Item 1. Business
Item 1. Business
Our Company
We are a Silicon Valley-based provider of accelerated compute platforms that are application-optimized high performance and high-efficiency server and storage systems for a variety of markets, including enterprise data centers, cloud computing, artificial intelligence (“AI”), 5G and edge computing. Our Total IT Solutions include complete servers, storage systems, modular blade servers, blades, workstations, full rack scale solutions, networking devices, server sub-systems, server management and security software. We also provide global support and services to help our customers install, upgrade and maintain their computing infrastructure. We offer our customers a high degree of flexibility and customization by providing a broad array of server models and configurations from which they can choose the best solutions to fit their computing needs. Our server and storage systems, sub-systems and accessories are architecturally designed to provide high levels of reliability, quality, configurability, and scalability.
Our in-house design competencies, design control over many of the components used within our server and storage systems, and our Server Building Block Solutions® (an innovative, modular and open architecture) enable us to rapidly develop, build and test our compute platforms along with our server and storage systems, sub-systems and accessories with unique configurations. As a result, when new technologies are brought to market, we are generally able to quickly assemble a broad portfolio of solutions by leveraging common building blocks across product lines. We work closely with the leading microprocessor, graphics processing units (“GPU”), memory, disk/flash, and interconnect vendors and other hardware and software suppliers to coordinate our new products' design with their product release schedules. This enhances our ability to introduce new products incorporating the latest technology rapidly. We seek to be the first to market with products incorporating new technologies and to offer the broadest selection of products using those technologies to our customers.
To reduce the high cost of operating datacenters, IT managers increasingly turn to suppliers of high-performance products that are also cost-effective, energy-efficient, and green. Our resource saving architecture supports our efforts to lead in green IT innovation. This architecture disaggregates CPU and memory, which enables each resource to be refreshed independently, thereby allowing data centers to significantly reduce both refresh cycle costs and e-waste. In addition, we offer product lines that are designed to share common computing resources, thereby saving both valuable space and power as compared to general-purpose rackmount servers. We believe our approach of leveraging an overall architecture that balances data center power requirements, cooling, shared resources and refresh cycles helps the environment and provides total cost of ownership (“TCO”) savings for our customers.
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We conduct our operations principally from our Silicon Valley headquarters, Taiwan and Netherlands facilities. Our sales and marketing activities operate through a combination of our direct sales force and indirect sales channel partners. We work with distributors, value-added resellers, system integrators, and original equipment manufacturers ("OEMs") to market and sell our optimized solutions to their end customers in our indirect sales channels.
Strategy
Our objective is to be the world’s leading provider of solutions using accelerated compute platforms that are application-optimized offering high-performance server, storage and networking. Achieving this objective requires continuous development and innovation of our Total IT Solutions with better price-performance and architectural advantages compared with our prior generation of solutions and with solutions offered by our competitors. Through our strategy, we seek to maintain or improve our relative competitive position in many product areas and pursue markets that provide us with additional long-term growth opportunities. Key elements of our strategy include executing upon the following:
A Strong Internal Research and Development and Internal Manufacturing Capability
We are continually investing in our engineering organization. As of June 30, 2023, we had over 2,400 employees in our research and development organization. These resources, along with our understanding of complex computing and storage requirements, enable us to deliver product innovation featuring advanced functionality and capabilities required by our customers. Also, substantially all of our servers are tested and assembled in our facilities, and more than half of our final server and storage production is completed in San Jose, California. Our engineering aptitude, coupled with our internal manufacturing capability, enables rapid prototyping and product roll-out, contributing to a high level of responsiveness to our customers.
