Following TYAN’s last year’s expansion in Asia as a result of closer collaboration with Mitac, server company Supermicro today also announced plans to expand its presence in Asia by establishing manufacturing and R&D centres in Taiwan. Supermicro is, as far as I remember, the first company to set up server and workstation R&D services in Asia. So far virtually all developers of server and workstation applications have been located in the USA or Europe.

Supermicro today officially announced plans to expand in Asia by building both an R&D centre and a manufacturing facility. If Supermicro decides to build its new facilities in Taiwan, it would provide a substantial boost to the local economy by providing hundreds of quality jobs and further improve Taiwan’s position as a global technology leader, particularly in the high-end server segment, the company said in the statement.

Currently Supermicro is recognized as an ODM leader in the Intel Enterprise Innovation Alliance; its expansion in Asia will probably help the company to solidify its positions in the market by offering more cost-effective products designed and build in Taiwan in future.

In Fall 2002 TYAN, another well-known maker of server, workstation and desktop components, announced plans to establish an R&D centre in Taiwan (see this news-story). However, the company emphasized that its Research and Development facility in Asia would primarily develop desktop mainboards and graphics cards (see this news-story). In case of Supermicro we do not see any detailed elaborations on the matter of its Taiwanese operations.

It is not a secret that a lot of brand-name companies, such as HP, outsource manufacturing and even R&D work to Asia because of lower costs, but do not announce such actions officially. Supermicro, nonetheless, went on to formally announce its expansion in Taiwan. Needless to say that the firm is most likely to invest heavily in its Asian facilities, not the US. Eventually, this may become a new trend for a lot of companies.