Synerway in Receivership

French storage company Synerway filed for bankruptcy – redressement judiciaire in French, equivalent of Chapter XI in USA – on March 26, 2013 as the company was not able to pay its suppliers and the salary of its employees.

Consequently a judicial administrator has been named, Patrick Prigent, to find an acquirer before next September. If not, the firm, with 21 people, will close its doors

Based in St.-Rémy-les-Chevreuses, near Paris, Synerway is owned and was founded in 2002 by CEO Christian Maillard, formerly at ATG Cygnet then at Quadratec becoming Atempo he left dramatically in 2000 to launch his own venture.

He said:" The financial situation began to be catastrophic in the fourth quarter of 2012 and it continues in 2013." "We are in contact with some buyers in France and outside," he added, without revealing any name.

During 2012, Synerway records €6 million in sales, with "6% operating profit," specifies Maillard. NEC was its only OEM, but not any more. The company claims 300 to 400 customers and 8,000 backup appliances sold by the channel, about all of them in France, including two big clients (STIME and French Ministry of Finance).

It could be interesting for a buyer that wants to expand in the country. Maillard, 66, also said that he was ready to work with an eventual purchaser to pursue the activity. He wanted to change the business model of Synerway to be based on subscription and SaaS, rather than traditional product sales and services, but was not able to finance this transition.

Synerway got no more than €2.6 million in financial funding and it will be a good deal if there is a buyer at this price.

The firm has developed its own software to manage its backup
disk-to-disk and disk-to tape appliances up to 48TB with CDP,
virtualization and replication, working on many OSs, for SMBs and
companies with several sites with backup consolidation. But some
technologies have to be added (de-dupe, SSD, etc.)

Products were manufactured in Germany by Wortmann AG.

It’s strange to remark that it’s quite impossible to succeed in storage in France. A number of start-ups died (Hispread Technologies, Kerstor, Steek, Storage Telecom) or were sold (Arkeia, Database-Bank, GriXpert, Hi-Stor Technologies, Intradot Labs, Seanodes). Atempo originated in France is now an US company. Remain small companies like Active Circle, Arnano, Dmailer, Lexbox, Lunabee Studio, Matrix Appliances, Naoned Systèmes and Numivision. Add Crocus, Oodrive, San Sentinel and Scality, the most promising ones.

Synerway was not able, like Crocus and Scality did, to enter into the US market, the homeland of storage where you need to have a foot to globally succeed.