Introducing More Innovative Products, Faster
We seek to sustain advantages in both time-to-market and breadth of products incorporating the latest technological innovations, such as new processors, advancements in storage and evolving I/O technologies. We seek these advantages by leveraging our in-house design capabilities and our Building Block Solutions ® architecture. This allows us to offer customers a broad choice of products to match their target application requirements. In fiscal year 2023, we announced more than 50 products supporting Intel’s new Sapphire Rapids data center CPU. During the second half of fiscal year 2023, our product portfolio was enhanced to support AMD’s Genoa data center CPU. In March 2023, we released a high-density petascale class all-flash NVMe server family supporting next-generation EDSFF form factor, including the E3.S and E1.S devices. Also in March 2023, we unveiled comprehensive portfolio of GPU systems including servers in 8U, 6U, 5U, 4U, 2U, and 1U form factors, as well as workstations that support the full range of new NVIDIA H100 GPUs.
Capitalizing on New Applications and Technologies
In addition to serving traditional needs for server and storage systems, we have devoted, and will continue to devote, substantial resources to developing systems that support emerging and growing applications including AI, cloud computing, 5G/edge computing, storage and others. We believe there are significant opportunities for us in each of these rapidly developing markets due to stringent design requirements for these applications that often require the use of the latest technologies, allowing us to leverage our capabilities in product innovation, superior time-to-market, and portfolio breadth.
Driving Software and Services Sales to our Global Enterprise Customers
We seek to grow our global enterprise revenue by bolstering and expanding our software management products and support services. These software products and services are required for large scale deployments, help meet service level agreements and address uptime requirements. In addition to our internal software development efforts, we also integrate and partner with external software vendors to meet customer requirements.
Leveraging Our Global Operating Structure
We plan to continue to increase our worldwide manufacturing capacity and logistics abilities in the United States, Taiwan and the Netherlands to more efficiently serve our customers and lower our overall manufacturing costs.
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Products and Services
We offer a broad range of accelerated compute platforms that are application-optimized server solutions, rackmount and blade servers, storage, and subsystems and accessories, which can be used to build complete server and storage systems. These Total IT Solutions and products are designed to serve a variety of markets, such as enterprise data centers, cloud computing, AI and 5G/edge computing. The percentage of our net sales represented by sales of server and storage systems increased to 92.2% in fiscal year 2023 compared to 85.9% in fiscal year 2022 and 78.4% in fiscal year 2021, and the percentage of our net sales represented by sales of subsystems and accessories was 7.8% in fiscal year 2023, 14.1% in fiscal year 2022 and 21.6% in fiscal year 2021. During fiscal year 2023, we experienced increased revenue from server and storage systems, particularly from our large enterprise and datacenter customers. The year-over-year increase in net sales of server and storage systems and corresponding decrease in net sales of subsystems and accessories was primarily due to our emphasis on selling full systems and servers which require utilization of the subcomponents. We complement our accelerated compute platforms inclusive of server and storage system offerings with software management/security solutions, global services and support, the revenue for which is included in our server and storage systems revenue.
Server and Storage Systems
We sell accelerated compute platforms comprised of a combination of server and storage systems in rackmount, blade, multi-node and embedded form factors, which support single, dual, and multiprocessor architectures. Our key product lines include:
• SuperBlade ® and MicroBlade ™® system families designed to share common computing resources, thereby saving space and power over standard rackmount servers;
• SuperStorage systems that provide high-density storage while leveraging an efficient use of power to achieve performance-per-watt savings;
• Twin family of multi-node server systems designed for density, performance, and power efficiency;
• Ultra Server systems for demanding enterprise workloads;
• GPU or Accelerated systems for rapidly growing AI markets;
• Data Center Optimized server systems that deliver increased scalability and performance-per-watt with an improved thermal architecture;
• Embedded (5G/IoT/Edge) systems optimized for evolving networks and intelligent management of connected devices; and
• MicroCloud server systems that deliver node density in environments with space and power constraints.
In addition to our accelerated compute platforms business, we offer a large array of modular server subsystems and accessories, such as server boards, chassis, power supplies and other accessories. These subsystems are the foundation of platform solutions and span product offerings from the entry-level single and dual-processor server segment to the high-end multiprocessor market. The majority of the subsystems and accessories we sell individually are designed to work together to improve performance and are ultimately integrated into complete server and storage systems.
