SYMBIO TECHNOLOGIES, New Rochelle

By Woods, Lynn; Kahn, Kathy

Remember the days when computers were giant mainframes housed in garage-sized rooms at big companies? There may be a lesson in that model certainly a market, as Symbio Technologies has discovered. Going against the grain of “high-tech,” Symbio looked backward to solve a problem experienced by many companies: the expense and hassle of servicing their employees’ personal computers. Symbio’s solution: diskless “thin clients,” terminal-like replacements for PCs that link to a central server.

“We are developers and specialists in stateless computing,” said company CFO Lewis Tischler. “The PC gave the power to the individual. This is a way to allow central administrators to control the network in a more efficient manner. If an upgrade is needed, it’s loaded once.” Besides saving on administrative and maintenance costs, the thin clients also are a green alternative, using a fraction of the electricity of a PC – 5 watts as compared to 175 watts for a PC.

The 5-year-old company was the brainchild of founders Gideon Romm and Roger del Russo, who, in the course of researching alternatives to the PC, came across the old mainframe concept, winch is still used in the medical sector The company’s business took off when it introduced its star product, the symbient boot appliance. This device replaces the PCs internal boot with an external source that boots up a thin client and directs it to the proper server.

The company began selling its “Symbient Solution” – the boot appliance along with a terminal (whose manufacture is outsourced) – overseas three years ago and has hit gold, with 30 percent to 35 percent of its sales now outside the U.S., said Tischler.

While a few of its clients are small operations, the product is designed for companies with 10 or more computer users and “scales up into the thousands,” said Tischler, noting that the firm is currently talking with the federal government. He said that the savings on hardware costs alone are covered within a year after purchasing a Symbient system.

Copyright Westfair Communications May 14, 2007

(c) 2007 Westchester County Business Journal. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.