ST1711

EVENT: SYNOLOGY 2018 SYNOLOGY 2018
THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX
IF YOU THOUGHT SYNOLOGY WAS ONLY ABOUT NAS HARDWARE/SOFTWARE FOR THE SMALL
BUSINESS, THE COMPANY'S RECENT USER EVENT IN LONDON PRESENTED AN IMPRESSIVE ARRAY OF
INNOVATIONS TO CHANGE YOUR MIND. STORAGE MAGAZINE EDITOR DAVID TYLER WAS THERE TO
REPORT BACK
September saw Synology run the third leg
of its 'world tour' as the company came
to London's Shaw Theatre. This was
their seventh such annual event, by the end
of which they will have spoken to over 6000
users and partners - and of course the
media. Since last year's event Synology has
launched over 10 new products including
public cloud services, and the most recent
version of DSM has been downloaded over 6
million times.
The keynote message reinforced the
company's core belief that 'data should be
administered only by its owner.' This was
followed by sales administrator Jeremie
Francois whose focus was on the company's
productivity apps aimed at the SMB market,
including the Moments photo management
app and Synology Drive which has been
designed to make all data accessible via a
single 'portal' approach.
Throughout the day it was noticeable that
Synology now has a vast breadth of offerings
that are aimed at everyone from individual
home users right up to enterprise storage
administrators. It is to the company's credit
that they managed to cover so much ground
in the course of a few hours, without
confusing everyone present.
As UK Sales manager Billy Knowles told us,
the event is designed to "Allow users to get
an understanding of Synology - of where we
are pushing boundaries and moving the
market forward. You can see we have these
applications we've developed for the home
side of the business, but we are also very
much looking at the enterprise space with
offerings such as our FlashStation all-flash
arrays. As a result our audience here ranges
from home users through business
purchasers to resellers and distributors.
Storage is for everyone - which means there
isn't really a typical Synology customer."
We also saw the Surveillance Station app
which allows users to set up CCTV using
Synology kit, which has taken off hugely in
recent years. The newest version includes
links to POS systems and is now built in
HTML to allow cross-browser support and
greater security and reliability.
It was clear from the event that Synology,
despite having started out with a
SOHO/consumer bent, has grown into a
business with designs on the larger
enterprise market. As Billy Knowles
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18 STORAGE Nov/Dec 2017
@STMagAndAwards
www.storagemagazine.co.uk
MAGAZINE