With an IT focus now, he makes a comeback

The head of a computer hardware marketer made a comeback in the information technology industry, vowing to refocus on growing sales of IT services rather than hardware sales. Kang Se-ho, 48, who was once known as an Internet pioneer, was recently appointed CEO of Unisys Korea Ltd., a distributor of mid- to large-computers and servers, marking his return to the IT industry since resigning in March 2002 as president and adviser of Samsung Networks Co. “When I was unemployed, I developed a digital interactive picture frame at a lab in Yeoju,” Mr. Kang said. The interactive picture frame can reproduce three-dimensional images and voice of a deceased person once digitally processed pictures and voice of the person are put into the frame. Phonetic sounds of about 1,000 words can be regenerated. “I devoted myself to developing the product in order to make public the importance of IT application services, which I have advocated,” Mr. Kang said. “I paid a lot of attention to engineering for seniors, for whom the society should take responsibility for.” The development is close to his area of specialization, since Mr. Kang received his doctoral degree in medical engineering at the University of Illinois. The CEO said he sometimes stayed in the lab for more than a week at a time. “Unisys Korea is now in a transformation,” Mr. Kang said. “The growth in sales of hardware, including computers, reached a limit, and the company is refocusing on services such as system integration.” Unisys Korea wanted Mr. Kang because he had shown he had a gift for IT consulting, and he accepted. Mr. Kang said he will establish a business model by assimilating computerization, network security and storage services to hardware sales. Mr. Kang stressed that multinationals like IBM Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. are making more sales from computerization services rather than from hardware sales. by Kim Jong-yoon