeded 5,000. In particular, during demonstrations of AMBIDEX, the world's first 5G brainless robot, and AROUND G, the indoor autonomous guide robot, a lot of visitors were crowded and the entrance was controlled for safety for a while. Seong-sook Han, CEO of NAVER, visited the booth as soon as it was opened on 8th. She said, “The movements of AMBIDEX and AROUND G are getting more natural day by day. Although it is the first technology in the world, it works stably and shows highly technical perfection.” “Although the names of companies that had been discussed cannot be revealed, concrete and actual cooperation discussions were held by meeting with officials of the leading global companies at the field, which was different from online cooperation conducted with documents. In the future, the exhibition will be held wherever there is an opportunity to showcase the technology for global cooperation.”- Sang-ok Seok, Head of NAVER LABS, said. - NAVER strengthened cooperation with global technology companies. NAVER LABS, which won the 'CES Innovation Award' for a total of four products, such as the mobile mapping system 'R1', received favorable reviews by a panel of judges, including engineers and designers, received interest from the companies that visited booths such as Intel, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, P&G, LG Electronics, LG Uplus, and S.M. Entertainment. NAVER LABS had also agreed with LG Electronics to conduct joint research on robot technology during CES. NAVER, which collaborates with global technology companies such as a digital wireless communications technologies company ‘Qualcomm’, a high-precision mapping and location services company ‘HERE’, and a location-based services company ‘Foursquare’, was given the opportunity to raise awareness and create various partnerships in the overseas stage with this event.

• 

  Park Hyatt Busan's Living Room Presents Its “MY LITTLE PARIS DESSERT BUFFET”

  Park Hyatt Busan's Living Room, a modern French restaurant, presents the “My Little Paris Dessert Buffet,” offering a sweet trip to Paris full of love and romance. The dessert buffet offers representative French desserts with colorful visuals and luxurious flavors, including eclair, macaron, Mont Blanc, mille-feuille, Paris-Brest, Madeleine, choux cream, raspberry charlotte cake and meringue. Guests can enjoy the sweet taste of Paris without going to France, alongside cute, attractive little decorations representing the city of Paris. Moreover, the dessert buffet is served with every Living Room set and is available for both lunch and dinner. Lunch sets consisting of three or four courses can be chosen according to guests' preferences, and dinner can be enjoyed in four or six courses. Our sets are presented according to the season, using the freshest ingredients that are available on the market. In addition, both lunch and dinner sets are served with premium coffee or tea. Living Room’s lunch is from 11:30 AM to 2:30 PM and dinner is available from 6:00 PM to 10:00 PM. The price of the lunch set during the week starts at KRW 39,000, and the price of the weekend lunch set starts at KRW 42,000. The dinner set starts at KRW 80,000 (all prices include taxes). For more information or reservations, please call +82 51 990 1300.