Mon, May 24, 2010 page12

• INTERVIEW: Taiwan’s ‘anti-PC’ firm with its head in the ‘cloud’

  • By Jason Tan / STAFF REPORTER
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  If companies think that investing in a full-fledged PC system is the only way for staff to improve their productivity, they should think again, as Hewlett-Packard Co, Dell Inc and Sun Microsystems Inc all offer other solutions, such as thin clients, as an alternative.

  Thin clients are stripped-down versions of the traditional bulky desktop, their small size allowing companies to save desk space and costs. Firms can manage all the software used by the staff via a central server instead of purchasing a complete PC system for each employee.

  Wyse Technology Inc is one of the major providers of thin clients.

  “We are an anti-PC company,” Wyse president and chief executive Tarkan Maner told the Taipei Times during an interview last month.

  The “anti-PC” philosophy is why Wyse introduced the “PocketCloud,” an application tailor-made for the iPhone and iPad. It allows these mobile devices to instantly turn into a “virtual PC,” minus the costs of owning a PC.

  Most people may be unfamiliar with the company because of its focus on the business market, but Wyse is a Taiwanese-owned enterprise.

  Founded in 1981 in San Jose, California, by three Chinese entrepreneurs, Wyse quickly gained a niche as a manufacturer of terminals used to catalogue libraries. It set up a subsidiary, Wyse Taiwan (台灣慧智), the following year in the Hsinchu Science Park (新竹科學園區). The firm later moved into PCs, servers and surveillance equipment for the business market and was listed on the NASDAQ in October 1984.

  In 1990, the “Father of Semiconductors,” Morris Chang (張忠謀), saw the potential in Wyse and acquired the company along with the state-run National Development Fund (國發基金), MiTAC International Corp (神達電腦), Koo’s Group (和信集團) and several other Taiwanese investors.

  The US parent was delisted from the NASDAQ and became a subsidiary of Wyse Taiwan.

  Chang steered the company into thin clients and ditched the other businesses to pursue a niche market.

  From thin clients to the Pocket­Cloud, the US-based Maner told the Taipei Times why the anti-PC trend is set to gain momentum in the future.

  Taipei Times (TT): Wyse has such a deep Taiwan connection. How are you working with Taiwanese partners on your core business, thin clients?

  Tarkan Maner: Our biggest shareholder is here [Nelson Chang (張安平)] and we have many clients, especially small and medium-sized businesses, that are using our thin clients here. Taiwan has innovative and creative companies that are doing interesting things in the marketplace. We see opportunity here because people understand the value of saving energy, security and the user experience. One of our biggest partners is Inventec Corp (英業達). We do a lot of work with Inventec and it manufactures our thin clients.

  So far, we have sold 20 million thin clients since the inception of the business. We are an anti-PC company and we eradicate the need for the traditional PC. We don’t like fat PCs and we make everything thin. We currently have a 70 percent share of the thin client market and our revenues have been growing 50 percent to 60 percent on average every year since 2005. We have aspirations to go public in the US by the end of next year.

  TT: How much is Asia currently contributing to Wyse in terms of sales and what are your expectations for this region?

  Maner: In terms of the regional sales breakdown, the Americas makes up about 60 percent, Europe, the Middle East and Africa about 30 percent and Asia is about 10 percent. About five or six years ago, the Asian business was only 1 percent. We have exponential growth in Asia because the market understands thin clients and cloud computing. The Asian market will contribute 50 percent to our revenues within the next five years, with its growth, energy and innovation.

  TT: Your PocketCloud application caught our attention. It only debuted in September last year and the total number of downloads for the iPad and iPhone hit 12,000 this month. Not to mention that it is not cheap, with the retail price of US$30 in the Apple iStore. Can you tell us why?

  Maner: PocketCloud is one of the most expensive apps in the iStore, there are so many free apps or those that sell for only US$1. We developed the PocketCloud so that “prosumers” (professional consumers) could access their PCs wherever they are. Take a look at this iPad, if we download PocketCloud the iPad interface is instantly turned into a standard PC interface, making it work as a virtual PC. I am here in Taipei, but now I can connect to my home or company PC in San Francisco and access the information I need.

  There is no data stored on this iPad. I am accessing data remotely through cloud computing, probably hosted by servers in New York. So with cloud computing, the iPad is turned from a consumer device into an enterprise device.

  If I am a banker, I need not to worry about losing my iPad, as all my confidential information is stored in the cloud.

  Also, almost 99 percent of the videos on the Web are Flash-based, which isn’t supported by the iPhone or the iPad. With the cloud solution, I can access Flash videos and graphics on the Web being delivered through PocketCloud.

  The Android version of PocketCloud will come onto the market in a couple of months.

  TT: How many PocketCloud apps do you expect will be downloaded this year?

  Maner: We expect the number to grow exponentially. My goal is to reach 100,000 downloads this year. A growing number of prosumers want to use their mobile devices and be able to connect to a PC.

  TT: How do mobile devices create business opportunities for Wyse?

  Maner: There are 1 billion PCs in the world today and 3 billion mobile devices. In five to 10 years, we believe there could be at least 10 billion mobile devices. Everyone is going to have multiple devices and that’s why we created the PocketCloud for prosumers.
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