Server Software Management Solutions
Our open industry-standard remote system management solutions, such as our Server Management suite, including Supermicro Server Manager (“SSM”), Supermicro Power Management software (“SPM”), Supermicro Update Manager (“SUM”), SuperCloud Composer and SuperDoctor 5, have been designed to help manage large-scale heterogeneous data center environments.
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Supermicro Global Services
We provide global service and support offerings for our direct and OEM customers and our indirect sales channel partners directly or through approved distributors and third-party partners. Our services include server and storage system integration, configuration and software upgrades and updates. We also identify service requirements, create and execute project plans, conduct verification testing and training and provide technical documentation.
Global Services: Our strategic direct and OEM customers may purchase a variety of on-site support service plans. Our service plans vary depending on specific services, response times, coverage hours and duration, repair priority levels, spare parts requirements, logistics, data privacy and security needs. Our Global Services team provides help desk services and on-site product support for our server and storage systems.
Support Services: Our customer support services offer competitive market warranties, generally from one-to-three years, and warranty extension options for products sold by our direct sales team and approved indirect sales channel partners. Our customer support team provides ongoing maintenance and technical support for our products through our website and 24-hour continuous direct phone-based support.
Research and Development
We perform most of our research and development activities in-house in the United States at our facilities in San Jose, California, and in Taiwan, increasing the communication and collaboration between design teams to streamline the development process and reduce time-to-market. We believe that the combination of our focus on internal research and development activities, our close working relationships with customers and vendors and our modular design approach allows us to decrease time-to-market. We continue to invest in reducing our design and manufacturing costs and improving the performance, cost-effectiveness and power- and space-efficiency of our Total IT Solutions.
Our research and development teams focus on the development of new and enhanced products that can support emerging technological and engineering innovations while achieving high overall system performance. Much of our research and development activity relates to the new product cycles of leading processor vendors. We work closely with Intel, NVIDIA and AMD, among others, to develop products that are compatible with the latest generation of industry-standard technologies under development. Our collaborative approach with these vendors allows us to coordinate the design of our new products with their product release schedules, thereby enhancing our ability to rapidly introduce new products incorporating the latest technology. We work closely with their respective development teams to enhance system performance and reduce system-level issues. Similarly, we work very closely with our customers to identify their needs and develop our new product plans accordingly.
Customers
During each of fiscal years 2023, 2022 and 2021, we sold to over 1,000 direct customers in over 100 countries. In addition, over the three years ended June 30, 2023, we have sold to thousands of end users through our indirect sales channel. These customers represent a diverse set of market verticals including enterprise data centers, cloud computing, AI, 5G and edge computing markets. In each of fiscal years 2023, 2022 and 2021, no customer represented greater than 10% of our total net sales.
Sales and Marketing
Our sales and marketing activities are conducted through a combination of our direct sales force and our indirect sales channel partners. Our direct sales force is primarily focused on selling Total IT Solutions, including management software and global services to large scale cloud, enterprise and OEM customers. In addition, we are planning to offer optimized products with our command-center-based services, starting with a comprehensive product auto-configurator. The command center is the foundation of our expanding B2C and B2B programs.
We work with distributors, value-added resellers, system integrators, and OEMs to market and sell our optimized solutions to their end customers. We provide sales and marketing assistance and training to our indirect sales channel partners and OEMs, who in turn provide service and support to end customers. We leverage our relationships in our indirect sales channel and with our OEMs to penetrate select industry segments where our products can provide better alternatives to existing solutions.
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We maintain close contact with our indirect sales channel partners and end customers. We often collaborate during the sales process with our indirect sales channel partners and the end customer’s technical staff to help determine the optimal system configuration for the customer’s needs. Our interaction with our indirect sales channel partners and end customers allows us to monitor customer requirements and develop new products to meet their needs.
