TAIWANESE technology company Synology unveiled a roadmap for private artificial intelligence infrastructure and AI-powered cyber-resilience tools at Computex 2026, positioning the company beyond its traditional network-attached storage (NAS) business as enterprises seek greater control over data, security and governance.
The announcements were presented to members of media at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center on June 2, highlighting how enterprise infrastructure vendors are adapting products for an AI era in which storage performance, cyber resilience, compliance and operational efficiency increasingly converge as business priorities.
The developments center on the next generation of Synology’s DiskStation Manager (DSM) platform and ActiveProtect Manager 2.0, an updated backup and recovery system designed to help organizations defend against increasingly sophisticated cyber threats while preparing for AI workloads.
Speaking during Synology’s DSM presentation, Katherine Chiang, product marketing manager at Synology, said the company is redesigning its software platform around the demands of enterprise AI adoption.
“DSM has never stood still,” Chiang said. “It has evolved itself from a storage operating system, now all the way to a platform that not only supports businesses with storage, but also data protection, productivity, surveillance, and even nowadays, AI operations.”
The announcement coincides with the 20th anniversary of DSM, which began as the operating system behind Synology’s storage products and has since expanded into a broader data management platform. According to the company, more than 14 million Synology systems have been deployed globally, managing over 400 exabytes of data.
Chiang said organizations are increasingly moving beyond experimenting with AI tools and are now confronting a more fundamental question: whether their infrastructure is prepared to support AI securely and effectively.
“The challenge nowadays is no longer how much AI productivity tools organizations are using. It’s how trustworthy and how ready your infrastructure is to embrace AI for intelligence,” she said.
The announcements reflect a broader shift among enterprise technology providers as organizations prepare for AI workloads that require not only computing power, but also secure storage, governance controls and cyber-resilience measures.
Synology expects enterprise AI adoption to evolve in stages, beginning with productivity tools, followed by systems that transform organizational data into searchable intelligence, and eventually agentic AI platforms capable of executing workflows autonomously.
To support those developments, the company plans to expand AI capabilities across its productivity applications, including Office, Drive, ChatPlus, Meet and MailPlus. Planned features include content generation, translation, subtitle creation and natural-language search tools.
Synology is also preparing GPU-enabled systems capable of running large-language models locally within enterprise environments rather than relying entirely on public cloud infrastructure.
“We believe with our on-premises roots, this Synology Office Suite will become a trustworthy local AI productivity hub for businesses,” Chiang said.
Among the key additions is DSM Agent, an AI assistant that will initially provide operational guidance for administrators and eventually automate tasks across storage, backup and security environments.
“At the very first stage of DSM Agent, we have positioned it to be an on-demand AI consultant,” Chiang said. “Users can now use natural language questions to ask it for troubleshooting or setup guidance or even operational advice.”
Future versions are expected to automate workflows involving backup management, disaster recovery and security operations.
Despite the focus on AI, Synology said governance remains central to the platform’s development. Upcoming DSM releases will include expanded role-based access controls, audit capabilities, permissions management and safeguards intended to provide greater visibility into how AI systems access and use organizational data.
AI-powered defense
Synology also used Computex to unveil ActiveProtect Manager 2.0, a major update to its enterprise backup and recovery platform that introduces AI-powered threat detection while expanding support for cloud and virtualization environments.
Speaking during a separate presentation, Cody Hall, product team manager at Synology, said enterprises are confronting a rapidly evolving threat landscape as cybercriminals increasingly adopt AI technologies to automate attacks and identify vulnerabilities.
“Now more than ever, organizations are looking at changing the mixture of their IT stack,” Hall said.
He added that attackers are increasingly “using AI tools to attack organizations to prod and poke the system security so that they can get in a little bit more efficiently.”
Scheduled for release in the third quarter of 2026, ActiveProtect Manager 2.0 adds support for Azure Virtual Machines, Amazon EC2, Google Workspace, Nutanix AHV and Proxmox VE while introducing machine-learning capabilities designed to detect suspicious activity in backup environments.
According to Hall, the platform analyzes historical backup behavior to identify unusual activity associated with ransomware attacks and other forms of compromise.
“The anomaly detection occurs during backup,” Hall said. “The engine will actually analyze what’s going on when you’re collecting that backup and compare it to previous history of your backups.”
The technology is designed to identify unusual change rates, mass deletions and encryption-related activity. Files flagged as suspicious can be quarantined automatically to reduce the risk of restoring compromised data.
ActiveProtect Manager 2.0 also integrates with third-party security products, including Bitdefender, ESET and Microsoft Defender, allowing backup data to be scanned for malware before restoration.
Hall said organizations increasingly need defensive AI capabilities to counter the growing use of AI by threat actors.
“We need AI and machine learning techniques on your side, working for your backups and your protection rather than just having the bad guys using the AI to attack you,” he said.
The update also expands cloud support, allowing backup copies to be stored in Azure Blob Storage and enabling recovery between cloud environments and on-premises systems.
Philippine opportunities
The focus on private AI and local control over data could resonate in the Philippines, where many organizations remain cautious about placing sensitive workloads entirely in public cloud environments.
In an exclusive interview with The Manila Times on the sidelines of Computex, Claire Huang, Synology country manager for the Philippines, said the company expects continued growth in enterprise infrastructure as organizations prepare for digital transformation and future AI adoption.
“We continue to strive in the enterprise market that once you are ready for the AI transformation, or you are ready for large-scale data processing, then we have the infrastructure ready there for you,” Huang said.
She said AI adoption in the Philippines remains in its early stages, with many organizations still exploring practical applications and addressing issues involving data quality and governance.
“I think AI is still in a very nascent stage right now in the Philippines,” Huang said. “With AI you need large datasets and these datasets need to be clean.”
Huang said concerns over data sovereignty continue to drive interest in on-premises infrastructure, particularly among government agencies and manufacturers.
“If we talk about data sovereignty, that’s definitely on-premise is the way to go,” she said. “All of your data is solely stored in your own hands, and you have the full control, you have the full sovereignty of your data.”
She added that government and manufacturing organizations remain among Synology’s largest enterprise customer segments because of their security, compliance and operational requirements.
The company’s latest announcements suggest Synology is seeking a larger role in enterprise AI infrastructure, data governance and cyber resilience while continuing to build on the storage and data management business that established its reputation among businesses and technology professionals.
For Synology, the challenge is no longer simply storing data. As AI adoption expands and cyber threats become increasingly automated, the company is betting that enterprises will place greater value on platforms that combine storage, governance, security and AI operations within a single environment under their own control.
