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Friday, December 22, 2006
NEW DELHI: Seagate Technology today announced the signing of a definitive agreement to acquire privately held EVault, Inc., in a cash transaction valued at approximately $185 million.
The acquisition of the online backup services provider is part of Seagate’s effort to extend its storage solutions offerings and strengthen the its Services group. The acquisition is subject to various standard closing conditions, including applicable regulatory approvals and is expected to close in the third quarter of Seagate's fiscal year 2007.
The company's strategy for Seagate Services includes offering market-leading services in the areas of data recovery, online backup/recovery and archiving for small-medium businesses (SMB).
"Today's announcement highlights a strategic next step into services, which is a natural extension of Seagate's core business and will leverage our brand leadership and channel expertise to deliver solutions to the SMB market," said Bill Watkins, Seagate CEO. "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. Our objective for Seagate Services is to become a leading provider of services to manage and protect our customers' digital content throughout its lifecycle."
EVault is the most recent acquisition in the broader storage solutions area and the third for Seagate in the area of services. In 2005, Seagate purchased Mirra, Inc., a provider of networked digital content protection products for the home and small business markets; and Action Front, a professional in-lab data recovery company. These acquisitions provide Seagate with growing opportunities in the storage solutions market and are highly scalable with Seagate's technology portfolio and market expertise.
With Seagate Services, the company is interested in pursuing underserved markets where it can leverage leading technology and market expertise, and provide unique value propositions to address growing customer needs.
According to analyst reports, there are currently over 74 million small-medium businesses worldwide, and one of their most frequently cited IT challenges is improving data availability and recovery.
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