International Sales
Our global sales efforts are supported both by our international offices in the Netherlands, Taiwan, South Korea, United Kingdom, China and Japan as well as by our United States based sales team. Product fulfillment and first level support for our international customers are provided by Supermicro Global Services and through our indirect sales channel and OEMs. Sales to customers located outside of the United States represented 32.1%, 41.6% and 40.7% of net sales in fiscal years 2023, 2022 and 2021, respectively.
Marketing
Our marketing programs are designed to create a global awareness and branding for our company and products, as well as an understanding of the significant value we bring to customers. These programs also inform existing and potential customers, the trade press, market analysts, indirect sales channel partners and OEMs about the strong capabilities and benefits of using our products and solutions. Our marketing efforts support the sale and distribution of our products through both direct sales and indirect channels. We rely on a variety of marketing vehicles, including advertising, public relations, web, social media, participation in industry trade shows and conferences to help gain market acceptance. We provide funds for cooperative marketing to our indirect sales channel partners to extend the reach of our marketing efforts. We also actively utilize our suppliers’ cooperative marketing programs and jointly benefit from their marketing development funds to which we are entitled.
Intellectual Property
We seek to protect our intellectual property rights with a combination of patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secret laws, and disclosure restrictions. We rely primarily on trade secrets, technical know-how, and other unpatented proprietary information relating to our design and product development activities. We also enter into confidentiality and proprietary rights agreements with our employees, consultants, and other third parties and control access to our designs, documentation and other proprietary information.
Manufacturing and Quality Control
We manufacture the majority of our systems at our San Jose, California headquarters. We believe we are the only major server, storage and accelerated compute platform vendor that designs, develops, and manufactures a significant portion of their systems in the United States. Global assembly, test and quality control of our servers are performed at our manufacturing facilities in San Jose, California, Taiwan and the Netherlands. Each of our facilities Quality and Environmental Management System has been certified according to ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and/or ISO 13485 standards. Our suppliers and contract manufacturers are required to support the same standards to maintain consistent product and service quality and continuous improvement of quality and environmental performance.
We use several third-party suppliers and contract manufacturers for materials and sub-assemblies. We believe that selectively using outsourced manufacturing services allows us to focus on our core competencies in product design and development and increases our operational flexibility. We believe our manufacturing strategy allows us to adjust manufacturing capacity in response to changes in customer demand and to rapidly introduce new products to the market. We use Ablecom Technology, Inc. (“Ablecom”) and its affiliate Compuware Technology, Inc. ("Compuware"), both of which are related parties, for contract design and manufacturing coordination support. We work with Ablecom to optimize modular designs for our chassis and several other components. Ablecom also coordinates the manufacturing of chassis for us. In addition to providing a large volume of contract manufacturing services to us, Ablecom warehouses multiple components and subassemblies manufactured by various suppliers before shipment to our facilities in the United States, Europe and Asia. We also have a series of agreements with Compuware, including multiple product development, production and service agreements, product manufacturing agreements and lease agreements for office space. See Part II, Item 8, Note 9, “Related Party Transactions,” to the consolidated financial statements and Part III, Item 13, “Certain Relationships and Related Transactions and Director Independence.”
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We monitor our inventory continuously to be able to meet customer delivery requirements and to avoid inventory obsolescence. Due to our building-block designs, our inventory can generally be used with multiple different products, lowering working capital requirements and reducing the risk of inventory write-downs.
Competition
The market for our products is highly competitive, rapidly evolving and subject to new technological developments, changing customer needs and new product introductions. We compete primarily with large vendors of x86-based general purpose servers and components. In addition, we also compete with smaller vendors that specialize in the sale of server components and systems. In recent years, we have experienced increased competition from original design manufacturers ("ODMs”) that benefit from their scale and very low-cost manufacturing and are increasingly offering their own branded products. We believe our principal competitors include:
• Global technology vendors, such as Cisco, Dell, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, and Lenovo;
• ODMs, such as Foxconn, Quanta Computer, and Wiwynn Corporation; and
• OEMs, such as Inspur.
