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Last Minute Shopping for Seagate

Posted by Dave Raffo on December 21, 2006

Tags: Backup & Recovery,  Other,  Storage Management

Channel: Backup & Recovery, Other, Storage & Mgmt

Seagate is jumping deeper into storage services, thanks to a $185 million cash acquisition of private firm EVault. (See Seagate Buys EVault.)

The hard drive vendor disclosed the deal today, which it expects to close by March. Seagate will operate EVault as a wholly owned subsidiary and its new Seagate Storage Services division. The division will focus on the SMB market.

"Today's announcement highlights a strategic next step into services, which is a natural extension of Seagate's core business," Seagate CEO Bill Watkins said in a release announcing the deal. "Over the past three years, Seagate has been executing a strategy designed to broaden its customer base and increase growth opportunities by expanding beyond its core hard disc drive business into the broader storage solutions category."

Seagate already offers data recovery services, which involve restoring data off corrupted storage devices. EVault brings it online backup and recovery archiving, email, e-discovery, and compliance services.

Although EVault does not exclusively go after SMBs, it beefed up its SMB offerings this year when it rolled out a business continuity consulting management practice for SMBs in July. (See EVault Assists SMBs)