Seagate Technology today announced the signing of a definitive agreement to acquire privately-held EVault Inc in a cash transaction valued at $185 million (around Rs 840 crore). A leading provider of online backup services, EVault is expected to strengthen the Seagate 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."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," Bill Watkins, CEO of Seagate, said."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."With the acquisition of EVault, Seagate Services will provide data recovery through professional in-lab and on-site retrieval of content for corrupted or inaccessible storage devices - all media formats and all brands. EVault is one of the industry's largest suppliers of online network backup, recovery and data protection solutions for SMEs and remote enterprise computing.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, a leading 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.
