Seagate Targets Managed Service Providers with BDR Cloud Option

Seagate (STX) has created a backup and recovery service that managed service providers (MSPs) can either resell or white label, giving them a way to offer BDR without making a capital equipment investment. Here are the details.

Following a bevy of acquisitions and a reorganization, Seagate has created a new Cloud Systems and Solutions group that combines the company’s former Evault subsidiary (that had worked with the managed services market) and disk-based backup appliances that the company gained via the recent acquisition of Xiratex into one business unit.

Recent file backups take priority

Unmesh Kulkarni, head of customer experience management for the Seagate cloud service, says the BDR service for MSPs lets service providers make use of the appliance to back up files locally and then transfer them to Evault cloud service as it becomes apparent that over time the customer is less likely to need them. Most customers, notes Kulkarni, are looking for recently used files 90 percent of the time. Kulkarni says these files would be readily available on a local Seagate appliance.

For Seagate, the formation of a Cloud Systems and Solutions Group completes a journey where the company has been transformed from being solely a manufacturer of disk drives to a provider of a whole range of storage systems and cloud services.

Cloud services focus

For example, with technology gained via its acquisition of the Flash memory assets that originally belonged to LSI Logic, Seagate this week also unveiled the Nytro XP6302 PCIe card for servers, which provides 1.86TB of capacity. Those server cards also complement another push into the enterprise via other Xyratex ClusterStor storage systems based on the open source Lustre file system that have been optimized for Big Data applications and a forthcoming upgrade to those systems that will add additional cache to support online transaction processing applications.

EVault rises

Most solution providers in the channel have historically only had limited exposure to Seagate. As a manufacturer of disk drives the company’s products are widely used across a broad range of storage subsystems built by third-party vendors that have extensive relationships throughout the channel. But as margins on disk drives have continued to fall along with the cost of a gigabyte of raw storage, Seagate has made a number of acquisitions that have transformed it into a supplier of higher margin disk systems. Seagate is now bringing the Evault subsidiary back into the corporate fold to shore up that effort by making backend cloud storage services more tightly integrated with its appliances.

A new age for storage

The degree to which Seagate can ultimately succeed will clearly be dependent on how robust a channel it can ultimately build. In the meantime, many of its existing OEM partners and the solution providers that rely on them will also be reconsidering their options. Many of those partners may opt to resell Seagate systems and services or look for other options, including following whatever direction their existing suppliers pursue should they decide to replace Seagate drives with drives from another manufacturer. With billions of dollars in revenue at stake, the one thing that is clear for the moment is that in the age of Big Data the way storage is delivered, deployed and managed is about to become significantly different one way or another.