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Busan Metropolitan City and Microsoft Produce the First Graduates of the Data Center Academy, Strengthening Cooperation in Talent Development

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Busan Metropolitan City (Mayor Park Heong-joon) announced that it will hold a completion ceremony at 1:00 p.m. today (December 19) at the Homers Hotel in Suyeong-gu for 28 trainees from the first cohort of the Microsoft Data Center Academy (MS DCA), a program jointly promoted in cooperation with the global information technology (IT) company Microsoft (MS).

The Microsoft Data Center Academy is a professional workforce development program for data centers that has been in operation since September this year. It is a practice-oriented, free training course totaling 450 hours, including both theory and hands-on training in server, network, and cloud technologies.

The 28 graduates are young talents who successfully completed the program. Many of them participated through linkage with the “Green Data Center Professional Workforce Training Program” operated by the Busan Information Industry Promotion Agency.

At the ceremony, a presentation session was also held to showcase the outcomes of projects carried out by the trainees in five teams. One team with an outstanding project was awarded the Busan Metropolitan Mayor’s Award.

The team projects consisted of practical, field-oriented tasks reflecting real-world needs in the cloud and network sectors, including a game server hosting service, a visual experiential tourism map platform for foreign visitors, and the development of a hybrid cloud-based ticketing system.

Based on a comprehensive evaluation of the educational outcomes, including the project presentations, six trainees will be selected later this month to participate in on-site internships at the Microsoft Data Center in Busan. The selected participants will work at the Microsoft Data Center in Busan for three months starting in January 2026, gaining hands-on field experience.

The City expects that this internship program will serve as a stepping stone toward full-time employment. It also plans to continue providing employment support, including job information, to the remaining graduates.

Meanwhile, the City plans to recruit trainees for the second cohort of the Microsoft Data Center Academy in the first half of next year.

Cho Jung-myung, Head of Data Center Community for Northeast Asia at Microsoft, said, “I would like to thank the trainees for their passion and effort in achieving outstanding results in such a short period of time.” He added, “Microsoft is growing together with local communities by fostering local talent and expanding sustainable digital infrastructure, and we will continue to support young people in Busan so they can grow into global data center technology professionals.”

Jeong Na-young, Director General of the City’s Future Technology Strategy Bureau, stated, “Busan’s digital competitiveness ultimately comes from its people.” She continued, “Building on the completion of the first cohort, we will expand collaboration with Microsoft by establishing a Microsoft Data Center Academy laboratory and making every effort to create local jobs in the data center, cloud, and artificial intelligence (AI) sectors.”