Unisplendour storage venture aims for world leadership role in 5 years
Unisplendour Corp’s storage venture with US hard disk maker Western Digital has set a goal of joining the ranks of the world’s technology leaders in five years, a vice president with the joint venture said on Thursday.
Unis- WDC Storage Co was founded last March to help Western Digital further expand into the Chinese market and facilitate data storage technological advancement in Unisplendour’s parent company Tsinghua Unigroup, which is directing China’s semiconductor drive.
If China did not develop its own storage devices, the country would have to spend heavily to import from other countries, Dong Meng, vice president with Unis- WDC, told the Global Times Thursday in an exclusive interview.
Dell Technologies led the world’s external enterprise stor- age system market with a 32.9 percent share during the fourth quarter of last year, following by Hewlett Packard Enterprise and IBM, according to a report issued by US market consultancy International Data Corp on March 3.
Dong admitted that Chinese storage companies have a long way to go to match their US counterparts due to the lack of core technologies and insufficient intellectual property portfolios.
The 1- year- old Unis- WDC venture is accumulating relevant patents with the help of Western Digital, the second- largest shareholder with 49 percent in the joint venture. High- end services such as flash memory and mass data processing still need technology support from the US shareholder, while “we also develop enterprise products on our own such as the distributed cloud storage system,” Dong said.
The company is scheduled to roll out products next week targeting Chinese companies that need big data services and storage.
Unis- WDC also wants to serve clients overseas, but Dong thinks it’s not the right time yet.
“In the next three to five years, we will focus on China, which is expected to be the fastest- growing data storage market in the world,” he explained.
Storage systems in China are mainly used in the government, telecommunications and financial sectors, with sales of 16.95 billion yuan ($ 2.5 billion) in 2016, up 9.6 percent year- onyear, according to a report issued by Beijing- based CCID Consulting on Thursday during the market research firm’s IT summit.
Huawei Technologies topped China’s storage system market by seizing a 16.7 percent share. US IT storage hardware solutions provider EMC came in second place with 14.9 percent.
In China, Uni- WDC, backed by State- owned Unigroup, believes that it will have an advantage over foreign rivals in meeting the needs of Chinese clients as well as complying with policies of the Chinese government, which is encouraging self- developed IT products and services.