Channel Post speaks to Nick Jheng, the Sales Account Manager at Synology about its products, market trends, and channel partner program
What sort of market do you see for NAS drives in the region?
Data storage is a universal need for both personal users and enterprise users. So, it’s not limited to a certain market segment; whether it’s retail, hospitality, education, public sectors – they all will have storage needs. Data storage is the core value of Synology NAS. There are more value-added services that can also meet individual users and SMBs to the various needs of enterprises. In the Middle East, most of our local customers are focused on small and medium enterprises. The main reason is that Synology NAS provides not only storage, but also other business-related rich applications. Overall, we have built an all-in-one server, that is reliable, stable and cost effective.
With the increased uptake of cloud storage in the region, do you believe there still is a market for NAS solutions?
Cloud storage provide more flexibility and cost effectiveness compared to traditional storage solutions like tape, SAN storage; etc. It can be mainly separated into public cloud and private cloud. The advantage of adopting the public cloud is the maintenance and implementation of hardware facilities. However, it is often confronted with data privacy and security issues. On the other side, people often think of NAS as private cloud solution; but Synology provides much more than that. We help our customers build hybrid cloud solutions.
These solutions do not only give them total control over their data and privileges. They also integrate almost all common public cloud services into our platform to offer more flexible choices and management for data storage so that our users can enjoy the advantages from both types of storage solutions. So yes overall, I believe that there still is a market that we can fulfill with our NAS solutions.
What sort of value proposition does a NAS solution offer in terms of personal cloud?
It must still be data privacy and data resilience. Moreover, NAS can be your centralized data management system for all kinds of devices, including the USB external storage you’re still using, PC, mobile and public cloud services.
How does Synology plan to stand out from the crowd when it comes to user interfaces and possibility of installing apps over your DiskStation Manager?
When using DiskStation Manager (DSM), which is the operating system of Synology NAS, you will find that our user experience is simple and intuitive, just like modern day operating systems such as windows for PC and iOS for Mac users. I believe people all are familiar with the term app store. DSM includes Synology’s own app store called package center which gives you the freedom to install apps that you desire. We have a wide selection ranging from office applications, video and multimedia packages to backup and data protection solutions.
Can you tell us about your channel partner program?
We welcome all partners who have relevant technical background and awareness of the storage industry. We have a healthy number of partners in the Middle East that we look after and train to effectively offer the right solutions for our customers.
As for new partners, Synology’s official website has a lot of materials related to our products, including video tutorials and FAQ articles that they can utilize and leverage for customer presentations and meetings. We will also be holding reseller training events from time to time, just like the Synology Solutions Day that place on April 27, 2017. During the last event, we managed to secure attendance from 70 channel partners and business end users as well local distributors from the UAE, KSA, Kuwait, Jordan, Lebanon and Iran.
How do you onboard channel partners into the program? What is the selection criteria? How many partners do you currently have in the program?
New channel partners are welcome to join our reseller program free of charge. All partners are free to leverage all available product and marketing materials on our official website. In terms of the Middle East region, the market is still in a relatively early stage and we are aiming to gradually build on our specific partner programs to be more like in our mature markets such as in Europe and Taiwan.
What are the benefits of joining your partner program?
Partner benefits will be based on the partner level that they are in. Key benefits as they progress through the levels include having a dedicated contact person, support priority, project support to ensure successful completion and listing as a preferred out let for buying Synology solutions.
What did you showcase at your the Solution Day which recently concluded?
There are some of our high end new products like the our first all flash storage FS3017, the first 3U model RS4017xs+ and the petabyte storage solution RS18017xs+. We also showcased our brand new 5 and 8 bay products, DS1517+ and DS1817+. Finally, we showcased Synology software solutions for Business End Point Protection and Disaster Recovery.
