Busan is a large port city in South Korea, and is also the country’s second most-populous city after Seoul. The Busan Port Authority has announced plans to build a data center that will be used to increase its competitiveness through data analysis. 

Announced on Wednesday, the new data center will be used to store and analyze information about the latest trends among shipping companies to help increase container traffic, as well as identify business obstacles to raise productivity.

Spotting changes

Construction is expected to begin later this year, with the first phase of construction anticipated to be finished by August and the final two phases scheduled for completion by 2019. The first phase will allow port officials to identify any change or shift in shipping, and keep an eye on the quantity of goods shipped in and out of the country.

Data will be gathered about the port and shipping data, and will include identifying the times when trailers are most occupied and the duration of time spent moving goods at terminals at the Busan Port. This will benefit both shipping companies and terminal operators, allowing them to reduce waiting time and improve their productivity.

Separately a comprehensive search engine system will allow shippers and carriers to check the timetables of shipping terminals and make reservations through an integrated system – without having to go through the official website of each company.

We previously reported that Korea have the fastest data centers in the Asia Pacific, with more than two in five boasting network connections of at least 1Gbp to enterprise customers. It has also gained the interest of public cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, with the latter operating a data center in Busan.