Arabian Reseller speaks to Nick Jheng, the Sales Account Manager at Synology, about the company’s plans for the Middle East region

Tell us about your recently held Solutions Seminar and your presence in the Middle East region.
We have been present in the Middle East region for years now. Through our Synology Solutions Seminar, we want to reiterate three pillars for the Middle East region. The first pillar is about our strong suite of products, file serving and data protection features. The second is about virtualization, and the third is all about surveillance.

Lots of companies in the Middle East region are investing in surveillance solutions. This is not the first time we are doing this seminar in the Middle East. Last year as well we did this seminar and we had 70 attendees. This year we had 100+ attendees this year.

How has your business grown in the region over the years and has VAT had any impact on the business?
Over the past five years, we have had a growth rate of 40 percent CAGR. Even through VAT was implemented this year, if we compare the first quarter of this year with last year, we still managed to achieve around 33 percent growth.

From the channel perspective, VAT may have had an impact. But I believe this is only temporary. People need to get used to it and I believe things will get better in the second quarter.

What sort of new solutions are you introducing to the market?
We have recently launched the Active Backup for Business. This is going to replace Active Backup for Servers. The concept is that we can help you backup your PC or notebook, your file server and your virtualized environment.

These devices and virtualized environment can be backed up into image files. And if you use Active Backup for Business with our Virtual Machine Manager, you will be able to perform physical to virtual backup, too. Since we have our very own VM solution, we will be able to replicate the images into a physical device very easily.

Tell us about your surveillance solutions.
Our Surveillance Station is a solution that works with any Synology device. It does not matter if it is a two-bay, four-bay or eight-bay device. All you need to do is install the solution from the DSM and you are good to go. We have also made mobile apps for iOS and Android available, too.

Tell us about the demand for such products and solutions in the Middle East region.
When we look at the Middle East market, most of the demand for products and solutions offered by Synology, are coming from the Gulf countries. Levant is also a market that is growing a lot.

At the Synology Solutions Seminar, we saw that the attendees came from GCC, Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan and so on. The event was not only for the UAE market but for the entire Middle East. We are also using the event as a platform to look for new channel partners to add to our portfolio.