The principal competitive factors in our market include the following:
• First to market with new emerging technologies;
• High product performance, efficiency and reliability;
• Early identification of emerging opportunities;
• Cost-effectiveness;
• Interoperability of products;
• Scalability; and
• Localized and responsive customer support on a worldwide basis.
We believe that we compete favorably with respect to most of these factors. However, most of our competitors have longer operating histories, significantly greater resources, greater name recognition and deeper market penetration. They may be able to devote greater resources to the development, promotion and sale of their products than we can, which could allow them to respond more quickly to new technologies and changes in customer needs. In addition, it is possible that new competitors could emerge and acquire significant market share. See Part I, Item 1A, "Risk Factors" risk titled “The market in which we participate is highly competitive, and if we do not compete effectively, we may not be able to increase our market penetration, grow our net sales or improve our gross margins.”
Government Regulation
Our worldwide business activities subject us to various federal, state, local, and foreign laws in the countries in which we operate, and our Total IT Solutions are subject to laws and regulations affecting their sale. To date, costs and accruals incurred to comply with these governmental regulations, including environmental regulations, have not been material to our capital expenditures, results of operations, and competitive position. Although there is no assurance that existing or future governmental laws and regulations, including environmental regulations, applicable to our operations or Total IT Solutions will not have a material adverse effect on our capital expenditures, results of operations, and competitive position, we do not currently anticipate material increases in expenditures for compliance with government regulations.
Human Capital Resources and Management
Mission, Culture, and Engagement
“The key to success in technology is designing a company around people committed to work that they love,” said Charles Liang, Supermicro Founder, President, Chief Executive Officer, and Chairman of the Board. We aim to attract, develop, and retain a high performing and engaged global workforce.
As of June 30, 2023, we employed 5,126 full time employees, consisting of 2,448 employees in research and development, 585 employees in sales and marketing, 465 employees in general and administrative and 1,628 employees in manufacturing. Of these employees, 2,291 employees are based in our San Jose facilities. We consider our highly qualified and motivated employees to be a key factor in our business success. Our employees are not represented by any collective bargaining organization, and we have never experienced a work stoppage.
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We are committed to protecting the environment through our “We Keep IT Green” initiative as a first to market innovator in high-performance, high-efficiency server, storage, networking and management total solutions. We recognize the critical importance of talent and culture to our success and ability to fulfill this vision.
We encourage opportunities for growth and conduct regular performance reviews that set clear expectations to motivate employees and align their performance with company objectives. Supermicro Portal, our internal intranet, was created to keep employees informed about key changes to our business and company-wide resources.
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging
We strive to create a culture that promotes diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging to boost team dynamics, productivity, and innovation within the organization. Employees should be treated fairly and respectfully despite differences and should feel accepted in the workplace to contribute their perspective and be valued. We are committed to increasing diversity in our workforce at all levels and regularly monitor our recruitment process with an aim to improve the diversity of our workforce and candidate pool.
Talent Development, Acquisition, Retention and Rewards
Talent Strategy
Our talent strategy focuses on attracting skilled, engaged employees who contribute the talent and skills critical to our innovative and forward-looking workforce. Our recruiting process actively sources talent supporting our ability to hire candidates with professional qualifications and potential. We identify opportunities through tracking and analyzing data from various sources such as annual performance reviews to assess our progress in ensuring critical talent are in critical roles.
It is our policy to ensure equal employment opportunity for all applicants and employees without regard to prohibited considerations of race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, gender identity and sexual orientation), national origin, age, disability or genetic information, marital status or any other classification protected by applicable local, state or federal laws. All employees receive training in the prevention of sexual harassment and abusive conduct in the workplace.
