Company’s Profile: Thecus
One of three NAS leaders in Taiwan behind Qnap and Synology
By Jean Jacques Maleval | February 20, 2014 at 3:00 pmCompany
Thecus Tech.Corp.
Locations
HQs in New Taipei City, Taiwan ROC, subsidiaries in Milpitas, CA, and Venlo, The Netherlands, offices in Ettlingen, Germany, Villebon-sur-Yvette, France, and Nanjing City, China.
Year founded
2004
Financial funding
Raised $2 million following an IPO three years ago on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and hoped to add $3 million in capital injection in one to two years, according to company’s president.
Revenues and profitability
Suffered from increased HDD prices following Thai flood; US$25 million in revenue in 2013 (same figure in 2011), up 30% from 2012, US$3 million net income last year; expects “at least” US$35 million in 2014 with US$3 million to US$3.5 million profitability. Note that Taiwanese rivals Qnap and Synology are at more than US$100 million in revenue.
Main executives
Formerly during ten years at ABIT Computer Corp, a Taiwanese computer components manufacturer, Florence Shih or Shih Wan Ching, the big boss, officially president (equivalent of chairman, president and CEO) and co-founder, owns 80% of the company with Sue Hsien Huang, apparenly from Accusys. She get $300,000 per year, salary, bonus and options included and said to be the only women in Taiwan at the head of a storage company. She starts as VP sales and marketing at Thecus. Her friend, other relatively young woman Camila Chang, is in charge of the German subsidiary.
Number of employees
300 including 200 in Taiwan
Technology
Diskless NAS, Windows storage and video surveillance servers (VisoGuard NVR) with deep knowledge on Intel processors used to design its own controllers.
Products description
External or rackmount RAID NAS, with free regularly updated management software based on Linux, from 2 to 16 bays using FC or Ethernet connection (up to 10GbE) with Thunderbolt to come, and offered with McAfee and Acronis software, respectively for security and backup. They are produced by four subcontract manufacturers in Taiwan. Thecus offers a list of HDDs, SSDs and IP cameras able to be integrated into its storage products because “all of them do not work with our systems.”
Average prices for resellers
US150 to US$200 for 2 bays, US$500 for 4 to 7 bays, US$1,800 for 2U rackmount with 8 bays, US$3,000 for 12 bays and US$5,000 for 16 bays, all of them without disks.
Units shipped
36,000 in 2013
Roadmap
The company is going to study the possibility to move HQs in Milpitas, CA, and recruit a well known US storage veteran heading the company to find VCs for adding new financial funding.
Distributors
70 in the world including Ingram Micro, Synnex, D&H, ELGO Group, Amazon, Newegg, Malabs, ASI, ABC Data
Target market
Consumers and MSBs
Main competitors
Qsan and Synology in Taiwan, LenovoEMC in China, LaCie/Seagate in France, Netgear and WD in USA, Buffalo Technology in Japan
Comments
Thecus is known for low prices but has to improve reliability. Our opinion is that the company, to expand, needs to find technologies to differentiate from all its numerous competitors around the world and to evolve its line of NAS to reach the enterprise market. A good step is the recent announcement of VMare 5.5 certification of its high-end N8810U-G, N7710-G, N8900, N12000PRO, and N16000PRO NAS.
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