IDG News Service - Hard drive maker Seagate Technology LLC will buy EVault Inc. for $185 million in an acquisition designed to bolster Seagate's managed services business, the company said on Thursday.
Emeryville, Calif.-based EVault provides online network backup, recovery and data protection products for small and medium-size businesses. Seagate said that market segment includes 74 million businesses and represents a multibillion-dollar growth area.
Founded in 1997, EVault is a privately held company; it has 250 employees and 8,500 customers in the financial services, heath care and legal markets.
The company specializes in on-site and in-lab data recovery for corrupted or inaccessible storage devices and often serves smaller businesses with limited infrastructures.
Over the past three years, Seagate has sought to expand its customer base from its core disk drive business into managed services. Seagate Services focuses on backup, recovery and archiving for smaller and midsize businesses.
EVault is Seagate's third acquisition in the managed services field. Last year, Seagate bought Mirra Inc., a maker of hardware and software that lets PC users back up their data and access it from any PC connected to the Internet.
Also in 2005, Seagate scooped up ActionFront Data Recovery Labs Inc., an in-lab data recovery company.
Seagate said it expects the EVault deal to close by April, during its third fiscal quarter for 2007.
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