Total Rewards Program
Our total rewards program is designed to attract and reward talented individuals who possess the skills necessary to support our business objectives, assist in the achievement of our strategic goals and create long-term value for our stockholders. We provide employees with compensation packages that include base salary, incentive bonus programs, and long-term equity awards, including restricted stock units and options, tied to the value of our stock price. We believe that a compensation program with both short-term and long-term awards provides fair and competitive compensation and aligns employee and stockholder interests, including by incentivizing business and individual performance (pay for performance), motivating based on long-term company performance and integrating compensation with our business plans. In addition to cash and equity compensation, we also offer U.S. employees benefits such as life and health (medical, dental & vision) insurance, paid time off, sick leave, holiday pay, and a 401(k) plan. Outside of the U.S., we provide benefits based on local requirements and needs.
Health, Safety & Wellness
Throughout our history, we have maintained our commitment to providing a safe workplace that protects against and limits personal injury and environmental harm. We follow international standards and regulations for product safety and security. Our health and safety programs emphasize personal accountability, professional conduct, and regulatory compliance, while our culture fosters a sense of proactivity, caution, and communication. In the development of our products, we define and perform various tests to ensure Product Safety and Security. We evaluate risks using both government-required procedures and best practices to ensure we understand residual risk and appropriately protect our employees. We engage in proactive efforts to prevent occupational illnesses and injuries which allows us to maintain a safe, healthy, and secure workplace. We have a Safety Committee, which is designed to promote communications regarding health, safety, and emergency response procedures and to help implement improvements to our work areas and practices.
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We are committed to complying with applicable laws, including those associated with labor and employment, across all areas of our operations. In addition, we abide by global standards, irrespective of legal requirements, regarding the treatment of workers such as those detailed by the Responsible Business Alliance. These include prevention of excessive working hours and unfair wages, controls to prohibit child labor and human trafficking and bolstering workplace health and safety measures.
Board Oversight of Human Capital Management
Our Board of Directors, as a part of its overall responsibility to provide oversight, has purview over matters related to human capital management. Our Compensation Committee provides oversight of various matters related to human capital management, such as incentive compensation plans and equity compensation plans and the administration of such plans, compensation matters outside of the ordinary course, and compensation policies.
Corporate Information
We were founded in and maintain our worldwide headquarters and the majority of our employees in San Jose, California. We are one of the largest employers in the City of San Jose and an active member of the San Jose and Silicon Valley community.
We were incorporated in California in September 1993. We reincorporated in Delaware in March 2007. Our common stock is listed on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol “SMCI.” Our principal executive offices are located at 980 Rock Avenue, San Jose, California 95131, and our telephone number is (408) 503-8000. Our website address is www.supermicro.com.
Financial Information about Segments and Geographic Areas
Please see Part II, Item 8, Note 14, “Segment Reporting” to the consolidated financial statements in this Annual Report for information regarding segment reporting and Part II, Item 8, Note 3, “Revenue - Disaggregation of Revenue” to the consolidated financial statements in this Annual Report for information regarding our net sales by geographic region. See Part I, Item 1A, “Risk Factors” for further information on risks associated with our international operations.
Working Capital
We focus considerable attention on managing our inventories and other working capital related items. We manage inventories by communicating with our customers and partners and using our industry experience to forecast demand. We place manufacturing orders for our products that are based on forecasted demand. We generally maintain substantial inventories of our products because the computer server industry is characterized by short lead-time orders and quick delivery schedules. Additionally, during the fiscal year 2023, the computer server industry experienced global supply chain shortage, which requires us to carry more inventories to fulfill our customers and partners’ demands and backlogs.
Available Information
Our Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K and amendments to reports filed or furnished pursuant to Sections 13(a) and 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”), are available free of charge, on or through our website at www.supermicro.com as soon as reasonably practicable after we electronically file such reports with, or furnish those reports to, the SEC. Information contained on our website is not incorporated by reference in, or made part of, this Annual Report or our other filings with, or reports furnished to, the SEC. The SEC also maintains a website that contains our SEC filings.
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