While the majority of Seagate's revenues are in hard disk drives, the company believes the services group is a business that can be profitable on its own.

Antone Gonsalves, Contributor

December 6, 2007

2 Min Read

Seagate Technology, best-known as a maker of hard-disk drives, said Thursday it has agreed to acquire MetaLincs, and plans to fold the company's software for searching corporate archives into Seagate's services group. Financial details were not disclosed.

MetaLincs gives the Seagate Services Group a "starting point" for helping companies make better use of their electronic archives, the company said. Finding information related to litigation or regulatory issues can be a problem for companies, so MetaLincs has developed patent-pending software to make that process more successful.

The acquisition fits into Seagate Services Group's mission of providing technology for backing up, archiving, or searching data. While the majority of Seagate's revenues are in hard disk drives, the company believes the services group is a business that can be profitable on its own. "This is an expansion opportunity on its own right, rather than just driving more storage (hardware sales)," Mark Grace, senior VP and general manager of the services group, told InformationWeek.

MetaLincs is a small, 4-year-old company that has managed to attract some large customers, including Merrill Lynch, Union Bank of California, Ernst & Young, and the Department of Justice. The company targets the insurance, banking and pharmaceuticals industries.

Seagate plans to offer jobs to MetaLincs' 50 employees, Grace said. Chief executive Ramon Nunez is expected to join Seagate Services' senior management team and lead the group's e-discovery business unit.

Seagate launched the services group early this year with the $185 million acquisition of EVault, an online backup services provider. EVault offered Seagate's small and midsize business customers data recovery, online backup/recovery, and archiving services. The EVault technology was combined with that of ActionFront, a provider of data recovery and data migration services that Seagate bought in 2005.

Seagate Services Group offers online backup services, as well as in-house software deployment. Seagate recently started providing recovery services to consumers and small businesses through a partnership with office supply company Staples.

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