Seagate Extends Storage Offerings With EVault AcquisitionSeagate Extends Storage Offerings With EVault Acquisition

Seagate Technology is looking to extend its storage offerings by buying EVault, an online backup services provider.

Seagate, which designs and manufactures hard-disk drives, signed an agreement to go ahead with the acquisition. EVault, which has more than 250 employees, is expected to offer Seagate's small and midsize business customers data recovery, online backup/recovery, and archiving services.

Seagate will acquire EVault in a cash transaction valued at about $185 million. The acquisition is subject to various standard closing conditions, including applicable regulatory approvals. It's 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," said Bill Watkins, Seagate CEO, in a written statement. "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-disk drive business into the broader storage solutions category."

EVault is Seagate's most recent acquisition in the broader storage market and the third for the company in the services realm. In 2005, Seagate bought Mirra, 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.