Synology vet James Chen has been appointed CEO for Synology America to spearhead its enterprise storage market business growth with data protection appliances taking the lead role.
Taiwan-based Synology, founded in 2000, is a strong consumer and SMB supplier of NAS filers, such as the DiskStation, RackStation and FlashStation, FS arrays, SANs, routers, video surveillance gear and C2 public cloud services for backup, file storage, and personal (identity) security. It is launching an ActiveProtect line of backup appliances.
Chen, an ex-CEO of Synology from 2016 to 2017, stated: “Over the past 20 years, Synology has grown from serving personal and home users to supporting SOHO and SMB environments, and now we’re furthering our progress in the enterprise market with advanced solutions like high-performance flash arrays and high-density archiving systems.”
The company has shipped more than 13 million systems with in excess of 18 million users. The US accounts for 30 percent of its revenues and it counts more than half of the Fortune 500 as customers – so it has an enterprise market presence already. Chen said the US market represents the cornerstone of Synology’s growth.
He said the growth plans are centered on products, sales partners and services: “On the product side, we’ve laid a strong foundation with Active Backup for Business (ABB), and we are set to enhance our primary storage lineup with scale-out storage solutions. In terms of sales channels, strengthening partnerships and streamlining operations will position us to better support our partners and customers. And, because business continuity is vital for enterprise customers, we’re introducing service plans tailored to meet their specific needs.”
The upcoming ActiveProtect line of backup appliances, including the DP7400 series planned for next year, are part of this, being scalable, centralized management systems tailored for large enterprises. ActiveProtect centralizes organization-wide data protection policies, tasks, and appliances to offer a unified management and control plane. There is coverage for endpoints, servers, hypervisors, storage systems, databases, and Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace services. The software features incremental backups with source-side, global, and cross-site deduplication to reduce operating cost.
IT teams can deploy ActiveProtect appliances in minutes and create data protection plans, with immutability, air gapping policies and recovery procedures, via global policies using a centralized console. The competition is seen as being led by Veeam.
Each ActiveProtect appliance can operate in standalone or cluster-managed modes. Storage capacity can be tiered with Synology NAS/SAN storage solutions, C2 Object Storage, and other ActiveProtect appliances in the cluster. Additionally, existing Synology Active Backup for Business deployments are manageable from the unified interface, providing high deployment flexibility.
He wants to move quickly: “This first year is an exciting one, where we plan to expand our support offerings to effectively service enterprise clients and bring true enterprise-level data protection solutions to the U.S. market. Our goal is to empower customers to securely manage their data, optimize IT infrastructure, and ensure business continuity in a rapidly changing landscape.”
Chen says data will be a focus: “Businesses today rely on data for everything from managing customer interactions to internal systems like email and document management. Synology delivers a comprehensive suite of storage and backup solutions that are both powerful and cost-effective. For businesses aiming to do more with less, Synology is the trusted choice.”
The main storage system suppliers can expect to see more Synology competition as Chen moves the US Synology business up market.
